So the expensive Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch massacre gets underway next Monday. Why? What on earth could it possibly accomplish?

A non-descript Australian, Brendan Tarrant, turns up in Dunedin, lives a fairly innocuous life, on what source of income we don’t know. Like thousands of others he joins a gun-club and a gym. Then suddenly he cracks and runs amok with a gun.

My pick for tomorrow night’s Australian election is a bloodbath as the old established conservative and anti-environmentalist members tumble before the new force in Aussie politics. I refer to the massive, totally apolitical new green movement, allied to neither left or right and targeting the likes of Abbott. As a result there be a Labour government, to some extent by accident.

We often read of people justifying their mis-use of English on the grounds it’s constantly evolving and not rigidly fixed. Basically a Germanic language English nevertheless has a rich variety of contributing sources, but that doesn’t deny it can be mis-used.

Consider this comment from Inland Revenue Department spokesman Baden Campbell (a fictitious name I’d wager) on the Department’s new computer glitches.

With western world interest rates now tantamount to free money, unsurprisingly common sense has gone out the window. The Uber float raising US$8 billion, epitomised this.

Described subsequently as a terrible flop because the issue price lost 8% on the first day, the reduced share price still valued the company at US$76 billion. For that reason I’d have called it an astonishing success.