Has the Ghost of Gore manifested itself and come to haunt one of north Queensland’s premier tourist destinations?

NB August 7, 2014. Apologies but made an irretrievable error when editing pix on the post, so they are lost to the delete God permanently. Things sorta still make sense. Valuable lesson learned, which bis when deleting from WordPress image library, you delete from the post they appeared on as well. The learning curve continues.

Not the man himself, but a somewhat more substantial figure who may be copying the Gore playbook.

Down here in the ‘Ville, this week has raised its own jiggery pokery question; are there different classes of political donations, some that must be declared and others that don’t? Seems the TCC bureaucrats think so.

Also, a very funny ditty from an engaging 84-year-old on a TV song contest, and meet the pipe-smoking grandma who spits at people, wees in public and drops farts that smell like vanilla – and her victims are loving it.

All that later, but first … No wonder they call him Matt ‘Dunno’ Dunn, ‘cos he sure dunno his workmates too well.

Errr, Dunno, would ‘Morgan Evan’ be Evan Morgan, arguably the best creative photographer and a steady hand at the Bulletin for more than a decade or more.  The paper has never gone in for the military style of names, and if it did, there would be a comma in there. Mate, perhaps if you stopped irritating your colleagues by playing the very unfunny office practical joker and devoted a bit more diligence to your grand position of On-Line Digital Editor, both the paper and you yourself might gain a tad more credibility. Mind you, the paper’s penchant for catchy but basically dishonest headlines does its own damage, as in today’s story about a projected 2016 air show.

‘Thunderbirds Are Go’, screamed the headline, which the more circumspect reporter shot down in the third par when she wrote: ‘The show will be staged along The Strand foreshore and could see the return of the famous American Thunderbirds’. So they ‘could’ be ‘go’. But one supposes that ‘Thunderbirds Are Maybe Go’ doesn’t read as well. But whatever, at least it was a positive feel-good story on the front for a change.

On the national scene, the Government Gnomes of Canberra … the elected ones … seemed to have forgotten the Law of Unintended Consequences when they introduced that deeply dopey, populist idea of the unemployed applying for 40 jobs a month to get the dole. Sure something has to be done to stop the rorts, but this sure as hell ain’t it.

This really is the depths of stupidity politically and practically, because it will alienate the strongest pillar of government support – small to medium business employers. A study by Crikey.com clearly shows that such businesses will have to spent costly hours sifting through a tsunami of compulsory applications.

This from crikey number cruncher Guy Rundle: Note that even if we radically reduce this in favour of the government’s scheme — halve the number of unemployed actually receiving the dole, halve the number applying for these jobs, keep the generous job number the same — then we get 500 applications per job per month. Each application considered properly would add 10,000 minutes, or 167 hours, per month to staffing duties. Even what will actually happen — staff giving a cursory glance to see if applicants are eligible, furiously clearing inboxes, chucking letters, hustling people off the phone — can be costed at, say, three minutes an application, or 1500 minutes, or 25 hours, per month. To go to the very basement of simply fending off job-seekers, let’s average a minute per application, or 500 minutes — and we’re back to 8.3 hours a month again, simply to deal with an extra imposition that the government has placed on a small business.

Talk of a thought bubble. Populist ‘let’s get the dole bludgers’ politics at its whimsical worst, especially from a government that has created policies that have stifled confidence in job creation.   Bentley sure sees the folly of it all.   Anyway, the app makers will be onto this like a fat kid on to a doughnut. Another cunning plan from Government Baldrick.

All the hoo-haa prompted old Magpie mate Conan the Grammarian to come up with ‘right back at yer’ follow-up letter to job application rejections. Sheer bloody genius.

Subject: RE: Application for Administrative Services Officer position

Dear *****,
 
Thank you for your email of 22 August.
 
After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me an interview, much less a position within CRS Australia.
 
During 2011 I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large number of similar rejection letters. Within such a varied and promising field of rejections, it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.
 
