Now  It’s Jenny-Come-Lately: Welcome Maybe, But What’s Really Behind Mayor Mullet’s Extraordinary Attack On Her Labor Colleagues?

An attack which included her now probably former BFF Premier Alphabet. But boy, have the likes of Fran O’Callaghan and the dismal performance of the three state stooges got our mayor spooked. The penny has finally dropped that her silence on Townsville’s crime wave cannot be airily dismissed as ‘not council business’. And her response shows the extent of her electoral panic.

The Bulletin’s language clanger … one for the ages – well, this modern-speak age …

A disgraced arch-plagiarist Peter Typo Gleeson makes a surly exit stage left, quitting (read fired) by News.

Clr Fran O’Callaghan PAYS to find out what she … and the ratepayers … should have been told for nothing. The TCC trio of Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest have really shot themselves in the tootsies this time.

Deciding the right thing in the wrong way: TCC’s highly compromised CEO decides on Strand development that either way, will make a mockery of political donation laws …

…and how The Magpie would’ve beaten FIFA at their own game. Plus Bentley on ambassador Albo, and our regular American gallery tries to keep up with the whirlwind of US politics.

Editorial note:

Cometh the hour, cometh the possible fuck-up. Overnight this Tuesday/Wednesday is the time given for the transfer to a new WordPress platform, and even the computer elves have their fingers crossed. Just so you know, if there are some glitches, comments not appearing and so on, it will only be temporary and hopefully brief.. Once the transfer is successfully in place, we will continue with building a new blog format. Your help in that task would be greatly appreciated with a donation. Appropriate button to do so at the end of the blog.

First Though, A Sad Remembrance.

Vale, my good friend, Greg Humphries

Respected Townsville solicitor Greg Humphries died yesterday, finally succumbing to an aggressive cancer. He was 60.

Greg was a partner in top law fir Connolly Suthers until his recent retirement for medical reasons.

The Nest has lost a long time supporter, commenter (Greg was Polythene Pam, named for the song by his beloved Beatles) and a contributor from this blog’s inception 12 years ago, often winkling out significant or amusing court transcripts that The ‘Pie used for column articles.

Personally, I have lost a very great friend of 30 years, whose generosity and high ethical standards I will never forget. Unbidden and incensed, Greg sprang to the defence of me and my daughter when we were so unethically attacked by a money grubbing southern lawyer and client. Genuinely angered by such a cynical and dishonest action, Greg was the instigator of an action that saw this mob scuttle off, tails between their legs and much lighter in their own wallets.

But first and foremost, Greg was a constant and thoughtful friend over the years. What really stings is his age, just 60, and that he had just started into a retirement which was to be filled with travels with wife  Heather, with friends and much celebration of a life well spent.

My condolences to you, Heather, you have been admirable in these past few difficult months. Also to Greg’s family members in Victoria.

I will miss him.

Vale Greg Humphries.

What’s Really Behind Jenny Hill’s Attack On Palaszczuk And Local Labor MPs Over Crime

In a story again painting Townsville as the wild west, Hill’s extraordinary attack on her party colleagues has spread far and wide.  By any measure, this really was an unexpected veer in tactics when she suddenly used the week’s council meeting to deliver a broadside … at her party colleagues.

From the Bulletin story, which called the her comments ‘scathing':

“Townsville residents are sick and tired of the platitude that this is just a small number of offenders,” she told this week’s council meeting.

“They are sick and tired of the state government being perceived as being far more concerned with the rights of offenders, not the rights of the victims or the right of the community to feel safe.”.

“I challenge the three state government MPs in Townsville to look at the example of the member for Cairns (Michael Healy) who has actually had the gumption to call out his own government’s failures on youth crime.”

