From Townsville To Whoville – Mayor Mullet Steals Christmas From The Struggling CBD.

In an inexplicable kick in the head for businesses in the heart of the city,  the council ‘steals’ the traditional CBD Christmas tree,  moving it to The Strand – in much the same manner as the Christmas Grinch’s famous raid on Whoville’s festivities in the Dr Suess classic.  Hard pressed business people find their joy and goodwill in is short supply, in fact, some are hopping mad.  And one has the courage to speak out openly to The Magpie.

Do the numbers lie? Is the headlong push for 100%  renewables the impossible dream  and we are being panicked and persuaded into power poverty.  Is there evidence that the current timetable is not only completely unsustainable but the we are also being bullied away from the answer right in front of us. The Magpie looks at the latest number crunching … and it’s pretty convincing.

The ‘Pie introduces what is looking like a permanent new segment: This week’s question that The Bulletin didn’t ask.  First up, we visit Bushland Beach and the Disaster Management Centre for ‘reporter’ Leighton Smith’s latest foray in stenography and sealed lips.

The Australian’s investigative report this week into the Magnis scam shows the full extent of how close we went to an even greater debacle with the mayor’s gushing dealing with a corporate crook. But did we hear anything from the Bulletin? We did not,  reporting irresponsible governance and mayoral near-misses is not in their remit apparently.

The stark difference between public value and private valuation.

It’s been a difficult week here at The Nest technically, and The ‘Pie’s ageing equipment could do with some TLC  – which costs money. If you’d care to help out, you can make a donation, the button is at the bottom of the blog. And just for the record, the promised new-look site is a work in progress, somewhat stalled by circumstances that could not be avoided. But it’s still happening.

A Claim That Jenny Hill’s Council Has Been Caught Out In A Direct Lie Looks To Be The Latest Setback For The CBD

During the week, The Nest received this email from well known Townsville businesswoman Lucy Downes of Gecko Interiors. The Magpie has edited it down for length. Ms Downes confirmed with The ‘Pie that she was happy to be identified. It speaks for itself.

I’m a long established CBD trader of 16 years. I was previously in Castletown for 10 years, so have committed overall to the Townsville community and economy for 26 years. In the time I have been in Flinders St, I have been a strong advocate for the precinct and have formed strong connections with other CBD traders.

But in those 16 years, I have witnessed a steady, constant decline in visitation, appeal and interest in activation by Townsville City Council. I have seen an increase in tenancy vacancies, anti-social behaviour and alarmingly, an indifference by TCC to respond to trader’s concerns.

This has recently been demonstrated by Council’s decision to re-locate the city’s Christmas Tree from the city to The Strand this year.

A Channel 7 news report aired on Thursday the 16th November about the new, bigger Christmas Tree stated that it was being moved to The Strand, “after CBD business owners campaigned for it to be relocated from the city last year”

 I want the Townsville community to know that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it simply isn’t true.

CBD traders embrace and continually plead for activation of the street, and events such as Christmas In The City have been a key calendar event for these businesses for decades. We would never campaign to have Christmas in the City relocated.

What we have campaigned for in recent years, particularly last year, is consultation.

In 2021, the tree was re-located from Bulletin Square to the Palmer St end of Victoria Bridge without consultation. And although the CBD traders all threw their support behind the “turning on of the lights” event and stayed open through till 9pm it saw little activation for the traders, because of this relocation, which is little wonder considering the tree was closer to Palmer St than Flinders St.

The Mayor later acknowledged via a media interview that this was a misstep, that activation of the CBD was vital and a key focus for TCC, and promised to consult with CBD traders about the position of the tree in 2022.

So imagine our surprise when the Christmas tree was returned to Flinders St last year but with dirty, great concrete blockades, road closed signs and a key access road into Flinders St barricaded off for a month!

The response and reaction from the CBD traders was swift and palpable., asking where was the promised consultation, and why was the tree plonked in the middle of a bitumen road in the baking sun with a ring of concrete blocks?

Who on earth thought that would attract the hordes?

The CBD is a city’s brand, and we need the Townsville CBD to become a destination for locals, tourists and travellers. We need as many events as possible to help achieve that aim but without the consultation of the traders Council staff are making gobsmacking errors with these events that are sabotaging the desired outcome.

The Mayor again went into damage control and stated that “staff believed they had consulted with CBD traders” (  ‘believed’? What the heck does that mean? ) but either way, “we’ll take the feedback from the traders and re-visit it next year”.

And here we are.

Another year later.

And no consultation whatsoever. 

Despite prompting.

