Bondy.
Bentley was greatly moved by the departure from this vale of the tumultuous Alan Bond (for whom The Magpie once worked, but that is another story for another time).
Bondy was very much a curate’s egg kind of fella, good in parts, other bits not too tasty.
But a generously spirited Bentley chooses to remember the great sporting achievement of the man, who was the prime mover in engineering what many believe was Australia’s greatest ever sporting moment, wresting the America’s Cup away from the foot-stamping, nighty-ripping Yanks. And still in a generous vein, Bentley would like to think that Bondy is creating havoc in heaven with a new use for the famous go-fast winged keel
Here, The Magpie must point out he was somewhat startled to see himself depicted as having angel’s wings, but Bentley explained that he didn’t suggest the old bird had, or was about to, turn up his claws. In fact, unlike many others around the town who believe that The Magpie will be headed for another place when the time comes (he won’t be lonely for local company if he does), Bentley simply depicted the old bird testing out a suitable set of wings ahead of time. Well, that’s what he said, anyway.
Moving on to more temporal matters.
When The Jobs About To Go Away, The Subs Come Out To Play.
Unbelievable headline, ya’d reckon.
This from the comments section of the blog during the week.
The Magpie June 1, 2015 at 9:47 pm (Edit)
Certain classes of workers – chefs, radio announcers, newspaper sub editors – are often sacked or made redundant on the spot – callous but it removes any temptation of farewell revenge. News Corpse metropolitan giveway commuter paper Mx is being scrapped at the end of next week, so what have the subs got to lose. This was spotted in last Friday’s edition.
A Harmless Hoot from the on-line Astonisher
This from the comments last Tuesday(in case you missed it).
The Magpie June 2, 2015 at 10:50 am (Edit)
The ‘Pie is not making this up, but thinks it is the most appropriate and hilarious own goal by the Townsville Bulletin for a while now.
Note below from last Tuesday on-line Astonisher.
Now look on the lower right at the ‘Most Viewed’ box. As you see, the first item is ‘1. Were you fooled by this creepy hoax?’
The ‘Pie idly clicked on it … several times. Waited awhile and clicked a few times again … BUT EACH TIME, THE SCREEN REFRESHED WITH THE BULLETIN’S HOME PAGE! Christ, how honest can a paper get?
As inadvertent cock-ups go, this is a bewdy, but just in case it’s a clandestine survey by the paper, the answer to the question is NO, hardly anyone is fooled by your daily ‘creepy hoax’ .
As commenter Winton Cowperson replied, ‘It is good to see that the Astonisher is complying with the Truth Council.’
Other matters.
More Power To Warwick Powell.
Ever heard of this bloke, one Warwick Powell?
He’s a chap with an impressive background. Born in Hong Kong, he has more than two decades of experience in organising many multi-million dollar project partnerships with China, and has backroom political experience, having worked in the Queensland Parliamentary bureaucracy under both Kevin Rudd (perhaps they had the odd natter in Mandarin, which they both speak) and for Tony McGrady .
He is inter alia a visiting lecturer at JCU.
Mr Powell was involved in the much ballyhooed Townsville Festival of Innovation and Creativity late last year, and had a good, gushing gallop in the Astonisher at the time. He still gets in the occasional quote, but usually buried in the last couple of paragraphs of any news report.
It’s pretty obvious why.
You see, it’s doubtful that he’ll ever become the darling of iditor Lachy Heywood, because, unlike Mr Heywood, Mr Powell appears to be beholden to no one but his own well researched and balanced arguments about our future. And those arguments more jar than jell with the Bulletin’s agenda of doing the bidding of it’s outside controllers.
Here’s a sampler of what I mean – Mr Powell doesn’t mince words or get lost in jargon, as you’ll see. His assessment of Townsville Enterprise’s tourism strategy is, to put it mildly, very blunt, including a somewhat tongue in cheek swipe at the TEL chairman and airport boss Kevin Gill over the flights to Bali.
‘Whatever happens with the Bali runs, and I suspect they will result in net losses in tourism expenditure to the NQ region, they should be treated as a regional “loss leader”. A mass exodus of North Queenslanders to Bali via Townsville will see tourism expenditure head in one direction mainly; the return flights will be dominated by hung-over Australians full of memories and perhaps regrets. It’s doubtful that there will be a compensating volume of Indonesian tourists coming into NQ to make-up for the Ozzie $’s that will flow the other way.
Then Mr Powell turns his attention specifically to Townsville Enterprise’s activity that masquerades as performance on tourism.
So, where has the focus been?
The City’s peak tourism promotion body – Townsville Enterprise – recently signed off on its Tourism Destination Strategy. China and Japan both get a mention. Good, right? Not really. They each only get a single mention in the entire strategy.
There must be something wrong with my search function, but neither Hong Kong nor Korea came up when I looked. Hong Kong got a guernsey in the 2012-16 Strategy so I’m guessing it got lumped in with China in the latest rendition.
