Somehow it seems names are not always what they seem – from local politics to loopy dingbattery from around the globe, the Nanny State remains busy chaning society’s soiled nappies. The ‘Pie holds his beak and reports …
The Sayings of Dear Chairman Gill … our airport boss shares his innermost business acumen with us …
Eggs and bacon all over her face … the week’s dimwittery award to woman who must change her name if she’s to be taken seriously …
… and a new late blooming career for The Magpie in TV? Could be.
But First …
The Limpic’s Limp On
The hanky wringing over dashed expectations, the lame excuses, the weird mix of police blotter news and sport, and Seven’s very average coverage from Rio are all getting tedious and offer little to entertain The ‘Pie.
And Bentley, too, seems to think we should be looking closer to home for some far more entertaining and relevant ‘gold, silver and bronze’. He’s whittled down the week’s field, with a Townsville local clambering and wheezing onto the top podium.
Well maybe a twisted old cynic like Bentley can make merry with the census debacle – does this mean the government will be redubbed Our Mal Administration?’ – but can we afford levity on this issue?
The ‘Pie thinks not: Bentley what were you thinking; that does nothing for a situation that demands sober commentary, careful analysis and watertight, responsible solutions. Indeed the ABS has sacked their previous cyber gurus at IBM, …
… and have installed their own world class crew to rectify the situation.
We are assured that no way will Miss Piggy be able to get hold of our personal …ummm, details.
Why This Woman Must Change Her Name
Naming names … and ‘unnaming names’ has become an international sport which came to the fore front everywhere this week. (Yellow Gin Creek, anyone?)
And practice what you preach came to mind in one well publicised instance. You probably have had a yawn over the call for Tasmania to change the name of Eggs and Bacon Bay, because a spokeswoman for the dreary PETA animal rights dingbats says ‘it urges people to eat fat laden and high cholesterol foods.’ (Question: so fucking what?)
The photograph is of the spokeswoman in question, Australian animal rights campaigner Claire … wait for it … Fryer. (That her on the left.)
Surely, Ms Fryer, your name – a word describing what is reputed to be the unhealthiest way to prepare any food – commits the same sin of which you accuse the harmless little Huon Valley bay of committing. Time to become Claire Tofu-Mung Bean, madam. Or otherwise, people might laugh at you.
And incidentally, Eggs and Bacon Bay was named for the Eggs-and -Bacon seasonal wildflowers that blanket the shoreline.
But It Ain’t Just Tassie
This modern fashion to rename places, programs and even people to suit modern sensibilities is a blinkered pastime at best, but it can also cause serious political derision as well.
To wit: when is a youth boot camp not a youth boot camp? Answer (courtesy of the Village of Thuringowa’s elected idiot Aaron Harper ‘when it’s an adventure-based program’. Yup, the government denies that its delegation visiting a cattle station up this way means the reintroduction of the ‘boot camp youth punishment’ regime, scrapped by Labor as ‘unworkable’ soon after being elected. This despite departmental literature released to the contrary.
No matter that kids can still be sent there for a 26 week program, doing exactly all the things and under the same strictures as the Newman Government ‘boot camp’ guidelines. It just ain’t a boot camp, Mr Harper assured us as he wrestled to pull up his Kung Fu Panda underpants so clearly exposed by this clumsy Labor somersault.
It’s even been suggested Labor’s program was to be voluntary. If that’s the case, Donald Trump has just lost his crown as the King of the Political Clowns – welcome, Anna Alphabet. And good luck with getting the little darlings to form an orderly queue requesting a spot.
But it Ain’t Just Us
But hey, Queensland isn’t alone in this sort government hoopla … in South Australia, they are seriously considering limiting the size of schnitzels allowed to be served in restaurants.
And over in Italy, they’ve gone one better and fought back against ‘vegetarian extremism’ by proposing a national law that could see parents go to jail for seven years for ‘bringing up their children on a vegan diet’.
And overseas, those western equivalents of Sharia Law ideologial principles, that is, Political Correct University students have become even more tedious than usual.
In England, they’ve tried to tear down (maybe by now have) a statue of Cecil Rhodes (yes, he of the Rhodes scholarship) because of his ‘racist colonialism’ and want he never to be uttered around Oxford again. Which tends to complete the journey from one extremism to another.
(A digression: Mark Twain met with Rhodes during a world tour, and then went on to England where a society hostess asked his impression of Rhodes. Twain said, ’I admire him, I frankly confess. And when his time comes, I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake.’)
But the best gotcha of the week comes from Yale University, where, as in many other instances, the people who run the institutions should perhaps be institutionalized because they should know better, are often held in thrall by these bumptious children of rich benefactors.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, journalist Roger Kimball reported the best gotcha of all, in an article about the current craze to rename historic places at American universities.
Mr Kimball writes:
At Princeton, Stanford, Georgetown, Harvard and elsewhere, students have demanded that buildings, programs and legacies be renamed to accommodate modern sensitivities. Amherst College has dropped Lord Jeffrey Amherst as its mascot because the colonial administrator was unkind to Indians. Students at the University of Missouri have petitioned to remove a statue of the “racist rapist”Thomas Jefferson. This is part of a larger effort, on and off campuses, to stamp out dissenting attitudes and rewrite history to comport with contemporary prejudices.
.
Mr Kimball then tells us that Yale University President Peter Salovey has announced he is creating a $50million Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming, which will decide if – as demanded by those now known as ‘crybullies’ – Yale’s residential John C. Calhoun College be renamed because of Calhoun’s support for slavery.
