Forget VP 70, Townsville, brace yourself for The Battle of the Bilge … Are two of our most formidable political backroom boys ready to slug it out in the council election?

Yes, he still walks among us … there have been sightings and indications that Kid Crisafulli isn’t done with politics in the ‘Ville just yet, If true, the Ironyman Award will go to his backroom opponent.

Also, an unhappy milestone in the sinking fortunes of the Townsville Bulletin has just been passed …

And a  useful and hilarious take on how to handle hate mail (hmmm, thinks The ‘Pie, better have another look at that…)

But first …

How To Stop That Infernal Racket

Bentley is as always eloquent in his problem solving, this time, with some helpful life coaching of the tiresome little tennis prick, Nick Kyrgios.

Wouldn’t go astray for spoiled brat bloody Bernard ‘Cata’ Tomic.

Snout Fest – Latest

Indeed, unlike the recently viewed Archibald Prize, there is something about good cartoonists need little or no explanation, like Paul Zanetti being …well, right on the money when it comes to pollies’ perks.

Just love that Chrisopher Pyne!

The Magpie Takes A Flight Of Fancy

If the following turns out to be correct –yes, yes, a long shot in this blog heh heh heh – it will earn The ‘Pie’s Ironyman Award.

There have been several sightings breathlessly reported down the MagpieFone of Kid Crisafulli brazenly parading himself in coffee shop and restaurant around the ‘Ville, consorting with what suspiciously look like Townsville First types. Having himself been a Townsville councillor in the Mooney years and Queensland Local Government Minister under Herr Newman, Crisafulli knows his way around the political potholes of election campaigns, so it would make sense that he’s willing to give Townsville First the benefit of his experience.

This would be particularly valuable when Jayne Arlett finally announces her tilt at the mayoralty, heading the Townsville First team. She has been smart enough … or smartly advised … to delay announcing what would seem a sure candidacy until some business and family matters are concluded. That way, not only are the decks cleared of distractions for what will undoubtedly be a right old ding-dong, but also, she offers no moving target to Mayor Mullet and her snipers until then. The mayor’s advisors are no doubt frustrated and flustered but still smart enough not to make fools of themselves by pot-shotting at someone who is yet to formally declare her candidacy.

Speculation is that The Kid is advising on the composition of a campaign  team and campaign goals. No doubt he will have a say in candidates, with a small reshuffle expected (safe to say Jenny Lane will opt for a well-deserved and graceful retirement, and there is some talk that Ray Gartrell – who is from a staunchly Labor family background – might jump across to Jenny’s team).

BUT here’s the irony if The Kid’s involvement is correct (and The ‘Pie will bet his cloaca feathers it is). When ousted from his seat, David realised his collective knowledge of the game was an ideal grounding for lobbying and consulting, so he set up such an outfit, basing himself in Brisbane – it’d be slim pickins if he stayed around here. But he didn’t have any knowledge of just how the infrastructure would work, and how to value his services.

So who did he turn to?

None other than the highly experienced and successful consultant Dolan Hayes, an avowedly Labor man, savvy political strategist and media boss at the council in the Mooney years. Dolan, who has little time for the hysterical stuff of local or Queensland politics from either side was happy to advise The Kid on such matters as running a consultancy. The ‘Pie presumes The Kid paid for all those CBD coffees and conspicuous Touch of Salt lunches as payment.

Now Dolan will admit to only dropping the odd bit of political wisdom to Mayor Mullet, who has a penchant for running her unconvincing agendas through the pages of a mysteriously compliant Daily Astonisher. But he has insisted to The ‘Pie he isn’t any more involved as that. Yeah, right, mate.

So it would appear master and pupil (you choose which is which) are in all likelihood going to be going head to head in Shogun mode(power behind the throne stuff)  to some extent behind opposing candidates. And that gets the Ironyman Award for Mr Hayes.

This month’s Janus Two-Faced BUMM Award Goes To …

This guy.

Ta dah … News Corpse CEO Robert Thomson.

The Mumbrella site covered his keynote address at this week’s Lowy Institute’s Media Awards reporting that Thomson ‘accused Google of “piracy, zealotry and kleptocracy”, labelled LinkedIn a “pretender” and described the redistribution of content created by journalists as “unnatural”

 

It was a wide-ranging and vitriolic spray from the man appointed as the Corpse’s undertaker – they term it ‘international boss’, but had the distinct sound of a helpless and mortally wounded beast who’d just run into a vacationing Yank dentist.

Thomson’s chat was littered with little gems of hypocrisy and displayed a sheer uncomprehending world view that exemplifies News Corpse inability to see and address today’s media reality. Read the Mumbrella report  in full here – and don’t miss the comments. Particularly liked ‘Oh, my giddy aunt. Pot, meet kettle’ , and ‘Wow, I don’t know where to start …’

Here’s a couple of Thommo’s gems.

He laments “Why pay professionals when you have UGC, user-generated content? And why pay when you can purloin?”

