Graham Richo Richardson terminally ill? That’s what he’s reported to have told one local during a visit up here this week.

We also take a look at the astonishing mind snap at the Astonisher – it openly admits it has published racist slogans. We have a leading contender for the annual Nanny State Award, and Bentley gets all bent about the spirit of Christmas,

First, though … has Graham Richo Richardson’s cancer turned terminal? One reliable report says that he says it has.

The powerful ALP back-room boy has made no secret that he has been successfully battling a rare form of cancer for some years now, and it was last reported to be successfully in hand, although certainly not eradicated permanently. With typical pugnacious determination, Richo has maintained for some years now that ‘it won’t kill me’.

Have things changed?

This week, Richo was dining at the Watermark on the Strand, the Townsville restaurant in which he has a stake (as well as a steak). Being the indefatigable networker he is, he worked two or three tables, chatting with folks and seeming pretty relaxed. The ‘Pie has consistently heard that he can be a very engaging bloke in this setting. But in a startling exchange at one of these groups, Richo said that his battle with cancer was now ‘terminal’. The Magpie is told that was the exact word.

This reported admission comes just a month or two after he had to leave the set of his Sky talk programme mid-show in September, later explained as ‘due to illness’.

Richo is – if not an elder statesman – certainly a respected and informed political commentator. Never far from or ever fearing controversy, the 65-year-old Labor power broker learnt recently that he will face some awkward questions from NSW corruption investigators regarding some allegedly errant millions from some years ago. Not known as a bloke to back away from a stoush, public or private, Richo will face his challenges in 2015 with typical gusto and grit.

Whether you’re with him or agin him, Graham, Richardson has been part and parcel of our political fabric for more than four decades, and it would seem unfair – as it does in every instance for cancer sufferers – to lose such a person to the modern scourge of this disease. The Magpie wishes him well, despite basic differences in our political outlooks – after all, life is life, as we have been so cruelly reminded on more than one occasion this week.

But there was another time marker overnight involving the dreaded disease … Mandy Rice-Davies (real birth name Marilyn Foreman) has died after a short battle with cancer. She was 70.

Famous for her good-time-gal role in the Profumo Scandal which toppled Harold McMillan’s government in the 1960s, Randy Mandy will live on in the language for her show-stopping reply from the witness box during the trial of alleged pimp Dr Stephen Ward. When she was told that Lord Astor denied her claims that they had slept together, her straight-from-the-shoulder reply – ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’ instantly went into folklore (you just didn’t say things like that in court in those days, tut tut tut)

Mandy lived the high life to the end, with multiple marriages to rich blokes, in a variety of roles in a variety of countries. Her last memorable words may be remembered as something she said a short time ago, when she said there would be no secrets she would be taking to the grave. ‘Everything is out,’ she said.

Indeed, ‘everything’ was out  … which is basically how it all started, all those years ago. Here’s a report from the SMH.

But it seems it hasn’t ended for other good time gals. Bentley has got all bent out of shape when he observed how low-rent black American argot is upsetting some of the local lasses.

But an event during the week had Larry Pickering showing that tarts really do have hearts of gold.

And Larry reckons it could be an omen, but perhaps Bazza Obama has the answer to make PM Wingnut change his mind about climate change.

You can get more of Larry’s take on matters of the moment – which are not necessarily The ‘Pie’s at

http://pickeringpost.com/story/a-terrorism-event-likely-over-xmas-/4317

… his view on Presbyterian terrorists is worth a grim laugh in itself.

Back here in the ‘Ville, are they stupid, arrogant or is it just a stupid/arrogant News Corpse thing? While the Sydney Telegraph and Rupert Murdoch himself have been roundly condemned for their insensitive and some say dangerous coverage of the Sydney siege, it is now apparent that there is a corporate mind-set that extends all the way here to our city.

Last Tuesday, after regurgitating seven pages of Telegraph-written coverage of the siege and its aftermath, whoever was in charge had a brain snap, unable to link the logical dots that made this story both hilarious in its dopiness and grossly irresponsible.

The headline declares that the sign is ‘racist’ – the Bulletin’s own judgment, which seems correct on the face of it – and that the immature twerps who held it up could be facing inter alia racial vilification charges (highly unlikely, given the vague wording). But if the paper decides the sign is racist, why reproduce the message that it condemns in feigned outrage, thus offering to a wider audience that it would otherwise enjoy? If the sign can or does attract criminal charges, should not the paper be also charged for second hand dissemination of an illegal message? :Yes, perhaps The Magpie, too, but the old bird will plead community interest about the sloppy work of the paper.

Adding to the confused attitude towards the issue, the paper chose to blur out the faces in the above photograph in a later attention to detail, although no charges had been laid at the time of publication and therefore there was no legal requirement to do so. This from the paper that champions naming and shaming juveniles who break the law – which apparently does not extend to juvenile (if they are)  dickheads who haven’t been charged. The Townsville Bulletin stands condemned by its own too-clever-by-half smart-arse and half-baked decision-making in this story.

Of course, the paper has a few other matters to contend with at the moment. Iditor Pinocchio Heywood is said to be looking stressed out just now. There’s been a mini-tsunami of staff jumping ship. In quick time, the Astonisher has seen the departure of the capable David Sparkes (still writes a column for the paper but chose the uncertainty of a freelance life over a sweatshop life) – the capable Harry Brumpton (also left without a firm job to go to), Simpo Templeton (a positive departure for Townsville but one of the iditor’s golden haired space-filling fuckwits) Matthew ‘Dunno’ Dunn, a seemingly almost illiterate sex-obsessed waste of space who is heading off to Sydney, and now, the most bitter blow of all, both for the paper and the community, Emma Channon is heading off to traipse the world looking for adventure.

Ms Channon was one of the few really good journalists recruited in recent times, and was a very good court reporter, a crisp low-key writer who let the stories tell themselves. She is a definite loss.

But some things will remain unchanged. Pinocchio arm will soon be too short to pick his ever-sprouting nose.

Despite the latest available circulation figures showing a drop of around a thousand copies in weekday sales – down to a sphincter-puckering 20,507 M to F average (including the various giveaways at events and hotels) – Pinocchio tells us that ‘readership’ has gone up 10.6% to an average of 104,000!

Quite a feat!

By any reading, he is seriously telling us that five people read every single copy of the paper on week days. The numbers are of course from emma (Enhanced Media Metrics Australia) a goodly chunk of which company is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Well, as they say, put as much lipstick on it as you like, that still appears a very unmistakable porky. The wonder of it is that they have to mention it all, it’s such a ‘mummy, mummy look at me’ ploy that is in itself is a bit of a dead giveaway. The ‘enhanced’ in the title certainly seems accurate.

We have to look overseas for a fine example of bureaucracy at its Nanny State best. In Dumbartonshire in Scotland, a woman waged a two year campaign for wheelchair access for her daughter to their council house. She won in the end … if this can be considered a victory.

A 60 metre slalom course. The daughter must look forward to going out, and dread coming home. There must surely have been a simpler answer.

Best military answer of the week.

But now is the last hurrah before Christmas, where the big man in red will face his annual share of tribulations from the little snots out there.

That’s if he gets there. They say reindeers never forget, and a gun-toting Rudolf is apparently no exception.

Sadly, it is a time of year when pets don’t have the best of it. But at least down here below the equator, our pooches don’t face the terrors of a colder clime.

So have a good one, you lot, The ‘Pie leaves all his readers and his motley tribe of commenters – cantankerous, crusty and contentious, one and all (except Miss Lou) – with this ‘without prejudice’ seasonal greeting as advised by his legal chums.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, Y’ALL.