A tew-klee-ay non-delight!

Look here. The Bug‘s Mediocre Bytes has no problem at all if a country wants to make a big change and demands to be called and pronounced as something else.

If Turkey wants to now be called Türkiye and that that should be pronounced something a bit like Tew-klee-ay (we’ll explain that shortly), we’re happy enough. Apparently the United Nations itself backed the change last year.

And hats off to the ABC – both radio and television – who have gotten into the spirit of the thing over recent days, even if they appear to be the only mainstream mediocre player to have adopted the practice.

But our only gripe – and yes, it’s only a little one and this column does get a little picky from time time to time as we might have already mentioned – is one of consistency. We tried to phonetically break down Matt Wordsworth’s attempts on the new pronunciation on Tuesday night’s ABC TV 7pm news out of Brisbane and we’re not totally satisfied with the Tew-klee-ay we came up with.

To be perfectly honest, it sounded different each time we replayed it and that surely can’t be Matt’s fault.

Michael Rowland on ABC News Breakfast the other day also manfully tried his version of Tew-klee-ay but then went on to talk about the Turkish (turk-ish) government’s rescue efforts. Shouldn’t that be something like Tew-klish Government?

Last night offered no new light on the matter. ABC Brisbane’s 7pm TV news presenter Brittney Klein and reporter Allyson Horn both settled on Turk-e-air. Just your normal, everyday, Tur-key but given a bit of air at the end. Turk-e-air. Shortly after, arguably Australia’s greatest-ever TV interviewer Sarah Ferguson was having none of that nonsense. It was Tur-key all the way.

But what if Wordsworth and Rowland are right and the pronunciation of the new country’s name does begin with something more like Tew-k….?

Will our military audio history books need to be changed to explain how our brave Anzacs on Anzac Cove back in 1915 sorted out good old Johhny Tewk?

Does it mean that one of the all-time favourite chocolates in a Cadbury Favourites box is now a Tew-klish delight?

Will north Queenslanders from now on have to talk about their upcoming holiday to Tew-klee-ay-ay!

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We suggest this full-page ad (below) in a recent edition of the national broadshit The Australian falls into the “do as we say not as we do” category.

It urges business owners not to cut back on their advertising spending just because they face tough economic and financial conditions.

The ad urges ad buyers to “see the upside in a downturn” and steal a march on their competitors by not cutting back their marketing budgets.

So the message from the Murdoch media is to persevere and not make cutbacks that could harm your business.

If only News Crap Australia took that same approach when it closed dozens of its newspapers a few years back and when it has regularly offloaded staff while apparently never cutting back on the massive financial returns it shovels to the Murdoch family.

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Remember the hectares of space News Crap Australia devoted to then defence minister Peter Dutton’s repeated bleatings about a war with China in the lead-up to the May 2022 federal election?

Dutton’s tactic backfired at the ballot box as voters of Chinese heritage turned to Labor, but that didn’t stop him or News Crap from beating the same drum as its affiliated entity Sky News plans to do with an upcoming special “investigation”. (below)

If you subscribe to the pay TV channel or even if you don’t we’ll save you time and money by giving you the answer that Sky will no doubt offer viewers to its own question: No, and it’s all Albo and Labor’s fault.