Dumbo Jones breaks out the champagne – Cathy O’Toole looks set to be Labor’s candidate for Herbert.

Also this week, was it a rare moment of self-awareness by the Townsville Bulletin, or yet another lack of self-awareness in openly admitting that they write crap that can’t be believed? Yes they did.

Also, the Poms can teach Joe Hockey a thing or two about condescending advice on how we lesser mortals can get on in life.

Show Me The Money (And Where It Came From)

It’s been a week when it seems the burden of proof is on a diet and getting lighter by the day.

The major move was by PM Wingnut and the dead-eyed would-be dictator Peter Dutton (the sort of former copper who gives good wallopers a bad name). Dutton wants to be both judge and jury on removing Aussie citizenship from people he thinks could be terrorist. Proof of said terrorism will be, like George Gershwin’s woman, a sometimes thing. The meaure itself has great merit but most deeply alarming is the assessment that the government wants to take the decision away from the courts ‘because they might not convict for lack of evidence’!

And with that timing that it seems only Prime Minister Wingnut  has mastered, this debate about one of the greatest departures from an underpinning of democracies around the world – the separation of parliament, administration and the judicary – came in the month when we celebrated the 800th anniversary of the historic Magna Carta – the Great Charter that started the world moving towards that ‘separation of powers’ ideal.

Bentley is not amused.

The Cheeky Chappy Award of the Week.

But Wingnut and Dutton  weren’t the only ones in on the game of making proof an unnecessary trifle.

Enter stage left the Keystone Kops of Indonesia, who called a media conference to show piles of money –US dollars – that THEY SAY Australian officials gave a people smuggling crew.

Well, hang on a minute, what we’re looking at is a bunch of money that could’ve come from anywhere, indeed just as likely to be the result of a whip-round in the Jakarta Police HQ wet canteen. And who’s the dude in the mask, a handy off-duty plod helping out? All this to hilariously bolster the argument that Australia is in the business of bribery (oh, merciful Allah, those perfidious infidels!!). As Paul, Sheehan pointed out in the SMH, it is a bit rich for the Indons to accuse us of pay-offs in a country where ‘bribery is a national sport’. The Magpie opines that getting moral lectures on corruption from Indonesian officials is akin to seeking advice on the virtues of modesty from Donald Trump. It would also be interesting to see how much of  that money – said to be about $30,000 – quietly becomes swimming pools, cars and plasma TVs.

State of Origin(al) Sin

But ‘proof’ was also taking a shellacking much closer to home when, under the headline Blues supporter may have watched game in public before robbing servo’, the Brisbane Times reporter Natalie Bochenski wrote:

‘Gold Coast police believe a Blues supporter who robbed a Labrador service station may have watched the game somewhere public. Wearing a New South Wales Origin cap, the man used a large hunting knife to hold up the business on Frank Street around 2.40am, making off with a small sum of money.’

So hang on a minute, just because a bloke is robbing a servo wearing a NSW Origin cap, that makes him unquestionably a Blues supporter? Hmmm, let’s think about that – others obviously haven’t.

Let’s consider this.

Could it be that a Maroon’s supporter with evil intent (a popular notion widely held south of the Tweed of all Maroon supporters) decides to, say, recover the bet he lost when his team got hammered by the Blues by robbing a servo?

Thinks: ‘Hmmm, there’s sure to be CCTV, so what would be the best way put the wallopers off the scent. I know, dress like a Blues supporter!!’

What if the bloke had been wearing a Mickey Mouse mask – raid all the homes of known former Mouseketeers members (easily identifiable by the Annette Funicello blow-up doll in the cellar)? Or if he was wearing a Ronald MacDonald mask, question George Colbran?

Definitely deep thinkers down there on the Gold Coast … and at the Brisbane Times.

Is This Honesty At It’s Shining Best Or Best own Goal of the Week?

Deep thinking seemed to be missing in this neck of the media woods, too. This comment by The Magpie during the week.

The Magpie June 19, 2015 at 8:17 am  (Edit)

If there was an award for brutal honesty, the mea culpa confession in the Townsville Bulletin this morning would take the cake.

Online there is a story (wisely with no byline) quashing rumours that rogue taxi service Uber would be starting up in Townsville. The nameless reporter made this astounding admission:

Quote: Earlier in the year, the Bulletin reported locals were trying to get Uber off the ground by the middle of the year, which has now all but been quashed by the lack of support from the company’s head office.
 An Uber spokesman said that while they hoped to be “everywhere in Queensland in the future”, they had no plans to launch in Townsville. He said: “There seems to have been some misinformation spread earlier in the year.” Unquote.

Out of the mouth of babes and all that … Full points for honesty, Astonisher.

The Art of the Insult

Much has been made of Joe Hockey’s recent lofty pronouncement to the huddled masses -‘ Want a house in Sydney, get a job that pays good money’, and ‘ A petrol excise won’t affect poor people because they don’t drive cars, or if they do, they don’t drive far’.

But as grating as these Malice in Blunderland touches are, Jolly Joe is but a babe in the woods when it comes to the studied, class-based insult. Although the French entry in this typically EuroScorn Contest – ‘Let them eat cake’ – is embedded in popular culture, it is the Poms who take this particular cake.

And by a long chalk, as the late and much lamented Chrisopher Hitchens dissected in his wonderful essay ‘Let Them Eat Pork Rinds’.

The ‘Pie has always liked the old definition of an English gentleman as ‘someone who uses the butter knife, even when dining alone ‘ but Mr. Hitchens came up with a far more useable and traditionally accurate description ‘A gentleman is someone who is never rude by accident’. The hidden point in this observation is that most of the time, the British aristocrat barely ever came in any meaningful exchange with the hoi polloi, so their Hockeyesque pronouncement were made in the sincere belief that 99% of the population didn’t exist outside of their brigade of servants.