Despite CRS Australia’s outstanding qualifications and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my needs at this time.
I will, therefore, present myself for employment within your Department during the second week of September.
 
I look forward to seeing you then.
 
Best of luck in rejecting future applicants.
 
Sincerely 

But cunning albeit inexplicable plans are not the sole preserve of our Canberra munchkins.

For some reason, a committee which one imagines is modeled on the motley church crew in Vicar of Dibley has come up with an interesting concept as part of  the World War 1 commemorative event in Liverpool England, called Memories of August 1914. For reasons known only to themselves, these folks decided that a 7.5 metre tall French marionette in the form of a grandmother figure fitted the bill for the 100th anniversary of The start of The Great War. So she has been brought over the Channel with her Little Giant Girl and Xolo The Dog.   But if the link is dubious, the fun it has created isn’t.

Thousands flocked to the local hall to see her ‘asleep’ for sev eral days before the real fun began last week.

When she ‘awoke’, the giant marionette – assisted by her 26 operators – sallied forth to walk the streets of Liverpool, smoking, spitting, lifting her skirt to have a wee, and spitting on onlookers. She also let out thunderous farts that billowed out her dress on a wave of vanilla scent – indeed, a Thunderbird of a different kind.

Bizzaro, but what a hoot, it’s been a great hit. It is understood several NRL teams are so impressed with her grasp of player off-field etiquette that they’re vying to sign her up for next season.

And since we seem to have degenerated into the depths of fartdom, have a look at this short but brilliant on-message TV commercial. No dialogue, brief and when the sponsor is revealed, the laughing starts.

Back to less whimsical matters, and gazing slightly north from the ‘Ville.

Lately, has the old bird detected the odour of rodent drifting down from Cairns?  Can they learn something from Townsville’s recent history with sweet talking interlopers with hidden agendas.   The latest developments over the latest mega project in Cairns should be sounding alarm bells in the halls of regulators, who should be guardians against north Queensland becoming the patsy for the international white shoe brigade.

The story so far.

Hong Kong-based Tony Fung, a man with serious money as an investment banker and investor, has proposed the biggest resort development ever in Australia for Yorkey’s Knob, just north of Cairns. He envisaged his $8 billion Aquis resort having no less than seven hotel ringing his proposed casino, a golf course, lake, sports stadium, shopping mall and a raft of restaurants. He said his project would create 3750 jobs in the building phase and employ 20,000 when operational.

Locals started fretting about the impact on established businesses, which is always a valid worry when mega-developments are designed to keep their guests  ‘on site’, catering to all their own needs and leaving local businesses out in the cold – which was a problem when Mirage at Port Douglas first started up.

As a result, Mr Fung has since scaled back his grand design, but it is still a mammoth project. A start was just waiting for the government to grant a casino license.

Then a piscine aroma suddenly descended on proceedings, when Mr Fung unexpectedly rolled out a $269 million takeover bid for Cairns existing Casino, The Reef, in the heart of the city.

That started another round of predictable and possibly justified  ‘we’ll all be rooned’ wailing, citing single ownership resulting in a lack of competition if it went ahead. But the real concern intensified when Mr Fung announced that unless the Auustralian regulatory authorities allowed the takeover to go ahead, he would cancel the Aquis project. He wasn’t about to let competition dent his big-dollar investment just north of town.

That is the impression Mr Fung was happy to create.

But no one seems to have canvassed the two equally debilitating possibilities if the Hong Kong investor’s strongarm demands are met.

In scenario one, Mr Fung gets the Reef, but runs it down, engineering that in part through management priotities, unattractive odds for punters and special customer deals for those choosing Aquis instead. And since Reef is smack dab in the middle of town, that would have a real impact on businesses in the CBD.

