Yes, Gill and iditor Ben English continue to try to dip Queensland Airport’s corporate hand into the community’s pocket, as they ramp up their anti-Townsville campaign. And in the process, the Astonisher gets the Pot/Kettle Award of the Week for its unintentionally hilarious front page on the issue.
Should we do a Charlottesville and tear down that statue of Robert Towns, because he was a ‘black birder’? There are plenty of opinions, but one thing is clear … there are plenty of suggestions on replacement statues, but The Magpie suggests one that is available and free right now.
Does The Magpie reveal exclusively that Senator Malcolm Roberts is not British, but is … oh, you’ll just have to read on.
… and The ‘Pie’s bright idea for a tourist attraction that would attract thousands, and cost the public next to nothing.
But first …
Dancin’ With Hanson Chapter 2
Pauline Hanson is many things to many people, and she certainly has many personal friends in this neck of the woods. In his newspaper days, The Magpie reported on a prominent Labor identity who got a bollocking and, if memory serves, was threatened with being ousted from the Labor party when he and his wife hosted Big Red for a few days at their Maggie Island home. It seems what most outraged those Labor poobahs was that the bloke actually had a DANCE with the One notion leader.
Well, this week, it’s Pauline who gets the bollocking … sort of. And while it does involve that burqua, it isn’t some sort of dressing down for her dressing up. Bentley reports that a special award was given to her by those who admire what they saw as her courage for her senate burqua stunt (sneaky suspicion Benters might be among the admirers) – but it appears Mrs Hanson didn’t understand the honour at first.
Her fellow One Notion senator, supposed pommy Malcolm Roberts is hogging his own bit of the spotlight.
When not expressing his somewhat exotic beliefs about all sorts of matters, he is coy about proving whether he actually holds duel citizenship. Which would mean he would have to forfeit the gig of as lifetime in the Senate. But The ‘Pie understands the High Court may have a tricky ruling on its hands, because those in parliament cannot hold allegiance to any other ‘country’. Malcolm could be in the clear, if a recent arrival in Canberra is to b believed.
And to prove his point, the alien brought a baby photo with him.
Oh, well, he is from Welsh stock, and the English believe all the Welsh are aliens anyway.
But the One Notion leader is making some of her own rules about who can join the party’s fight for office, as the Courier Mail reported during the week.
Or presumably, Vietnamese.
One Prominent Local Not Bound For Canberra
Fay Barker won’t be standing for parliament any time soon, she would have trouble with the eligibility test, it seems. She recently went into paroxysms of pearl clutching disbelief when she went aramblin’ around Google.
Are you one of those Nigerian princesses with fortunes you want help handling, m’dear? Feel free to call.
Iditor Ben Bogan English’s Ironyman Award of the Week.
During the week, we were treated to some highly selective reporting of the increase Townsville Airport passenger numbers for the month. Yes, one bloody month. This brought forth a oh-so-predictable follow-up (and outright lie) that the airport was ‘bursting at the seams’, which is just tripe. But one commenter had an interesting take on it …
Alex De Large
The story is that Dill (Kevin Gill) has deliberately made a number of seemingly nonsensical changes with the deliberate intent of inconveniencing and annoying the travelling public. This done to cause aggravation and discontent to the extent that they are fooled into thinking that renovations are needed, when competent management is all that is required.
That is as it may be … another person said the tables at the end of the security conveyors have been removed so you have nowhere to put your belongings back together.
But the absolute hoot of derision comes with this front page today, lambasting Qantas for refusing to approve the swindle.
If you could ever choose a wrong week for this sort of transparent flapdoodle, this would be it. Because here we have an iconic Australian company in Qantas which has turned around its financial fortunes and its standings with both investors and travellers in the past three years, being berated for its fiscal policies and lectured on probity by News Corpse, an organization that has proved to be inept in business, and in reading its industry’s direction and requirements, to the extent of multi-million dollar write-downs and losses announced not three weeks ago.
But that hasn’t stopped Ben Bogan penning another schizo iditorial – veering wildly between bum kissing and bum biting – to further alienate the community. Bogan ended with the line: ’Qantas should do the right thing and support the upgrade.’