Mr Hitchens tells an appallingly fascinating anecdote of what he elegantly terms ‘the subconscious mentality of the uncontrollably well-off’.

In the 1930s, it was possibly Lady Diana Cooper (many of the these tales are apocryphal) who was waiting under an umbrella outside London’s Dorchester Hotel, tapping her foot impatiently as she waited for the Rolls to be brought around to the front. Hitchens writes:

‘Seizing his chance, a ragged man approached her without the courtesy of an introduction and announced that he had not eaten anything for three days. The outraged Lady Diana drew herself up. ”Foolish man that you are,” she instructed him. “You must try. If need be, you must force yourself.”

Novelist Joyce Cary (a bloke despite his name) described this sort of thing as a ‘tumbril remark’, meaning it was little wonder the French carted their versions of Lady Diana off in tumbrils to the chopping block. But a clearer indication that the upper crust was devoid of any sense of the reality outside their world was encapsulated in the comment by a duke during a interview, during which he told how an ancestor had lost 150 million pounds in a South African goldfields venture. ‘Mind you, that was a lot of money in those days,’ the Duke helpfully offered.

Another interviewee, the greatly anglicised Armenian tycoon Nubar Gulbenkian explained why he had modeled his customized town car on a London cab ‘ because it can turn on a sixpence – whatever that is’.

And there is the hopefully apocryphal tale of the two aristocrats sitting in their city club armchairs, when one gets up, looks out the window and says, ‘it’s raining’. ‘Good,’ replies his companion, ’It’ll wet the people’.

There is also the special language of these creatures, (a subject that will be covered in a future blog), but a summary of the foregoing is encapsulated in the still current phrase of social rejection that someone is ‘below the salt’. Mr Hitchens tells us that this refers to the long table in the baron’s hall, when seating was a social gradation all the way to the bottom, where sat the greasiest serfs and scullions. Salt then was a precious condiment, and could not be passed below a place about halfway down the table.

This sort of snobbery is unaware of itself, it’s ingrained, undoubtedly. Samuel Becket described this self-styled ‘cream’ as ‘thick and rich’, while an anonymous wit said that ‘the upper crust is a lot of crumbs held together by dough’.

But coming full circle to our treasurer, Mr. Hockey, no fan of the Sydney Morning Herald, is in the happy position of being able to emulate the Duke of Devonshire who deplored the decline in newspaper standards. ‘I would not have The Times in any of my houses’, he is quoted. The Duke of course is breaking Joe Hockey’s house-owning rules; he effectively doesn’t have a job that one can discern, but is on very good money – bit like Joe, really.

Walloper Speak of the Week

Clear cut winner here. It goes to Inspector Mark Henderson, speaking on the ABC about the fire than razed the Waltzing Matilda Centre in Winton.

Quote: ‘Within the town, there were some concerns that someone may have perpetrated this terrible act upon them, … and they are somewhat relieved to learn that there was nothing suspicious about the fire.’

Translation: ‘It wasn’t arson‘. Good bloke though he may be, Inspector Henderson managed to perpetrate a terrible act upon the English language. … norty policeman.

Notes from the local scene.

Despite the best efforts of the Astonisher, it seems this year’s TCC budget is going to be a tame affair. There’ll be an extra workshop for councillors on Monday to get some extra information, but The ‘Pie hears it more just some housekeeping than anything else, and we’re all in for a group hug when it comes to the vote.

It’s fair to say Mayor Mullet has made the best of a bad situation, and her colleagues wisely agree with her strategy to keep a rate rise as low as possible. One interesting snippet is that while the Townsville Enterprise begging bowl will get another disgraceful $735,000 of ratepayers money to run their under-achieving bureaucracy, they won’t be getting the new three year deal they are seeking, which would lock in the legal thievery of the council’s annual donation. The ‘Pie hears that the majority of councillors will vote for just one more year, because it is generally agreed that a new council next year – no matter how it is comprised – should not be locked into such a wasteful agreement that they might want to change. Has peace and harmony descended on Walker Street at last? Not if the Astonisher has anything to do with it … watch for the spin.

Another unconfirmed wheeze down the MagpieFone is that there some at Wishing Well House that frankly wouldn’t mind seeing the council take back Economic Development from them. Be interesting and sounds sensible, since the TCC already has its own four-person ED team.

The More Things Change etc Dept Of:

Seems certain the Cathy Curlytop O’Toole will donning her industrial-strength undies and bulletproof bra to carry Labor’s escutcheon into battle against Dumbo Jumbo Jones in the battle for Herbert next year.

Curlytop was mightily rattled by a strong challenge for the nomination by Patricia ‘Little Patty’ Schluter, who has garnered some strong local support. But such is the way of the Labor Party – and it’s steam-rollering Left faction – a Brisbane meeting of the Electoral College during the week voted by a margin of two to one for O’Toole. Given the lop-sided weighting  the college gives its own votes (something like three to one) as versus those of the local members, this looks certain that Curlytop has prevailed. But there may be some very pissed off folks around if the locals hand Ms Schluter a hefty majority, which is still not out of the question. there is an outside chance we haven’t heard the last of this yet.

Voting for the apparently irrelevant hoi polloi closes next Friday and the outcome of those ballots should be announced a day or two later.

But Ewen Jones will be treating himself to a few extra doughnuts for breakfast this week, it is the outcome he and the Libs wanted … their polling says he will comfortably look after what they see as a tired old challenge from tired old Labor. We’ll see.

What a Difference 40 Years Make.

We’ll let this week’s final word go to Old Man Time himself, in the form of these offerings:

and …..