Writing in the Daily Telegraph James Morrow has coined the expression ‘pulling an Albo’, meaning ‘looking busy while doing nothing’. But will his new coinage catch on? Aussie English already has a number of expressions for the useless worker who never actually achieves anything. The classic expression is ‘bludger’ – but there are others. Someone who is a ‘morphine’ is a slow-working dope; a ‘suitcase’ is someone who has to be carried by the rest of the team; while a ‘seaweed’ is someone who floats around doing nothing. Then there’s ‘coffee badging’ – the practice of being physically present at the workplace just long enough to have coffee or to meet attendance expectations before returning to working from home. (In other words, you dash in and have a coffee in the open office space where the boss can see you – then dash off again!) Our current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese (like Gough Whitlam before him) has no interest in economics and appears to know nothing about economics – and so does nothing about protecting our standard of living. He looks busy but achieves nothing. That’s ‘pulling an Albo’. Will it catch on? The rule is – new expressions catch if, and only if, lots of people start using them. So, it’s up to you, dear reader!

I have written about ‘populist’ before, but I have to come back to it because I am increasingly irritated by the constant abuse and misuse of this simple word. On his visit to the United Kingdom, Anthony Albanese dismissed the need to meet with Nigel Farage on the grounds that Farage was just a ‘populist’. The definition of ‘populist’ offered by the Oxford English Dictionary is simplicity itself: ‘A person who seeks to represent or appeal to the interests of ordinary people.’ According to Albanese, and others, anyone who does this is beneath contempt. But – ‘populist’ really just means democratic. ‘Democracy’ comes from two Greek roots – ‘demos’ (‘the people’) and ‘kratia’ (‘power or rule’), making ‘democracy’ rule by the people. And the word ‘populist’ says much the same, based on the Latin source word populāris meaning ‘belonging to the people’. We should be alarmed when our political leaders dismiss any movement that ‘belongs to the people’ as being misguided and deserving only of being ignored. In fact, I will go a step further, and say that anyone who slags off ‘populist’ is slagging off democracy. Rejecting ‘populism’ is rejecting democracy. This suggests we have a ruling elite who despise the will of the people. They inherit a long tradition of opposing democracy on the grounds that democracy means ‘mob rule’. That is clear from what the enemies of ‘populism’ are saying today – we mustn’t let the common people, the common herd, the ‘great unwashed’ (as they sneeringly call them) call the shots. If most of the people want an end to excessive mass migration this can be dismissed as ‘populism’ by those who have no regard for the will of the people. So be prepared to defend the word ‘populist’ because in doing so you will be defending democracy itself.

Speccie reader Peter writes that Charlie Kirk is being referred to as a ‘conservative activist’ and asks if ‘activist’ should be applied to him. Well, Peter, I have my doubts. ‘Activist’ is used in a political sense from about 1917 (at which time it often referred to bomb-throwing anarchists). My judgement is that Charlie Kirk pursued thinking, talking, debating and discussion as a way ahead – not shooting, bombing or burning.

In modern usage an activist is often someone who wants to shout down opponents (or cancel them), not engage with them – and that wasn’t Charlie Kirk. Setting fire to Teslas is ‘activism’, engaging someone in intelligent discussion is not.