Dick Smith will have the “best prime minister in the world” launch his Dick Smith Foods foundation tomorrow. The foundation promises to distribute $1 million next year from the sales of Dick Smith’s foods, but recent research suggests the foundation might have some culinary application as well.

Researchers at the University of Gävle in Sweden in a study evocatively named “Who Needs Cream and Sugar When There Is Eco-Labeling? Taste and Willingness to Pay for ‘Eco-Friendly’ Coffee” gave participants in an experiment two cups of coffee which were identical, but they were told that one of the cups was “eco-friendly”.

In a slight twist on the placebo effect 74% of those who said they were concerned about the environment rated the “eco-friendly” cup better than the other.

It would be a fair bet that the effect would transfer to something like Dick Smith Foods where Smith is trading not only on compassion in a general philanthropic sense, but also on the products being Australian-made.

We know from the failure of the Australian-made label to make any perceptible dint on imports that being Australian on its own does not impart enough improvement to a good to move it, but twinned with philanthropy it could be another matter.

In a final twist Smith is also giving ownership of the philanthropy to his customers. They are being asked to vote on who will get the funds.

Smart marketing with financial, moral and culinary pay-offs, and all for a total donation (marketing budget) of $1 million.

In politics media bias is a given, no matter which side of the fence you stand on. It is particularly worse for the non-Labor and non-Greens side of politics because most journalists fit on the left of the ideological spectrum so what they genuinely see as even-handed has a lean on it to start with.

So it was bizarre to see former ALP communications minister Stephen Conroy attempt various strategems to control the media to eradicate what he saw as bias. In fact it was one of the signs that the Labor government was a bad government that these attempts even got support.

Therefore it is not a good sign for the Abbott government that they are wasting so much valuable time hyperventilating about the ABC, when there are boats to be stopped, debt to be paid back and taxes to be axed.

They are dependant on the media to get their message across. How does threatening to take a bludgeon to their main means of communication with the electorate advance their cause at all.

And suggestions, like that advanced by Matthias Corman, that the ABC should be prevented from running a website are simply idiotic. Hasn’t he heard of “convergence” and isn’t he aware that many of us, including me, are as likely to “tune in” to the ABC using a live feed from a website, and that this is just the sharp end of where things are going? Doesn’t he comprehend that most of what’s on the ABC website anyway is derived from broadcast products anyway?

This type of idiocy plays right into the hands of those media who say that the Abbott government is hopeless.

But having the media biased against you is not necessarily a bad thing. You can use it to your advantage.

Take Pauline Hanson for example. Despite a massive media campaign against her in the Queensland elections in 1998 she came from nowhere to have the second most popular party in Queensland.

How did this happen?

Well, the media is not nearly as powerful or influential as they like to think they are. In any survey of trustworthiness I have seen, journalists, politicians and used car salesmen have similarly low levels of trust.

So just because they tell you something, it doesn’t mean it is accepted by a majority of electors.

In Pauline’s case, the constant barrage of criticism made voters sit up and say “I mightn’t agree with everything she says, but I think she has a right to say it,” and marked their ballot papers accordingly.

Smart politicians understand this dynamic and work with it, turning press opprobrium into electoral gold.

Dumb politicians do what some members of the Abbott and Rudd/Gillard governments have been doing. It says something about the pool from which we are drawing our politicians that this tendency appears to be bipartisan.

Various news outlets are reporting that Bowman MHR, Dr Andrew Laming has backed down from comments he made about obesity after a storm on social media. I hope not, because Laming was right on the money.

He was commenting on a photo on the a Newscorp site of Melanie Ward who is apparently the same size as the average Australian woman – 163 cm and 70 kg.

Laming linked to the image and tweeted “So it is OK to be overweight, if it is now average!”

That’s exactly what Twitter is for – provocation. And a fine provocation it is.

Obesity is a serious health issue for Australia, and if you put the height and weight figures into the BMI calculator on the home page of Body and Soul, where the photo comes from, you’ll find that the average woman comes out as “overweight”.

Yet there are parts of the health, psychology and fashion industries that are trying to tell us that it is OK to be average, even when average is unhealthy, and that we risk damaging the mental health of those who are overweight by criticising it.

The photos of Melanie confront you with the reality of average, and Laming asks the right question. If we don’t ask this question of our average selves, then how do we do something about the problem?

The criticism on Twitter and the media, and by prominent ALP frontbencher, Kate Ellis was completely partisan and misguided.

Ms Ellis, who trades on being svelte, attacked Laming’s tweet as being “appalling”.

We don’t need this government critiquing women’s bodies.

We’ve got health experts and many others who will do that, and women themselves…

With typically sexist sangfroid Ms Ellis claims that only women can talk about women’s bodies, and by implication that a male parliamentarian, also a medical doctor, is not allowed to even raise the issue. What next? A ban on male politicians dealing with female constituents, and male doctors with female patients?

Recently Moggil MLA, Bruce Flegg, made a speech about it in the Queensland Parliament, and received a strongly supportive response to it.

The obesity epidemic is one that we have to deal with. At a time when there is a boom in fitness centres and some of the population is getting very buff, it is hard to understand that the median citizen is slumping further into the scales.

Part of the explanation lies in an underlying assumption that if we are fat it isn’t our fault – it’s genetics, or the population averages, or fast food, and that to even discuss the issue is to put at least half our population in the way of mental harm.

While a large minority of the population is actively taking charge of its own bodies, another large minority is wanting someone else to take charge.

It’s an attitude that explains rising rates of obesity. It could also very-well explain other trends, like falling levels of numeracy and literacy.

When it comes to health, education or a number of other areas “Whatever” is not a good enough response.