But The ‘Pie reckons a second scenario is more likely, given our experience with the likes of Craig Gore and a smear of other southern twicers.  Let’s say Mr Fung gets the Reef casino (and one in Canberra he is also bidding for), and then hey presto, suddenly, somehow, PR firm Blather, Bamboozle and Bullshit put out a press release on Mr Fung’s behalf, reporting that, sad to say, funds aren’t now available for the Aquis project – lamentably, it’s all that global financial instability y’know, volatile market pressures, so sorry and all sorts of other reasons that can’t be checked blah blah bamboozle and blah.

So Mr Fung ends up with perhaps what he wanted in the first place – a lucrative chunk of Australia’s gaming market – something he could perhaps not have achieved without some emotive lever like phantom job creation and the promise of breathing new life into a local plodding economy.

This is all if and maybe, but having watched the parade of smarties waddling through the north – some with ill-deserved success – this is not an outrageous prognostication.   The Magpie hopes his suspicions do not upset Mr Fung enough for him to order a martial arts specialist – his dyslexic brother Fung Ku – to persuade the old bird of the error of his ways.

Wading on.

This tedious tit-for-tat reporting of opposing Townsville City councillors’ basically harmless peccadillos regarding conflicts of interest seems to be running longer than the Star Wars franchise, prompting a similiar factor of fading interest.

But the week threw up an interesting question.

Are there different classes of political donations – those that must be declared by councillors, and those that do not?

A while back – before Mayor Mullet made tittle tattling on colleagues the latest fad – council voted on making a grant to the Umbrella Studio, a worthy cause as these things go. But as the conflict of interest accusations continued apace, Townsville First pointed out that the head of Umbrella Studio is singer Vicki Salisbury, who was also a candidate on Team Hill at the last council election.

That doesn’t mean much in itself, but Ms Salisbury is listed – and declared – as a donor to the Team Hill’s coffers. And Townsville First gleefully noted that she had donated more than $800 to the Team Hill aka Labor campaign, yet all three Labor councillors, the mayor,  Messagebank Walker and BooHoo Doyle had not declared any conflict of interest and voted on the Umbrella grant (which was apparently unanimously raised from the initial ask, anyway).  So much for Clr Walker’s hypocritical honking to the paper about how he had been unfairly dragged into the conflict of interest debate … blub blub.

This was all duly reported to authorities to show that two can play the mayor’s game of spiteful party politics, but the council’s legal department came up with an interesting ruling. In this case, no one had a conflict of interest, because Ms Salisbury was a candidate and the money probably went on her own campaign. So all was tickety boo.

But hang on. She was and is listed as a donor, and declared as such by the three ersatz Labor candidates, so surely a declaration is a declaration, especially if the former (unsuccessful) candidate has got her hand out in her day job for ratepayers money. The legal department appears to be saying that some campaign donations don’t sorta count.

But who decides that?   Which leads to some interesting hypotheticals.

Let’s say Businessman A wants to donate big time to a team but prefers to stay anonymous, so he slips a candidate B, oh,  let’s say $10K. Candidate B then makes donation openly, but doesn’t have to declare any conflict of interest down the track if a matter concerning the businessman A comes up. So who’s to know if a grateful businessman A doesn’t reward the councilor or mayor in some way, like maybe promising a job as a community relations executive for a mining company when said candidate retires.

Anyway, it’s all getting tedious, and The ‘Pie will give up talking about it when he no longer has to balance biased reporting by Simpo Templeton.

If all that’s enough to make you cry, look at this little gem to end on a laugh. This old codger has  – as the young people say – got his shit together to wow the judges of an American song quest show. He obviously does not subscribe to the late George Burns dictum that ‘Trying to make love at 92 is like playing pool with a rope’.

Enough now, it is away to Poseurs’ Bar to hook up again with a recently encountered lady of a certain age. Hopes are, as usual, high, and the old bird is willing to overlook her odd habit of smoking a pipe and making frequent visits to the Ladies Room. But at the first hint of vanilla scent, The ‘Pie’s outta here.