While we really do sympathise with senior emergency folk shoved in front of the world’s cameras to try to explain the inexplicable, never before have we experienced so many people going to such great lengths to say absolutely nothing while ignoring the blatantly obvious.

“Is it true that today’s Saturday? Sorry, that’s just media speculation and we have the absolutely best people on the planet trying to establish the facts of which actual day it is in terms of its placement in a traditional seven-day structural timeframe.”

Why do we do this?

We note that the Plain English Foundation has honoured our emergency agencies for generating some of the worst words and phrases of 2014.

The Morwell coal mine fire was described as an "open cut event" in which “an inversion condition led to a reversion in air quality, while firefighters struggled to bring the fire to its totality".

And the Gold Coast Council warned visitors there was a "potential for dangerous aquatic organisms physically penetrating the waterways.”

An accompanying graphic showed the council was talking about sharks.

Good luck holds

As the Centenary of World War I moves along, some of the human stories keep coming to the fore.

DTM found a fascinating report of how the women of our region responded.

The Mayoress of Bendigo, Mrs Beebe, and the Eaglehawk Mayoress, Mrs Oswald called a big meeting in 1915 and set out to buy and fill up to 20,000 billy cans to send to local men fighting overseas.

In these days when we expect governments to supply everything, it’s intriguing to read what the women suggested should be packed in the billies.

They included tins of tobacco, tissue paper, scissors, pocket knives, canned sardines, chicken “essence”, figs, prunes, cocoa, safety pins, needles, candles, soap, small books, potted meat, cheese, riddles, jokes and mouth organs.

For months afterwards, the Addy carried letters of appreciation from the battlefields, such as this from Private P. Devine: "I am usually an unlucky individual, but since I scored your billy at Christmas I feel my luck has very much changed for the better. It contained articles that we very much required and which could not be obtained at Anzac. The shaving gear was put to a very hard test, a seven months' beard. I am indeed deeply grateful for the billy and contents."

DTM did some research and he was right, his luck did turn.

Patrick Stephen Devine was 22 when he wrote that. He was a Townsville labourer and was among the first to land at Gallipoli. He then moved over to the new Army Flying Corps, which had an appalling mortality rate. Yet, Patrick came home in March 1918.

New Year has its uses

You’re half way there – Christmas gone, and New Year to come.

Mark Twain had a firm view, as usual: “New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.”