‘Wha …?’ as Jimmy Olsen used to say to the Daily Planet’s editor Perry White . Or, as the digital folk are fond of acronymically spluttering nowadays WTF! this, coming from The King of Cute Cat Videos and click bait ‘lists’ like ‘the 10 celebrities you didn’t know have ingrown toenails’. This stuff infests every feed that News Ltd runs (and runs badly, for the most part).

But the clincher has to be that “the digital age has been hostile to investment in reporters and reporting”.

That’s gotta win this month’s Janus Two-Faced BUMM Award for barefaced, unmitigated mendacity. Let alone anywhere else, just here in the ‘Ville, there will be 60 or more former News Ltd professionals, sacked for desperate, purely financial reasons who will read that comment with gritted teeth and bunched fists. Actually, anyone in Townsville reading it should and probably does feel the same way.

This is like a mafia boss whingeing about a formidable and legitimate opponent muscling in on his ‘territory’. Only difference is that Al Capone would’ve delivered his chagrin not from a whinger’s pulpit but from a speeding sedan with machine guns rat-a-tatting out his reasoned argument. But Thomson can’t take the law into his own hands on this issue, although you can bet he’ll give it a red hot try in various courts in various global jurisdictions.

If Thomson Is Wetting Himself, Spare A Thought For Our Local Iditor

Being a global company can have its advantages of money and influence, but it always carries the possibility of bad news hitting it from all points of the compass … including Townsville.

This week, the audited (hard to fiddle) circulation figures for the year ended June just dropped, and Iditor Pinocchio Heywood can rejoice in the singular fact that he goes down in history as the editor in charge when the Townsville Bulletin’s Monday to Friday circulation went below 20,000 for the first time, possibly ever, certainly since News Corpse started infesting the city 25 or so years ago. See for yourself.

And just to underline the underlying problem, have a look at those risible digital subscriptions. Aren’t any alarm bells going off?

That makes Pinocchio’s recent boast recent boast just a few weeks ago of a Monday readership of 90,000 either a straight-out lie or a severe case of dyscalculia – ‘difficulty in learning or comprehending arithmetic, including learning how to manipulate numbers’. Or perhaps we should lay that little bit of sophistry at the door of marketing boss Lewis Ramsay.

Saturday figures are anything but flash, too.

Now Something Nice About The Astonisher …No, C’mon, Really …

All that said, are we seeing a classic case of too little too late at the paper. The Astonisher over the past few weeks appears to have come to its senses and is doing basic reporting – without opinion – across a range of issues hitherto attracting all sorts of spin. Sure, Galoot Galloway continues to lie by the sin of omission, thus backing one side of an issue (‘CBD Assaults On Police Down’ story a good example, in support of the FSE advertisers) but this is more than balanced by – ready for the Magpie’s kiss of death – Charlie Peel, who seems to have been properly trained and hasn’t had it bullied out of him yet. Sorry to put the mockers on you Charlie.

Boring Is One Thing, Bigoted Another.

The fascinating anatomical mystery tour of several Astonisher columnists – notably the sadly mistaken Chris McMahon and The Eye’s queen of too much information Jess Steele – continues unrelentingly in the ‘the north’s opinion leader’ to the point where continued comment only encourages them.

But if their regular contributions to banality weren’t enough to prove the old adage about monkeys, typewriters and Shakespeare,  no one – anywhere – gets close to another News Corpse columnist, to wit, this gal.

Katie Hopkins would’ve been described by Arthur Daly as ‘a right little scrubber’ while others have suggested she is to columnists what Hulk Hogan is to Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling. She’s also a bombastic bimbo given a national stage in Britain by the likes of Robert Thomson and Rupert, of course.

In fact she is simply simple-minded, a bigot with a cause. And also a former Pommy Big Brother participant, which kinda says it all.

She’s the London Sun’s version of our own Kim Vulgarina Vuga (although Katie is more or less literate) when it comes to race and Muslims, but Katie is irritated about more than just that … try just about everything.

One of her latest targets is that waste of space, old people. One would be tempted albeit briefly that she is familiar with Swift’s ‘Modest Proposal’ (that the starving Irish survive by eating their babies) but that would be an impossible stretch for this wretch. Here’s her answer for this nuisance to modern society. The idea of being trundled off to the knackery to the sounds of Greensleeves would be seen as a whimsical pisstake from anyone else, but given her track record, she cannot be afforded the benefit of the doubt.

Where is a crossbow-toting dentist when you need one.

Replying To Hate Mail

This is one for when you’ve got a moment, an inventive and truly side-splitting response to that sub-species of internet denizen, the (almost always illiterate) writer of incoherent hate mail.

The ‘Pie may have picked up a couple of pointers from this, so just watch out, you lot.

A WARNING: there is a very graphic short video clip included, but you will only see it it if you click on it … not necessary to view to get the hilarity of the exchange, but bet you bloody do! Enjoy it here.

Enough. it is away to Poseurs’ Bar now, to hear the woes from Mongrel the Barrister’s latest (now former) squeeze. She encountered a gap in Mongrel’s knowledge of sexual termninology that she found less than satisfying.

Perhaps that’s why he’s called Mongrel?