-Gate

Why is it that every scandal now has to be labelled [scandal]-gate? It's wearing a little thin. I thought that it was something that was favoured among the uninspired NZ media, but the Canadians love it too. Two of the most popular Canadian government scandals have been bingo-gate and advertising-gate.

I'm looking forward to the day when a negligent farmer doesn't fence his stock properly and they rampage through the downtown area, because then we could have gategate.

Or if another scandal happens at the Watergate hotel then we could have Watergategate.

I'm sure the media are so used to slapping a -gate on the end of everything that they wouldn't even notice.

*Update: I now see that Tana Umaga's speartackle on Brian O'Driscoll has been dubbed speargate. There is a special place in hell for proponents of that phrase*