 Council decided to relocate the tree and lighting ceremony out of Flinders St and move it to The Strand, where it appears it will stay from now on. I know this because I was told “ we have a new, bigger tree that won’t fit in Bulletin Square. So we would have to put it in the road again which would mean road closures and you guys don’t want that”.

And hence the totally untrue narrative being pushed is : “the CBD traders wanted it relocated out of the city”

NO. NO. NO. NO.

We want it in the city. 

We desperately want it in the city.

It’s been in the city for decades with great results. 

But they changed it. And stuffed it. And they won’t own up to it.

Lucy Downes

And the Chamber of Commerce is nowhere to be seen.

Knowing the demonstrated vindictive and petty nature of our mayor, the Magpie double checked with Lucy, but she had decided she was ready to put her name to the letter.

So now Ms Downes no doubt has a greater interest than most in the outcome the upcoming mayoral election . If Jenny Hill prevails, it probably won’t be long after she demonstrates that, like Donald Trump, she doesn’t shrink from using her position and power to ‘get even’.

Watching closely.

Powering Down To Poverty

The Magpie has coined a new term for ill advised ventures that fall into a certain pattern … he calls it the Campbell Newman Syndrome – Too Much Too Soon. That in a nutshell tells the story of his ill-fated term as premier.

But the Newman Syndrome can be seen elsewhere, and no more so than the helter-skelter rush to renewables, and the hysterical calls to phase out of fossil fuels. There are more and more coherent arguments being made against the indecent and dangerous haste to halt mining. Not only is the feeling of being hassled and hustled down this road (Thunderberg Road perhaps?), there is also the suspicion it is all politically driven political point scoring.

That is certainly Bentley’s view.

But there are more and more coherent and analytical arguments emerging challenging the fashionable orthodoxy, claiming to prove  that complete power needs from just wind and solar sources are an unsustainable and impossible dream.  There ae some impressive numbers to back it up, too.

The main arguments against wind and solar are two-pronged: economic and financial analysis claim that only a fraction of power will ever be gained by renewables, and even those are simply unaffordable, self-defeating and, frankly, impossible. And battery storage, so the argument goes, is bullshit (although more technically argued, of course). And renewable will mean more mining not less, only of different and rarer minerals (most of which China control).

These aren’t arguments against climate change or a looming energy crisis, they are a thoughtful examination of the pitfalls that certainly exist for the present path of popular thinking, a path strewn with noisy (and bloody annoying) children and pig headed, panicked adults.

Slowing down the demise of fossil fuels is one matter, but the core claim for this new thinking is gaining more and more credence as myths and scaremongering disappear and technology increases … nuclear energy. On that point, here is an eye-opening short video that tackles some of the self serving objections to what some say is the ONLY solution for a power supply for an economy determined to demand more power (vehicles for instance) while the concept is cut off at the knees by reality of vastly LESS power. And this one puts the case of economic impossibility.

A New Weekly Segment: The Bulletin’s Unasked Question Of The week.

And who better to baptise this new feature than the Astonisher’s reigning Marcel Marceau, Leighton ‘Light-On’ Smith. This story in the Weekend Bulletin is listed weirdly under an ‘exclusive’ banner.

His tongue peeping pinkly from the corner of his mouth in concentration, Light-On dutiful transcribed the self-serving but justified guff  offered to his obedient pen from  a parade of characters about a pretty standard TCC reclamation project.

An epic transformation of a Bushland Beach watercourse is taking shape as 70 workers plant 97,000 trees and grasses to create a picturesque living waterway which improves water quality and protects the Great Barrier Reef.

In planning since 2021, the Townsville City Council-led $2.8m Bushland Beach naturalisation project is upgrading a drain corridor and footpath running behind Peggy Banfield Park, between Mount Low Parkway and Lionel Turner Drive.

Work began in January to dig out old cement-lined drain to widen the corridor, line it with rocks, and re-landscape it to create a “bio-engineered naturalised waterway” featuring a low-maintenance creek, habitat pools, and sediment-collection pond

Which is all fair enough, a good story as a matter of community interest, although one man’s ‘epic’ is another man’s ho-hum (exclusive?!?)

But Light-On,  you seem to have short term memory loss – and no ability to join any dots . You apparently didn’t pay much attention to another media release you yourself transcribed in the paper earlier in the week featuring the ludicrous suggesting from our campaigning mayor who said  her Disaster Management Group has rehearsed for three times the amount of rain of the 2019 monsoon

A tropical cyclone has hit North Queensland and three times the volume of rain that fell on the city during the 2019 monsoon event has hit Townsville.

