Also, some fond and maybe facetious farewells from the Astonisher – major staff changes apparently in train at the paper, with some departures, some arrivals and musical chairs in some editorial positions … also, gunnin’ for Gavin … failed Townsville entertainment industry entrepreneur Gavin Thompson has declared himself bankrupt, saying he has just one single dollar in his bank account.
We look at when the cure is worse than the disease; Campbell Newman’s unique take on health negotiations – ‘toonist Bentley neatly nails The Brisbane Bantam on this one.
In sport, down south it goes from Aussie Rules to Insanity Rules, with no scoring allowed for juniors.
And when it comes to headlines, not all double entendres are mistakes … The ‘Pie has unearthed the cheekiest – and rudest – Australian headline of the century – it’s a gem from the most unlikely source. All that and other silliness from the week from all around the place in today’s nest.
Campbell Newman has become the’ break or break through’ gambler of the political plunge. He has taken several key hot-button issues – bikies, public service cuts, asset sales and now health – specifically doctors – and on each one, has made the big plunge of populist politics, gambling that he knows what the Queensland public think and want.
He is playing hardball on all them, but he’s playing with fire – it’s his unique style of brinkmanship – and, at the same time, is unapologetic about his $67,000 pay rise. So much for his reading of the public mood.
But the looming health debacle seems almost certain, if each side holds to its position. The problem lies in the barging approach of Premier Newman and Health Minister Laurence ‘Dad’n’Dave’ Springborg who have mistaken hectoring lectures and a blunt ‘no compromise’ approach as ‘meaningful discussions’. What seems to have escaped their tunnel vision is that they have now placed themselves in the undesirable political position where whoever wins in this fight, it is assured that the Queensland public will be the losers, one way or the other. And they are the voters.
Bentley’s one picture is as usual worth those thousand words
Down in Canberra, the lowlight of the week was the same approach from the flint-faced speaker Bronwyn Bishop, who has without any doubt brought the role of House Speaker to its grubbiest low ever – and that includes slippery Pete Slipper. There have been 98 ejections since she took the role – all of them from Labor ranks – and just for good measure, a ban on spontaneous – or presumably any other sort of – laughter from Labor ranks. The traditional independence of the chair has been well and truly trashed, aided and abetted by that walking/talking Brylcreemed oil slick Christopher Pyne, who described complaints of imbalance as coming from ‘sooks’. Ironically that the alternative meaning of sook could well apply to the speaker – sook is also a female crab.
Renowned southern doodler Leunig has had one of the wittiest pisstakes on the issue.
But speaking of lunatics in charge of the asylum, the AFL has come up with the weirdest nanny-state cottonwool bit of policy imaginable.
Sanctioned junior football leagues for teams under 10 years of age will now have no scoreboard, ladder or match results. And no players names will be allowed to be published!
AFL national development twerp Josh Vanderloo said the new rules were aimed at giving children ‘an enjoyment philosophy rather than a winning philosophy’. And they wonder about our decline as a sporting powerhouse? And just as The Pie suspected, the whole cockamamie bit of prize bullshit originated from the acadils and boofademics at Deakin University. What a bloody surprise. And no, the new rules were revealed on March 29, not April 1, as first suspected.
But one guesses it’ll never fly, the kids and officials are up in arms (well, fancy that) , and given the reaction from the public – some have even called for charges of treason against Australia to be laid – a quick rethink must surely be on the cards.
Mind you, it certainly appears that there is another sport where the ‘enjoyment philosophy’ has won out over the ‘winning philosophy’. That would be horse racing. Or more specifically, that enjoyment idea has been wholeheartedly embraced by all the glue factory candidates on which The Magpie punts his hard earned. These nags all but stop for an enjoyable nibble of the track and a sniff of the daisies while all those other highly strung and neurotic horses thunder off into the distance towards the winning post. If only they had an enjoyment post, but in its absence, The ‘Pie will start sending his tips to Mr Vanderloo, so he can fully appreciate the deep wisdom of this new footy philosophy.
Enjoyment is a moveable feast, especially down on the Via Vomitorium nightclub strip. Hear that The Exchange recently went bottomless as well as topless, but staffing can be such a hassle.
He ooks a bit like a couple barristers of the Magpie’s acquaintance … around the head, that is.
Moving on, and when it comes to newspapers, enjoyment for publishers can only be quantified by how many people enjoy their product. The more that do, the more papers can charge for ads.
All this can be measured in two ways … by the legally enforced accurate (more or less) recording of papers sold i.e circulation, and the somewhat rubbery theory of readership, which is measured by surveys asking how many people in a household read parts of the same copy of a paper. Naturally readership is always higher than circulation. And for decades, readership figures were carried out by the independent Roy Morgan organization, a respected and long-standing survey firm on all sorts of measurable commercial data.
But then, when newspaper sales and therefore readership started tanking spectacularly, publishers were desperate to keep their revenue rates as high as possible. They decided that the villain in the piece – or more correctly the fall guy – was to be the Roy Morgan company, headed by CEO Gary Morgan.
So what was a newspaper industry to do? Why, obvious, Baldrick, we’ll start our own readership surveys.
Last year, after a design programme of a couple of years, enter EMMA, a brassy strutting strumpet if ever there was one. Formally known as Enhanced Media Metrics Australia, EMMA plies her trade using advanced survey techniques, the results of which are interpreted by … well, by the newspaper industry itself, along with the clever clogs at Ipsos Media, the techo mob that have a part of the action.
