A nice loaf of whirlwind-flour bread

Lest you think I only pick on the silly things said by Australian journalists here is a paragraph by Dan Hodges (son of Glenda Jackson, no I can't quite believe it either) in the (London) Daily Telegraph. He is discussing the consequences of the Eastleigh by-election of 28th February at which the UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate came second, beating the Conservative and Labour candidates. In American terms that is like beating the GOP and the Democrats, in Australian terms like beating the Liberals and the ALP. When these sorts of thing usually happen UKIP is seen to be the spoiler for the Conservatives, in this case it is fair to say it is the other way around.

It was expected, Hodges means to say, that another party would benefit from dissatisfaction with Conservative policy, but that UKIP would reap these benefits was not expected.

However, that is not what he actually says:

Two and a half years ago the conventional wisdom in Westminster was that at this stage in the parliament the cuts would be biting, the Coalition would be as popular as typhoid, and Labour would reaping the whirlwind. And that wisdom has been proved broadly correct. With the exception it’s the Tweed Army, not the Red Army, that are the temporary beneficiaries.

(Tweed is supposed to be the preferred clothing material of UKIP supporters: sturdy, old fashioned and very British. At Oxford in my day the Tridentine Mass enthusiasts were said to believe in "salvation by tweed alone".)

Hodges thinks that reaping the whirlwind is something you want to do.

The prophet Hosea (8:7), who coined the phrase, would beg to differ:

For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads, it shall yield no meal; if it were to yield, aliens would devour it.