You really are a dunderhead, mate. Qantas ARE doing the right thing, they DO support the upgrade, they’ve said so. They just don’t think they should ‘gold plate’ a Queensland Airport’s asset out of it passengers pockets and be used as a tax collector.
Bogan and the Bulletin just don’t get it, not at all. Fortunately, not that Qantas, among News Ltd’s top 10 advertisers, could give a flying fuck what the Bulletin thinks. we don’t either.
The community applauds you, Qantas.
And Incidentally …
Serious question, Mr English. Despite your name, do you actually understand the language? Its meanings?
Pushing your pickpocketing airport idea, you shout the catch-cry in the paper ‘It’s time the community got on board’.
So. This can ONLY mean that you admit that the community is ‘not on board’ – as in ‘opposed’ to the idea? What else can that mean? (Like you did when the community broadly rejected a CBD stadium.) Yet you exhort Qantas to ‘do the right thing by Townsville’ – in your eyes, unfairly tax the community with an unrepresentative impost.
Mr English, you really are special, in fact so special, Holt Street should get you some crayons and a crash helmet.
Art Should Imitate Life
There was a bit of a commotion during the week when locals got on the Charlottesville bandwagon again and demanded that the statue of Robert Towns, founder of the Townsville, be removed because he was a ‘blackbirder’, a virtual slave trader in islander workers for cane plantations.
The ‘Pie argues against such a move, and suggests that a small change in focus would be beneficial all round. This is how he put it in comments during the week.
The Magpie
August 24, 2017 at 2:50 pm (Edit)
By all means, alter the plaques to tell the ugly truth of the history, so the statue cannot be seen as a celebration of a slaver but an historical landmark, while noting he inter alia was founder of our city. Let his statue stand as a permanent rebuke to the darker days of our story, for generations to see, understand and be able to acknowledge history. But expunging it from mention or memory is an act of cowardice and denial in itself.
But many a naysayer wanted it gone, suggesting others more worthy of permanent civic praise. His Radiance Tony Mooney got more than one mention, and no surprise that JT got a good run, but then someone suggested that if we were to feature someone atypical of our history, we should have a statue of ol’ Captain Snooze himself, Mike Reynolds. And it was hard to disagree with the argument.
Snooze was by all reports a disaster as a mayor (just before The ‘Pie’s time) but they loved him in Cairns. It became worse when he became the member for Townsville. Elevated through Labor greasing to Speaker of the Queensland Parliament, it was suddenly beneath him to speak of parochial Townsville matters, and his smarmy dismissal of media questions – even innocent ones – was a measure, in The Magpie’s enduring opinion, of the overweening arrogance and lofty disdain of one of the worst representatives that the electors of Townsville have ever put their trust in.
But hey, a statue of Snooze is a great idea, and guess what … we could get one for nothing with a little negotiation.
The local Catholic Church has a suitable edifice already in storage, the Homeless Jesus, a gift the city rejected. The face is hidden, so just change the plaque and you have a visual representation of Mike Capt Snooze Reynold’s contribution to Townsville. And instead of votive candles, the faithful could place Iced VoVo’s near his head and a bottle of Scotch near his hand. Not many words needed, really.
Blind Be The Blankets And Beads Brigade
One of the more unsettling aspects of the attitude of those who hold sway over us until they face their own ‘Merit Based Selection’ process … an election … is that they are so spooked to discover the depth of their ineptness, they always have to go for the often unattainable ‘big ticket’ items – the beads and blankets with which to dazzle we ignorant oafs. Grand plans get grand announcements that go unexamined in the Townsville Bulletin. Some of these ideas, if they actually get up, will have ‘grand’ consequences. Like the actual on-going costs to council of the new you-beaut CBD stadium. Soil remediation anyone? More on that during the week.
Neither the paper or the protagonists – Mayor Mullet in particular – have cottoned on to the fact that we are more than a tad weary of stories that feature words like ‘could’,
‘may’ ,
‘is expected to ‘
‘on the way’ and ‘down the pipeline’
and ultimately, the hollow lazy journalistic waffle about ‘that may all be about to change’.