The fact is, the so-called Strategy has totally missed the mark on the international dimension of growing regional tourism. Totally.
The excuse? No direct international flights. That’s what the TEL CEO said in December 2014. I guess back then they didn’t know the Commonwealth was going to help re-open the local airport to direct international flights. After all, the TEL Chairman is the Airport Supremo,(Kevin Gill) and the tourism strategy was crafted after extensive “engagement” with government agencies … well, I guess it’s a case of the left hand not knowing what the right one was doing; or was it a case of effective Chinese Walls?
Either way, the excuse doesn’t wash
Crumbs, sounds like Magpie redux.
And Mr Powell managed to make the most of his small end-of-story mention in the Bulletin recently, when he gave the lie to most of foregoing prattle in the same story with this:
“Townsville needs to look beyond the mining boom and can’t hinge its future on projects such as the $16 billion Carmichael coal mine.
He also urged the city to stop looking to the government for handouts.
“As for planning matters specifically, the idea of planned urban utopia is a chimera,’’ Mr Powell said.
“The obsession with a planning scheme, as opposed to real economic activity and dynamic organic civic life, confuses people into thinking that something is happening when there is little more than earnest and energetic chatter.”
As The ‘Pie said, a lot of activity masquerading as performance.
The Magpie’s point here is simple – whether or not you agree with Mr Powell’s assessment, we need more of this type of robust and intelligent, well argued debate on a whole range of subjects. Just hope we hear a lot more from him. This blog will always be open to you Mr Powell, if you would care to use it as a forum if other avenues are closed to you.
Moving on.
Miscellaneous.
The Magpie mind is curious about matters both large and small, and there was a collection of fascinating matters that floated into the nest during the week. Here’s an intriguing shot from last Monday’s irritating Q&A program.
WTF – literally.
The fruit of The ‘Pie’s loins, (she hates that James Thurber descriptor – she prefers unpoetically to just be known as his daughter) – who knows about these tricky technicalities, provides the likely reason why such a word sullied our screens.
‘ Ha!’ she says .’Word clouds are automatically generated from tags on tweets – the mor the tag occurs the bigger the word appears in the cloud.’
Whatever that means, but sounds good, she’s a smart gal. And thus one supposes the ABC smarties missed this modern quirk.
Pigeon Pie Anyone?
You’ll recall the pic last week of someone sneaking up on a pigeon with an air horn. Well, it seems more dastardly plans are afoot in what appears to be open season on pigeons.
Not Saying A Word
Then there’s a photograph that The ‘Pie guesses is from California, probably in the LA or San Francisco Chinatown areas. Not what could be called a marketing triumph.
‘Lo and Behold
The famous British bobby’s catch-cry of ‘allo, ‘allo, ‘allo seems to need, like so many other things in this changing world, updating. It may very soon vie for prominence alongside the more unwieldy ‘marhaba, marhaba marhaba’ – Arabic for hello – if you run foul of this pair of happy pommy wallopers. (It’s a fair dinkum pic.)
Apropos nothing, you may have heard about the traditional bobby who came home and caught his wife in bed with three blokes. His initial reaction was to blurt out ‘allo, ‘allo, allo’, and the missus said to him ’What’s the matter, aren’t you talking to me?’ Boom tish.
Bureaucracy And The Beast
The Astonisher tells us today that sanity has had a rare bureaucratic victory, with rangers being told to shoot an errant croc that has been playing hide and seek around Townsville waterways. And The ‘Pie says there should more of it, at least enough to create a viable industry in high end jackets, handbags and high heels.
But of course, being bureaucracy, the blokes with the gats won’t be just shooting the croc
A Department of Environment and Heritage Protection spokeswoman said the rangers would indulge in a spot of ‘humane euthanasia’. This will no doubt be achieved by the use of a normally tubular devise commonly called a weapon which is designed to discharge projectiles by the action of gas pressure produced through the rapid combustion of a propellant, which will impart sufficient velocity to sustain the projectile’s travel once the action of the gas ceases at the end of the tube or muzzle. (A similar description would fit the manner of speech of these bum-polishing drongos.)
Whatever, humane or otherwise, the result will be ‘splat’ and presto, a dozen handbags and a few pairs of high heels will be hauled on board.
But crocs fall into the same category as Woody Allen’s famous biblical observation that’ the lion may lay down with the lamb but the lamb won’t get much sleep’. Or the more succinct and accurate D.H. Lawrence summation that nothing will make the lion lay down with the lamb unless the lamb is inside him. Many a tropical fishing party have had uneasy nights down by the billabong, alert for the slithering sound of a croc creeping up the muddy banks towards the camp site. But some have the right idea about getting an undisturbed night’s rest.
Then there was this little personality test.
The ‘Pie is happy to say he proved that his heart pumps only the purest unpasteurized milk of human kindness, by seeing ‘good’ first.
No really, he did.
Aww, c’mon now.