Then Mr Kimball pounces.
I have unhappy news for Mr. Salovey. In the great racism sweepstakes, John Calhoun was an amateur. Far more egregious was Elihu Yale, the philanthropist whose benefactions helped found the university. As an administrator in India, he was deeply involved in the slave trade. He always made sure that ships leaving his jurisdiction for Europe carried at least 10 slaves. I propose that the committee on renaming table the issue of Calhoun College and concentrate on the far more flagrant name “Yale.”
Mr Kimball titled his article ‘The College Formerly Known As Yale’.
As good as a gotcha gets.
Deep Insight
Back to the local scene.
What would we do without Our Beloved Chairman (of TEL that is) airport boss Kevin Gill. Without Dear Chairman, we would be living in total ignorance of the intricacies of how business works.
On Wednesday, he graced the pages of the Daily Astonisher to generously share his deep insight into the business stratosphere (almost literally). The paper, in an uncharacteristic shift away from full blown hyperbole told us that proposed international links to Auckland and Port Morseby were ‘at least’ two years away, and probably five. The hook for the story initially was a survey conducted by two wholly independent entities which stood to gain nothing from the results –they being Townsville Airport (CEO Kevin Gill) and Townsville Enterprise (board chairman Kevin Gill). The survey, the methodology with which they did not want to trouble us, said 5000 respondents wanted flights to Auckland and PNG. Look, seriously now …For mysterious reasons, the airlines have refused to start up services in the next week, month or even year. Even half a decade. The sods!! …
…but wait, Dear Chairman Gill calmed us with this uncanny insight. Quoth he: ‘The decision to commence a new international service is a significant one for an airline (really!?) and they take into account many factors, including potential market demand in both directions.’ !!!
Crumbs, whoda thought?
Now, there will no doubt be those cynics out there who would say that ‘potential market demand in both directions’ would be the only factor considered before getting down to the nitty gritty of the design of crew name tags or somesuch.
But what would those critics know, negative dumbasses, as the Yanks say. Our man Gill has his finger(s) on the pulse. Indeed the whole hand, one imagines.
…And Pot Calling Kettle Department
On Friday, The Astonisher nonsensically proclaimed that …
… that work being the Queensland Airports plan to enrich its corporate assets portfolio by getting the public to pay for an airport upgrade of dubious necessity.
The Astonisher – part of the mother-knows-best cartel trying to run this town – waffled on about missed deadlines for the project, tenders not called and stalled plans – all because Qantas would not agree to the $3 surcharge Queensland Airports sought to impose on ticket sales to fund their expansion.
But these plans were only unilateral and arbitrary, a thought fart from Gill’s bosses and several of the well heeled urgers around the ‘Ville. And certainly not enjoying any popular groundswell of support, indeed quite the obverse. The Dudley Do-Nothings predictably came to the party, ever mindful of their masters and bugger the great unwashed. In fact, the missed deadlines etc etc yakkety yak and so on, were self-imposed wish timelines, with a laughable hint of bullying by the Bulletin.
(Scene: Office of Qantas CEO Alan Joyce.
Assistant: Oh, Mr Joyce, The Townsville Bulletin is giving us a bad name up there, blaming us for the stalled airport expansion!’
Joyce: ‘Begorra, lass, we can’t have that ruinous situation, we’ll be right royally shafted, bejasus, we’d better agree to slug our customers to help out Queensland Airports. By St. Paddy, we don’t want to get Townsville Enterprise off-side.’)
Both Qantas and subsidiary Jetstar were blunt – and one would’ve thought obvious – in their assessment, shared by thousands of others, including The Magpie, when they said’ The upgrade should be funded out of the airport’s own profits’. Ergo not locals and other passengers who are at the mercy of a grasping monopoly.
The exclamation mark to all this is that it more than a bit rich that a News Ltd entity – part of corporation that has sacrificed it’s proper role in this community in the pursuit of profit-at-all costs – should harangue another corporation for openly declaring it’s in the game to make a profit for shareholders – only in Qantas’ case, by doing the right thing by its customers.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere …oh, if only similar sentiments were smoldering down on Flinders Street West.
How The ‘Pie Wished He’d Been There
(But reporting it would’ve been a tricky one to get passed the prudish Attila The Hen at the Astonisher).
The ‘Pie used to delight when the façade of orotund pomposity was broken in court, especially by the impish sense of humor of the likes of Judge Clive Wall QC (who incidentally, retires from the bench next month after almost five decades in the legal lurk … enjoy your retirement Yeronner.)
The ‘Pie well remembers the day Judge Julie Dick forthrightly told a defendant that ‘you can’t go around full of grog and bad manners’ before sending him for a brief stint in chokey. But Judge Dick cannot hold a candle to an English Judge, who gave as good as she got from a low life racist she had just sentenced. There’s been an outcry from the public towards suggestions the judge should be sanctioned for her remarks … most feel she should be given a medal. Definitely my kind of judge … we should offer her a job on the Queensland bench if her hanky wringing peers give any what-for over there.
Soon Some Real Heroes Take Centre Stage In Rio
The Paralympics start shortly, but one winner already is this video made to promote the event. Simply one of the best of its genre ever, not just technically and for its editing, but it really is an example of that much overused and abused word ‘inspiring’. What do you think?
And Finally …
The ‘Pie still remains temporarily speechless in fact if not essence, but suddenly, it’s dawned on him that a new career could await, in his old stamping ground of television.
His inspiration is David Armand.