An amazing and seemingly out of character blast. Or was it? It seems to The ‘Pie our mayor had finally come to the point where she has had to choose – a sort of political Sophie’s Choice: her own electoral survival, or solidarity to her party. Not surprisingly, her own self-preservation won out, but it has risked her being left further out in the cold by Labor. But Jenny knew that in 18 months or so, she would be facing an electorate in a towering rage about the unabated kiddy crime wave. She would also have been aware of the sustained News Ltd campaign targetting Palaszczuk and her ministers over a myriad of scandals and failures, most of them real (unusual for News).

So Clr Hill came to the conclusion that canning the party was her only hope of another term and all the perks that go with it, including a super lucrative seat on the board of the LGAQ. Now in her early 60s, Jenny Hill is bitter and disillusioned about being shunned for any shot at higher office, and presumably thinks a cherished Senate spot has gone – if it ever existed.

All a bit bloody late, one would think.

Now she just has to con the electorate that her inaction on speaking about crime in Townsville for the past eight or more years was all the fault of the local MPs. Which it is, but blaming them for she herself keeping quiet? We’ll see if that washes.

And brittle as ever, Harpic didn’t take it well and wasn’t changing his easily disproved on-message drone. But didn’t offer any facts in rebuttal.

’ Mr Harper hit back at Cr Hill on his Facebook page on Wednesday afternoon and asked for a “redaction”, saying he had been trying harder than anyone to tackle crime in Townsville.

The word is ‘retraction’ ,you swivel head.

Describe to us your ‘hard trying’, Aaron? And if you’ve been unsuccessful with all your ‘hard trying’ don’t you think, seeing the lack of result of your efforts, you ought to resign as an incompetent we all see you to be?

Chinese Takeaway

What do we make of our newish Prime Minister’s foray into personal international diplomacy, and particularly his open-handed  but measured initiative towards China? Murdoch’s mob seem to be all at sea on which line to take, because generally, Albo’s attempts to thaw the frosty and damaging Dutton/Morrison-inspired stand-off have been generally welcomed and applauded.

And as Bentley points out, it’s early days, and there are many issues yet to be broached, despite Albo’s unique approach to the Chinese leadership.

Yet Again, A Bit Of High Dudgeon About High Rise

It’s been an issue that has raised blood pressure ever since The Strand was built … the somewhat flexible height limit on buildings facing the tourist and local leisure strip.

While conservatives fight a rear-guard action against the inevitable encroachment of modern realities, The ‘Pie has forever been amused by the arguments some dunderheads put forward to nix buildings soaring to an unsightly seven – yes, seven –  storeys . Gasp!

The usual objections are trotted out (will building shadows rob the packed beaches and crowded pathways of sun in the afternoons – something The ‘Pie thinks would have definite advantages most of the year hereabouts.?) But coming into the genius category where ‘Daylight Saving will fade your curtains’, is the one that granting economically viable and job creating 7 stories will be the thin end of the wedge in making Townsville ‘a second Gold Coast’.

So this …

…will become this.

The only answer to that is ‘yeah, right’.

But now it turns out this particular project has highlighted the absurdity of the current rules about political donations. Turns out the projector’s proposer was a crowd called S & S Group, who had made donations to Team Hill … in 2016. This has left eight councillor’s forced to declare a conflict of interest, with the result that the fate of the new hotel falls to the Townsville City Council CEO Prins Ralston.

Now sure, Mr Ralston, on one of the few days he spends actually in Townsville and not other distant boardrooms, is no doubt a fine honest corporate go-getter, and will consider this matter dispassionately and without fear or favour.

And I’m the Queen of May.

Prins Ralston is as bought as bought can be, lock stock and sweaty barrel. The author of the wrecking ball policy commissioned by the Mayor, Ralston so pleased The Mullet that she pushed him for the lucrative CEO job a few years later. Which, for around $600k per, he manages to squeeze into his packed schedule of boardroom appearances elsewhere.

