Not sacked but ‘made redundant’, to become a freelance columnist … and the reason for that is another Astonisher ‘restructure’ to Townsville’s major detriment.
Activity disguised as progress: Mayor Mullet’s track record of all talk and no action is again laid expensively bare …
And council CEO Adele Young’s pulls on the jackboots and offers a non-explanation of why she needs two internal investigators snooping on staff – and answering only to her
But first …
The ‘ordinary working man’ learned a valuable life lesson this week, according to Bentley. He thinks many an average Queensland Joe has been forced to come to grips with the realities of modern life.
And The Astonisher really did astonish with a front page that was either ignorant or a schoolboy snigger.
The ‘Pie knows some of his readers are pure as the driven snow, so just Google MILF … Anthony Milford should sue, except he maybe loves the reputation.
Cynical News Corpse : Knowing The Price Of Everything And The Value Of Nothing.
Shari Tagliabue’s redundancy from the Astonisher makes Oscar Wilde’s incisive witticism of 125 years ago remain just as relevant today. The ‘Pie was right when he sa last weeks anti-Adani column as some sort of parting shot, but it apparently played no part in her demise. It is not so much Tagger’s departure that is cynical – she will remain a weekly columnist as a freelance – it is more the reason behind it.
Ten years ago, News decided that weekend editions in regional Queensland would benefit their bottom line with a lifestyle lift-out magazine, so The Eye was born, a multiple birth in Townsville, Cairns and the Gold Coast, all covering the fripperies and folderoles of the materialistic life in their own patches.
And Taggers was soon the editor, which was a tribute to her dogged determination and intelligence, coming to journalism later than most. She had started a year or two before as the editor’s secretary, but from the get-go, was clearly too smart and efficient to be satisfied with that gig for long. Editor Mick Carroll was no dill, and allowed to make the move under his careful eye. She proved to be a thoughtful and funny writer, too.(The ‘Pie is pretty sure he’s got his history right here, but will happily be corrected for the record.)
The Eye quickly became, and remained, the favorite read of mainly women, fashionistas, and the once dismissively described ‘arty farty crowd’, all under Shari’s guidance of a top flight team of subs and designers.
Now, a panicked News Corpse, bleeding profits through their paralysis in the face of the changing media landscape, has chosen to save a few dollars by amalgamating all editions of The Eye – Cairns, Townsville and The Gold Coast – into an homogenous publication, filled mainly with irrelevant glop to much of the individual home markets. Following the template of the news pages, there will be the occasional local item to attempt the colossal pretense of being ‘all for this community’. No idea where it will be edited, but you can bet it won’t be here.
There is perhaps another literary witticism that can apply to this wrongheaded idea. When the acid tongued novelist Evelyn Waugh heard that his literary foe Randolph Churchill has undergone successful surgery for the removal of a non-malignant tumor, he said d ‘A typical triumph of modern science, to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it’
Only here, we can reverse paraphrase it to read ‘A typical triumph of News Corpse venality, to find the only damn thing worth reading in the Saturday Bulletin and kill it.’
Post Script
Journalist Jess Johnson has also departed, under what circumstances The ‘Pie has not been able to ascertain.
When The ‘Pie was at the paper, Jess was a steady hand and a bit of a terrier with a story, but the real loss with her leaving is the fact that she is yet another journalist with a wealth of community memory of Townsville that newer staffer can no longer call on – if they ever bothered to tear themselves away from the Facebook long enough to ask.
Empty Activity Disguised As Progress
Don’t forget to pop along to Molly Malone’s pub on Monday night (5.30) where Mayor Mullet has promised to give a report on her Indian Adani arse kissing trip … hopefully she will try to explain why she used ratepayers money to pay for a reporter (who acted as a personal PR booster) from the Bulletin to accompany her.
Should be interesting, and maybe someone could ask a few other questions about some of her decisions … and they are HER decisions, this is just a puppet council, happy to pick up the money in return for slavish obedience to their leader.
During the week, the mayor’s PR pamphlet aka The Bulletin kept up the meaningless gabble on her behalf. The Magpie was amused to see that the fabled ‘bus hub’ was now ready for an artist’s sketch to wow the locals. Seems it’s just a bunch of bus shelters built together.
And it appears, from what principal goof-off Les Messagebank Walker says – in amongst all the lying crapola about ‘community consultation’ – we are going to get a series of open street-side bus shelters as a ‘hub’.
The ‘Pie, like many others, construed ‘hub’ to be mean a roofed bus station immune to weather. Silly old ‘Pie.
From what can be gathered from Messgebank’s waffle, the popular hardware store on Ogden Street was booted out so the building so it can be demolished for a road, making a loop around the Urban Quarter shopping precinct. And that is presumably where the long awaited $4million from the government has gone. $4million plus? Four years of waffle? Five by the time it’s finished by the end of NEXT year?
What a hoot.
It’s A Worse Story Down The Other End Of Town
But one thing we haven’t been megaphoned about is the mayor’s waste of money regarding the old railway North Yards on Flinders Street West. Remember this story last year.
In a nutshell, a wrong-headed attempt to be miracle woman saw Mayor Mullet persuad her Labor pal Anna declare the yards a State Priority Development Area, in the belief that such a declaration would nullify previous concerns. Which is a stark reminder of the widening gap between our delusional mayor and the real business world. According to a well placed source, the Calcutta Group tasked with finding someone silly enough to take on the site has not been able to attract any interest whatsoever – for exactly the same reasons the council couldn’t – contamination and heritage.
In other words, all too tricky.
