Friday, 25 December 2015 - 10:50pm

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Published by Matthew Davidson on Fri, 25/12/2015 - 10:50pm in
advocate

"ALL the best Boxing day bargains aren’t necessarily in the shops with Australian consumers tipped to spend up to $2.26 billion over the post-Christmas period."

Ouch. Here, let me sub-edit for you:

"Australian consumers are tipped to spend up to $2.26 billion over the post-Christmas period, but the best Boxing Day bargains are not necessarily to be found in the shops."

That's if you hold your nose and allow the verb "tipped", which is somewhere near "top cop" in the league table of most tiresome media clichés.

"Bessie Hassan, Consumer Advocate at finder.com.au, forecasts NSW shoppers will spend the most online out of all Australian states and territories with the state to spend $104, 989,000 on Boxing Day alone and a total of $744,940,000 over the post-Christmas period."

Nope. Sorry. Can't do anything with that. You're on your own.

I have in the past complained about the Advocate's habit of publishing press releases verbatim, but this dog's breakfast suggests I didn't know when I was well off. A faithful reproduction would also reveal that Ms Hassan's real job title isn't "Consumer Advocate", but "PR Manager".