And boy, has this gal been worth the money, for a good time is being had by all. The EMMA readership results are nothing short of spectacular, reporting a Lazarus-like renaissance of readership figures, often up to double the Morgan statistics.
BUT … could this lead to – gasp, say it ain’t so, Joe – fibbing!?! And could such fibbing be proved by comparing circulation and readership?
Let’s just look at The Astonisher for a sec. They now use EMMA stats rather Roy Morgan’s, although the all-powerful media buyers are still evaluating EMMA’s worth and are sticking mostly to Morgan for the time being.
Here’s the Astonisher’s carnival barking to potential suck … err, advertisers, as printed on their website.
Key Facts
94,000
Readership (M-F AVG)
96,000
Readership (SAT)
21,400
Circulation (M-F AVG)
31,484
Circulation (SAT)
Source: emmaTM conducted by Ipsos MediaCT, 12 months ending Dec 2013. ABC, Dec 2013.
Now it has to be taken that the circulation figures are correct, on pain of penalty, and since the last quarterly stats, they show a further loss of 1115 sales on weekdays and a pretty dire loss of 3417 sales on Saturdays.
But then sashaying onto the scene, swinging her bag and chewing her Wrigleys, strolls EMMA … and what a miracle worker she is, she really knows how to please a jaded publisher whose wife doesn’t understand him.
The last Morgan figures for weekdays has the Astonisher at approximately 52,000 weekday readers, but EMMA says no way Jose, actually 94,000 people squinting their way through the pages – that is an unbelievable four+ people reading each and every copy! Morgan’s last had Saturday readership approaching the mid-70000s, but EMMA reckons it has actually shot up to 96,000! That’s three people fighting over the weekend paper, sort of possible, but so is a Cowboys premiership.
It’s a wine into water scenario, with sales slipping dramatically, but readership going up? If it looks like bullshit, and if it sounds like bullshit, then it is what do ya reckon?
And while we’re down at the Astonisher, big staff movements coming up, and from what The Pie can gather fourth-hand through old chums, some well known names (at least in this blog) are leaving heading both north and south. Names forthcoming as soon they can be confirmed. And no, Simpo Templeton isn’t one of them, and he’s said to be spitting chips about it. The word is he’s been lobbying the Courier and other southern rags during recent holidays without success. More’s the pity, but at least The Pie won’t be short of material if he stays. Hope he didn’t ask Cath Webber for a gig at the Gold Coast Bulletin and get knocked back … he’d be right royally pissed off, given that two of his Astonisher colleagues are heading down there. More on this when the situation is clearer.
But if you want to be genuinely astonished, The Magpie has unearthed one of his treasures filed away in the back of the nest for a few years now. Anyone with a memory for political jokes and crude witticisms will always remember the punchline of one particular exchange: ‘yes, we remember’.
It is so well know that The ‘Pie won’t risk your tut-tutting by repeating it, but keep it in mind when you view this Sydney Morning Herald headline from 2002, when it was discovered that NSW government minister Michael Costa was claiming travel money to his country electorate while all the time living it up in a plush Sydney apartment. The august Sydney Morning Herald reflected public sentiment with this gob smacker.
It was no error. – we remember, Mr Costa.
Another person likely to be remembered in those terms is closer to home, here in the ‘Ville.
Seems Townsville’s Gavin Thompson has gone belly-up, the former Centenary Hotel and Bank Nightclub operator declaring himself bankrupt last Tuesday, the day before he was due in bankruptcy hearings.
Gavin Thompson
Our Gavin, who doesn’t look like the shifty spiv he’s painted to be by some, says he has one single dollar in his bank account, and a few thousand in super, which is understood to be off limits in bankruptcy matters, anyway.
The roll call of those lining up to get their dough back include one couple owed $103,000 for a personal loan, the Commonwealth Bank is seeking $88,000, Asanda Finance $40,000, the tax office wants $5000 and he is said to owe a previous law firm who dumped him for non-payment a tidy $50, 000. Good luck to you all, and God bless.
While all that sounds somewhat ulcer-inducing for all concerned, our Gav just might be a candidate for a striped suntan, if the Mystery of the Missing Pokies ever makes it to court. It is alleged that while managing the Australian Hotel in Palmer Street, Thompson took three of the pub’s pokies across town to his own hostelry, the Centenary in Pimlico, presumably either for a bit of hopefully untraceable cash, or to boost the figures for a possible sale. The Centen has now changed hands or is still in receivership. The owners of the Australian are less than amused, and why not, if true it amounts to straight-out theft. They swear they will pursue him relentlessly on that issue and for lost monies.
Well, just now, the wallopers won’t have too much trouble finding him. He still lives in that architectural disaster that was the Cassimatis house on Melton Hill, because the house is in his partner’s name. The Pie understands neither are working, so meeting the mortgage – unreliably reported to be something like eight grand a month – might become a tad tricky soon.
Watching with interest.
New foodie player in town made a bit of a rocky literary debut during the week, when this blurb fell out of the daily paper.
Perhaps the old mnemonic would have helped – it’s always two for tea in Garbutt.
It’s bound to be tea for one if you blokes make the wrong joke at the wrong time.
And those interminable waits out at the Townsville Hospital are nothing compared a vet of The ‘Pie’s acquaintance.
Enough now, it is away to Poseurs’ Bar, perchance to bump into Emma, and seek to personally appraise her enhanced metrics and check her – ahem – digital performance.