So we’re going to get a fair and balanced decision from this bloke? No, we’re going to get whatever Jenny decides, because she owns him and he owes her.  Prins seems a bit more circumspect than one predecessor, Adele The impaler Young, who was similarly favourably appointed by Mayor Mullet but later turned on her benefactor and keeper of the Cookie Jar, which she quickly found out to be an unwise decision. So those who hyperventilate about decisions being made by the unelected – worthy but pointless arguments in this instance – can rest easy … you DID elect the person who will make ultimate decision, because even with no conflict of interest,  Jenny Hill also as comprehensively owns the hand-picked councillors whom she has sat on their lucrative arses to do as she says. So either them or Ralston, the outcome would be the same – and that’s whatever Jenny chooses.

Approval of this project is odds-on, which The Magpie doesn’t think is a bad thing. Making the Strand frontage more attractive to tourists and residents is not a matter of if, but when.  And change is needed NOW. The naysayers could be mollified if the council had the guts to make it official …. eight storeys is tops, no exception, no rubbery exceptions. Then everybody would know where they stood, investors and developers would have more certainty, and if they were in the sun of economic progress or in the shade of a tiny elite.

That way, the city may finally start up a tourism powerhouse which may eventually be worth real dollars, and not the make believe smoke that TEL keeps blowing up us.

The Astonisher’s … errr … Ball Tearer Of A Mistake

The Magpie has decided on a new award, The Omar Khayyam Kryptonite Keyboard Chalice and Spoon.The award honours the core truth of the 10^th century Persian bard’s great verse:

“The moving finger writes, and having writ,

Moves on; nor all thy piety nor wit,

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”

And you can bet many an Astonisher journo is awash in piety, wit and tears over some of their frequent howlers. So the inaugural winner of TOKKK trophy is the latest through the Bulletin’s turnstiles, reporter Kiel Egging, who graced the Astonisher’s front page with his tale of woe about an abandoned princess.

 

Piling horror upon horror (‘we had to wait 20 minutes on the tarmac before we could get off the plane’), this rather disturbing expose was repeated at least twice more on the page 6 story.

 

Just when does inconvenience become ordeal? The most obvious answer is when the Bulletin needs a beat-up story that is totally unbalanced. And to focus in sensationalised terms on a nervous young woman who unfortunately was not emotionally equipped to handle what was no more than an (admittedly) annoying inconvenience … caused by the weather, not the airline.

But, pardon the pedantry Kiel, (look it up, mate, look it up) but the word in this instance is ‘bawling’. Normally it would not matter all that much, and some even say balling is equally right (it isn’t) = except for the fact that in this new smart-arse world of definition-bending, we find this in the Urban  Dikshunary.

balling – Urban Dictionary

balling · 1. To engage in sexual intercourse.

Could’ve been worse … she might have said she was ‘balling’ her head off.

A disclosure: The Magpie wasn’t exempt to a cock-up or two – no journalist is – it once got into the paper when he had a brain fade and called the Crown Prosecutor the ‘Crown Persecutor’. Not that he was necessarily wrong – well, philosophically.

And While We’re on The Subject …

The proof continues that the Bulletin has no respect for language … including the word ‘respect’.

‘Why add the worded ‘respected’ to this headline? As versus what? A disrespected magistrate?

It’s childish in the extreme, and is repeated in the story. One guesses that somehow, the writer thinks this intensifies the heinous aspect of the crime, that it wouldn’t have been quite so bad had it just been old you or me. Same goes for the phrase ‘in her own home’. Own? Who else’s home can a home be if she was burgled.?? (And The ‘Pie disrespectfully notes the irony that Kathy Wadley, nice woman and all,  is widely regarded as one of the softest touches on kiddy crime and crims generally sitting on the local bench.)

But it seems that it isn’t just journos, but Jenny too who somehow thinks similar qualifiers are emphasis for her good choices, when in fact it raises the question of the alternative. Talking about the piss coloured water appearing again in our taps, Mayor Mullet simpered ‘ (we) are working closely with highly regarded water quality experts to identify algae bloom treatments’.  Same tactic, with the mayor trying to emphasise a weak defence of poor TCC performance by making her experts ‘highly regarded’ … which in fact tends to throw unwarranted suspicions on them. Jenny, sweetie, ‘highly regarded’ tends to be redundant when wedded to the word ‘expert’.  It’s like linking the word  ‘incompetent’ to the words ‘Mayor Jenny Hill’ … totally redundant.