That is the scenario that put Townsville’s disaster management team to the test ahead of the wet season.

A “cast of hundreds” gathered in Townsville to run through a simulated cyclone and flooding event to ensure the city was prepared for the approaching high-risk weather season.

Three times the 2019 monsoon. Really? 

In the ten days to 8 February, Townsville Aero recorded 1259.8 mm, far exceeding the January 1953 record of 925.5mm. There were several sites in nearby elevated areas that reported 12-day rainfall totals of more than 2,000 mm. 

Not only would the RR Dam be spilling over the wall – if not actually breaching it and washing it away – unable to hold the predicted 800% of the wet stuff, all of Townsville would be floating off to New Zealand. Not so much the venice of the North as the Atlantis.   As absurd as that suggestion was … and if it was only a impossible hypothetical, why waste training time the what would be the inevitable wipe out of the entire city … you took it seriously enough not to question it. (Oh, drat and poo, The ‘Pie can hear you saying.)

So mate, did it not occur to you to ask what would happened to the $2.8m Bushland Beach project in the event of almost guaranteed catastrophic flooding?  Or the outcome even the stock standard regular overflow drenching, likely to denude all the good works done there.  There might be clever technical planning for such an event, and then again, knowing the TCC, maybe not, but surely worth the question that everybody who’s been here more than your five seconds would ask?

Public v Private It’s Not a Matter of Values, It’s A Matter Valuations

Just a thought for you to ponder.

In the weekend real estate section, this four-bedroom, three-bathroom house in Rowes Bay with four car spaces on 800sqm is valued by experts Knight Frank at $2,350,000.

… while this structure on Castle Hill is valued at $4million by Mayor Jenny Hill.

In the ugly vernacular of the present day, ‘go figure’.

Also In The Go Ho Ho Figure Department

Trusted mate tells The ‘Pie that despite his drunken escapades, precinct ban, police insults and general buffoonery, Messagebank Walker is going to be Santa at the TCC community Christmas lunch. Asked why, considering his record, inquirer was told ‘because he always has.’

But hey, maybe not that silly … who better to play a mythical person who only turns up once a year with dubious presents – Forensics For Dummies for coppers who’ve just lost colleagues  – and isn’t heard from the rest of the time. Ho-fucking-ho indeed.

And Thanks, Anna …

Funny, That …

Big spread about the woes of Magnis in the Australian during the week …

… which finally demonstrates Frank Poullas as the unsavoury scammer he is … and how close Jenny Hill, who was his guest on a US ‘softening up’ trip, was to being more closely linked to him, before circumstances made him piss off voluntarily. But while over the years this courtship filled page after page of glowing confabulated stories of jobs and riches galore, there was never a single mention, not the merest hint of the bleedin’ obvious … Poullas was on the make with make-believe.  And it is no humblebrag by The Magpie … indeed he is bloody proud to say it … that from very early on, it was he alone called out Poullas for the bullshit artist he was, and Jenny for the irresponsible fuckwit she was in all this. Lucky she has an electorate with the memory of a goldfish.

But despite the previous attention given to this fantasy by the Bulletin, not a single word in that paper about the current Magnis implosion and this city’s past links with the central character. One imagines a responsible, balanced and truly independent newspaper would be running the yarn and surely asking the mayor for comment.

But The ‘Pie reckons he’s now answered his own obvious question.

Priorities

Did anyone else notice the glaring omission in all the reports of the disgraceful FNA scandal in Queensland over the past decade. The details are everywhere else, so no need to go into it here. But what struck the ‘Pie was the follow-my-leader parroting of the estimated number of criminals who may have got away with their crime, and given time and the unlikely continued existence of evidence,  are unlikely to face court again.

BUT NOWHERE WAS THERE A SINGLE MENTION OF THE VERY REAL POSSIBILITY THAT INNOCENT PEOPLE MAY HAVE BEEN SENT TO JAIL BECAUSE OF THIS BUREAUCRATIC INCOMPETENCE.

It’s happened before both here in Queensland and elsewhere (the name Folbigg looms large), but not a single dickybird about the possibility.

This is a disgusting commentary on the priories of a sensation seeking media.

The Desensitizing Of America Grinds On

Ironic that it’s Thanksgiving time again in the US, a country that increasingly has fuck all to be thankful for. Well, at least they’re getting rid of George Santos.

Those Funsters At The Shovel Areat It again …

… proving here’s a lot truth in jest.

…………….

So we start another week, and you can bet there will be all sort of gentle debate and reasoned argument in comments, whack in your say.

The donate button to help Nest finances is below.