The ‘Pie’s informant is now sure that Calcutta’s conclusion, which can be summed up as ‘ no one is remotely interested for the same reasons as before’, is now being written up into a 500 page ‘report’ full of buzz words, which will be forwarded to the council with a bill of five if not six figures for services rendered. An example of mayoral hubris at its damaging best.
Now, what’s the betting the mayor and the Astonisher respond with a fairy floss story of ‘strong interest’; from a party that cannot be revealed etc etc, and that something gunna happen, just can’t say what, but there’ll be a feasibility study in there somewhere..
You see, both parties are developing a habit of trying to counter and debunk things they read here. The Impaler is the latest to attempt it.
But It’s What Adele ‘The Impaler’ Young Didn’t Say That Is Most Interesting
First we had Mayor Mullet’s cack-handed cock-up replying to assertions made here about the parlous state of council finances. The Magpie sounded more like a kookaburra when she was forced to break cover again a day or two later, after being quoted that ‘my council is flush with money’. She belatedly realised that the put-upon ratepayers might draw the wrong conclusion that relief was on the way, so she did a frantic back pedal.
This week, it was the Impaler’s turn, giving the paper a lot of words and no meaning while pretending not to be responding to questions raised in this blog about the hiring of two internal snitches, formally known as council investigators. But it was what her silky anodyne spin didn’t say that leaves room for alarm and despondency.
TCC CEO Adele Young
The Astonisher story began with the unchallenged statements : ‘TOWNSVILLE City Council has pledged to crack down on internal fraud and corruption with the addition of two investigators to its ranks. A focus on complaints handling and fraud is key in the new organisational structure.
Crack down? Corruption? Fraud? And investigating these alleged crimes is a ‘key’ to the new council structure? C’mon now, Ms Young, any chance of a ‘for instance’? No, not one? Are you saying that the ranks of TCC staff are shot through with twisters, twicers, harrassers, oglers, and just plain crooks? And is widespread, as you clearly imply?
Talk about insult to injury – every person who has lost their job in this callous ‘restructure’ is now tarred with your brush of having maybe been dishonest, on the take, fiddling expenses, embezzling, or visiting the stationery cupboard too often. And your cowardly and devious hint-hint, nudge-nudge statements will aid your aim of further cowing those remaining staff. Obviously, fear and intimidation is your preferred modus operandi … it also stops people looking at your own performance, not to mention how you got the job over far better qualified people in the first place. And even more so when these ‘investigators’ answer ONLY TO YOU. Surely such matters require independent investigators for that holy grain of transparency you and your BFF the mayor have been trumpeting.
But no, your take is blatantly otherwise., as you told the paper. “Having those skills within council will also greatly reduce the need to hire external contractors to provide specialist services.,” Yes, contractors who may not be amenable to your not-so-hidden agendas. Inependent, in other words.
This is insidious in the extreme and should be resisted by the union, which is very doubtful about the move anyway. The Astonisher report continued: ‘Union secretary Neil Henderson said that, while it was not unusual for councils to employ investigators, having two raised questions around the amount of work at hand. “I don’t know what incidents Townsville has but with there being two of them I don’t know how much work they have going for them,” he said.”
You should clarify if not apologise, Adele – like that’s gonna happen. No matter how you paint it, Ms Young and Mayor Mullet, these two investigatots will, in the American jail argot, be your bitches.
So that will make four in all.
Anna’s Agony: Not Being Able To Boast About Trashing Trad
When it comes to infighting in your own party, doing a lap of honour with air punching waves of the arms is not either advisable or advantageous. So Premier Alphabet must have drawn on all her resolve to stay mum and smiling shyly when she effectively put her plotting deputy premier JackieTrad back in her box … for the moment.
The cabinet split over the Adani ‘royalties holiday’ – where it was proposed the company would only pay a couple of million a year for the first seven or so years – split the cabinet and presented Queenslanders with the laughable image of Jackie Trad as the ethical heroine of Labor’s campaign promises. But when the much ballyhoo’d cabinet showdown took place, it was clearly the Premier who bared her teeth.
Because she came out to announce, in the best tradition of the Monty Python’s Black Knight victory speech, that as leader, she had hammered out a deal to put both Adani’s plans and her leadership back on track. But she wouldn’t say what that deal was, even when Adani, with indecent haste, put out a unilateral media release announcing they had accepted the deal.
Some deal! The Australian has reported that under the ‘breakthrough’, Adani will pay a flat $5million a year for five years, eventually paying any outstanding royalties amount with interest. This is chump change. The initial idea, at two million a year for a vague time, maybe seven years, would’ve short-changed the Queensland taxpayer some $320million Now, it seems, we’ll only be bilked maybe $200million. And the ‘with interest’ is a furphy; Adani will just put the savings on the international money market over the next five years, earn a motza, so when – AND IF – they ever get around to paying the extra, the interest component will have been earned back several times over. The ‘if’ part of that is based on the fact that, five years into the project, Adani will hold the whip-hand because of the billions borrowed and jobs it controls, and may very well insist on a renegotiation which would only to be to Queensland disadvantage. Make no mistake, on its track record in India, Adani is untrustworthy and run by arch twisters. But very politically savvy people.
Last week, The ‘Pie predicted we’d have to wait for the mirrors to accompany the smoke. Well, we’ve got it. And Trad has only retired to the shadows again for a while.
Stop Dragging Your Feet, A Bargain Awaits
C’mon, help out a struggling paper, won’t you? Sign up for a subscription to the Bulletin. really, look at what you get.
See, you get just about everything – except The Magpie. And that’s free anyway, although a donation would help things along somewhat. Don’t forget to have your say in comments during the week.