And The Paper Doesn’t Even Have A Short Term Memory Of Its Own Reporting

As reader The (Barely) Civil Engineer writes: The Bulletin is reporting the stink about water as UNPRECEDENTED but only unprecedented since last summer and something that was supposed to be resolved by our new clarifiers which came online recently.

Indeed. This is what happens when you sack sub editors who collectively used to hold the community memory. The turnstile door policy for staff at the Bulletin is responsible, a policy that makes you an old timer before the age of 30 and maybe three years at the paper. They don’t have the wit to do a simple Google search and look at their own archives. The ‘Pie did and it took him all of about three clicks to come up with the lie.

Had they done so, they could’ve bravely broken with tradition and actually pointed this out to the mayor, perhaps adding that it is now an almost annual story, so why hasn’t she done something more about it. The ‘Pie jests of course.

But Language Is A Constant trap Waiting to Be Sprung.

It’s the thought that counts, but don’t think this is the kind of retirement Bernie is looking forward to.

As reader Achilles commented: ‘A bit jarring’.

The Magpie Is, As You Can Imagine, Devastated. DEVASTATED, I SAY!!

Thoughts and prayers, Typo.

Fightin’ Fran O’Callaghan, Giving The Energizer Bunny A Run For Its Money

Anyone now want to tell us that Clr Fran O’Callaghan isn’t fighting for the rights of Townsville ratepayers?

Perhaps nothing turns on the information, except the fact that it was withheld. Fran – and the ratepayers – should’ve been told without some veil of secrecy pulled down over such seemingly innocuous information they had a right to know (a right as confirmed by the RTI people). The RTI people are correct in declining to name individuals and only companies which attended … for it is only with company entities that the TCC deals.

BUT HERE’S THE THING. DUMB (BOARD HOPPING CEO PRINS RALSTON) DUMBER (TCC LEGAL STEP’N’FETCHIT TONY BLIGH) AND DUMBEST (MAYOR MULLET) HAVE SHOT THEMSELVES IN THEIR FEET.

Through simple spite, fighting to keep such information secret, they have automatically raised the suspicion as to why. Is something going on with some of the invitees that may not be above board, and they were nervous that it might be uncovered? it’s a fair bet nothing is going on beyond the usual legalised thievery,  but in their panicked and bullying attack s on Clr O’Callaghan, they have now cast some doubt in the public mind on otherwise stalwart local companies.

With a nine to one majority on council, why is the mayor and her lickspittles so fragile and obviously insecure about the Division 10 councillor? Got some secrets?

News Flash Just In: Patches Of Sanity Appearing In The United States, But Morons Still At Large

That seem to be the message from this week’s US Gallery. We also note that crypto currency is on the fritz bigtime … the only mystery is why it took so long.

An One For The Road …

And surely The Magpie can’t have  been the only one to think of this.

The Magpie 11,050 approved email hidden; JavaScript is required 120.152.24.64

Submitted on 2022/11/22 at 8:36 pmJust talking tactics here, not the issue.If the immoral bastards of FIFA threatened captains who wore a particular armband with an on-field yellow card, why didn’t the several teams … including those among the top tier … decide that ALL their players taking the field would wear one? FIFA would’ve had to have had a be rethink, real quick. Or see their tournament wrecked and their organisation beyond repair in its present form if they maintained their bullying stance.

…………….

That’s it for the week. Hopefully, the blog will continue on uninterrupted, but if there’s any disruption, do not worry (or cheer, depending ) the old bird will be back asap. Keep sending comments, they will be filed and published when things are proved to be tickety-boo again. And if you’d like to contribute to the rebuild underway, you can just go to the big donate button below.