The Lighter Note

Big serve 

As if it is not hard enough juggling junk food, cigarettes, alcohol, contact sports, noise pollution, efficient use of the roads, public expressions of creativity, corporal punishment and tanning, the fun police have found something new to target: that bastion of gourmet pleasure – airline food.  

According to a missive received by The Note’s most culinary-challenged operative, WA Institute of Sport consultant dietitian Julie Meek is urging airlines to serve more nutritional meals and snacks, saying many serve up high-calorie, salty foods that can cause discomfort, even health problems for passengers.

Ms Meek is hoping to save regular high fliers like fly-in, fly-out workers, politicians and corporate travellers from killing themselves slowly at high altitude.

You can just about hear the under-employed at Occupy Wall Street and various spin-offs ask Ms Meek the simple question: Why? 

Straight kick

The Note is as absorbed as everyone else about how Western Australia is going to pay for its $1 billion sports stadium, so it was interesting to hear Treasurer Christian Porter’s take on a meeting with Australian Football League CEO Andrew Demetriou to discuss footy’s contribution to the proposed new oval.

“In arguing they should contribute less, Andrew was putting the great benefits of football tourism to me as treasurer, how we really wouldn’t need that much money from the AFL because we would make the money back out of away games for Carlton and Collingwood and people coming here,” Mr Porter told an audience recently. 

“I did say respectfully to Andrew that Carlton playing a game in Perth was definitely tourism; Collingwood was probably more like a crime wave.”

Whoops

Last week, we literally put the wrong words in the mouth of Decmil’s Ray Sputore, butchering his acronym EPCM (engineering, procurement, construction management) to somehow come up with electrical construction and maintenance. 

The Note reckons we need a widget or app to accurately decipher such material in the future. We’d call it the acronymator.