And blokes once chased sheilas, a name that’s been retained by the Macquarie Dictionary after its publisher Susan Butler read a piece in a newspaper column about gender signs on toilet doors that included: ‘A little bloke wearing strides and a sheila in a frock’

The Oxford English Dictionary defines sheila as a ’young woman or a girlfriend, playfully affectionate.’ Originally an Irish female name, it became popular in Britain in the 1820s to describe all women.

But former Premier and Sky News presenter Kristina Keneally last week took exception to being called a 'Yankee sheila' by co-presenter Mark Latham so she lodged a formal complaint.

Legally, under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, calling people names can get us into hot water with the radical PL brigade believing it can be considered a hate crime on a par with racism or homophobia.

Calling workmates ‘darling’, ‘sweetheart’ or ‘honey’ could be perceived as disrespectful and non-professional, so what’s that about freedom of speech?

The Supreme Court had to determine the meaning of the word ‘tart’ after former Australian Olympic cycling coach Charlie Walsh supposedly called gold medallist Kathy Watt  ‘a little tart’ in an address to the Adelaide Press Club. She sued for defamation claiming Walsh had tried to ‘disgrace, discredit and belittle’ her.

The government wants to change the words ‘offend, insult and humiliate’ in Section 18C to ‘harass and intimidate’ but it has to pass Parliament and that’s probably unlikely. You wonder whether boring pollies ever go to the pub with real people where the attendant might dare call them ‘darl’.

THE new $5 banknotes' security features including a clear top-to-bottom window designed to protect it from counterfeiters may be world-first but most poker and vending machines won't have a bar of them.

In fact, they won't even accept the notes and people playing the pokies have to swap them for the old ones or cash them in for coins. Apparently the machines can be modified for about $1,000 each and that's a costly exercise but one that will need to be done, especially because new $10 notes will have the same features.

WHILE Australia Post struggles to deliver letters to and from Orange within six days, homing pigeons can do the job in hours. ‘Regular’ mail between Orange and Dubbo, for example, takes around three days but a pigeon can cover the distance with a message on the leg in one hour 35 minutes.

And a pigeon can fly to Bathurst in 30 minutes beating hands down (or wings down) Australia Post’s delivery time of three days. The super-slow snail mail was introduced to save money on overnight processing. Stamp prices also went up with an ordinary letter costing $1.

And it’s not just domestic mail where Australia Post fails.

An Orange resident mailed a parcel to the UK and it took 30 days to get there, going on a world tour via the United States where it was off-loaded for a week or so. An Australia Post spokesman says while letters were declining, the focus was on finding new ways to ensure a sustainable future.