And of course, there are the things you never hear about in this big rock candy mountain of a paper. Take this for instance, the ceremonial sod turning for the new stadium (the sod refers to in the soil, not the turners … umm, wait a minute …) …
The stadium project faces a few problem that are played down as much as possible. One was highlighted in the fact from a Magpie spy was that the soil on the former railway and industrial site is so contaminated that the soil being turned had to be trucked in from elsewhere. More on that, too, soon.
Everything seem to have to be a promised three ring circus of acts that rarely happen. No one seems to want to take the baby steps of imaginative little community opportunities that are sitting there waiting to be recognized. Too modest for the likes of our current collection of empty boasting glory seekers
But Talk Is Cheap, So You Say, Like What?
Well, here’s something that can easily be achieved, will have multiple benefits , will have minimal cost (done right, absolute zero to the council), and is just crying out to be done.
Strand Ephemera has just grown ‘like Topsy’, creating its own momentum through its imaginative concept. Calls for the bi-annual event to be yearly are growing louder. But leaving it at that is missing a vital opportunity.
The Magpie’s suggestion is the creation of a Strand Ephemera Sculpture Park.
‘Pie believes a sponsor – Glencore or similar – could back the project for a permanent home for the best one or two sculpture’s every year to add to the collection, and make it retrospective, so perhaps a dozen or so of the most eye-catching of the past few years are sited in parkland, with picnic tables, barbeques and just plain old ‘sit and look’ park benches dotted about Park..
And there is an ideal site. The ‘Pie has noted that the sloping parkland at Jezzine Barracks – it’s little known name is Brigadier North Park, the area bounded by Howitt and Mitchell streets, and the internal road running behind Kissing Point.
This sloping part of Jezzine Parkland is little used by anybody and is a much under utilised community asset.
The word ‘epherma’ means ‘things that are used or enjoyed for only a short time’, so the theme could be sold to visitors as ‘EPHEMERA SCULPTURE PARK – capturing the moment in time.’
Once the initial work is done – no doubt there is a grant just waiting out there for this worthy cause – the sponsor then ponies up the cash for the annual purchase of art works, and we have created an eye-catching, unique draw card for the city. At virtually cost to the ratepayer. There could perhaps even be a Carpe Diem Carnival Day during the annual Strand Ephemera.
Relatively inexpensive, undoubtedly popular with all demographics and a lively addition to our attractions.
AND it would go a long way to repair the damage that our Goth-like mayor has inflicted on the city, which has suddenly given us the reputation of a cultural hell hole full of banjo-playing politicians and scythe-wielding bureaucratic sociopaths.
And you can be certain that Brigadier North would be proud of his contribution to the city and its citizens.
Same Sex Marriage? Here’s A Suggestion.
This write-in survey – an opinion poll by any other name – represents an interesting hidden sleight of hand introduced by the government.
There was a late switch from the electoral commission over to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which will now be collating the results. But the switch to the ABS collating the results means they will have valuable demographic data about how various defined groups –age, ethnicity, religion – voted. Although there may not be relevant questions that reveal that information, the ABS will already hold information that can be cross referenced to get those bloc results. And the government – presumably the only recipient of the ‘enhanced’ information – can use it as a campaign tool.
So, you may like to follow The Magpie’s example … vote as you would anyway, but lie like hell about your personal data … age, sex, household arrangements or anything else that may be asked.
That’ll keep the bastards busy.
BREAKING NEWS
The Magpie has just received a phone call from someone claiming to be Jesus, who wanted to comment on the Homeless Jesus statue. He said he was only too pleased to have the statue that was initially depicting him to instead glorify Mike Reynolds and his achievements, a person he rated on a much higher individual scale than himself. And he said his dad was of the same view.
The ‘Pie is a little suspicious, though, as the caller sounded like he was munching on an Iced VoVo while talking.
And Finally, Just For The Hell Of It
That’s quite enough nonsense for now, dive into the comments during the week, there’s plenty left over that couldn’t fit, so comments from Monday will as lively as ever. Do join in the fun. And if you care to push out a small financial boat of appreciation, the how to donate button is below.
