The Kid and his coffee catch-up that got tongues wagging. And the hundred million dollars the TCC doesn’t know quite what to do with.

Yet the same council managed to let $125,000 of ratepayers money be pissed up against the wall by an idiotic and confused TEL ad campaign during the last state election … and they complain NOW. But you won’t hear a peep of follow-up from the Daily Astonisher … The ‘Pie tells why.

But TEL is not an outfit to rest on its laurels, seems it has found another way to make non-use of ratepayers dough – The ‘Pie wonders why. Also, Bentley’s back from his gap fortnight, putting on record his insights in Canberra’s leadership longings, a couple of quotes of the week and the amazing koala stroll along a busy Australian street.

Bentley has been watching events in Canberra with his usual jaundiced eye, and while most think PM Wingnut’s trouble are being fuelled by the media baying for blood, our boy thinks there’s another group doing the chasing.

And Paul Zanetti has some bad news for the baying hounds. If they dare look over their shoulder … arghhh!

You can see more of Paul’s work at The Pickering Post site.

There’s always someone waiting in the wings to take advantage of every situation, like this.

Bill Shorten is in the box seat to save some dough – worst he can do is half price.

And this has been floating around cyberspace, and even featured here before but in the current climate, worth a reminder of a brilliant new word.

Quite.

Sport is a subject rarely taken up in these printine offerings, but The ‘Pie thinks he knows why the Broncos copped such a shellacking in the opening NRL round last night … their really  tougher players were all away, practising for tonight’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney.

Pub trivia corner: Mardi Gras is from the literal French ‘Fat Tuesday’, alluding to the last day of feasting before the fast and penitence of Lent. Many mardi gras celebrations are held on Shrove Tuesday, most significantly the one in New Orleans.

And during the week, The ‘Pie wondered if this web headline from the Courier Mail was a go-getter exhortation recruiting folks for the sex industry.
All round, a funny old world, ain’t it? But some things are more weird than wonderfully funny. For instance.

If the Olympics had an event for jumping to conclusions from a standing start, Townsville would street the field. The ‘Ville is easily Rumor Central: Heard the one about Jenny Mayor Mullet Hill doing the Dance of the Seven Army Surplus Blankets (veils large enough to cover the essentials couldn’t be found) at the Patriots Motorcycle Club? Or the old perennial of the last 15 years – His Radiance Tony Mooney attends gay S&M parties in Brisbane wearing leather and studs. The ‘Pie has learnt to be wary of any supposed infomation which is prefaced with the word ‘apparently’.

It’s a sport with which the community is obsessed.

So…

A few days ago, North Queensland Liberal senator-in-waiting David The Kid Crisafulli (hurry up, Macca, call it quits, the boy needs a job) bumped into an acquaintance he’d known for many years, and, as one does, suggested they have a catch-up coffee. So the two sat down at the buzzy little Dominion Coffee in Ogden Street in the CBD and had a chat. This didn’t go unnoticed by a number of people. And several others who didn’t actually spy this alarming tryst but ‘who heard it from a mate whose sister best friend works across the road’, made breathless calls down the MagpieFone, along the intriguingly wrong-headed lines of ‘You’ll never believe who Crisafulli is going into business with?’

Well, they’re right about that … The ‘Pie didn’t, and doesn’t believe it. ‘Cos it ain’t within spitting distance of the facts.

You see, the chum with whom The Kid was mainlining caffeine was Dolan Hayes, who is a loud and proud Labor stalwart, and Jenny Hill’s current eminence gris, although Mr Hayes prefers the term ‘occasional consultant’. Mr. H, who now has his own thriving ‘consultancy’ that is respected on both sides of the political fence and across business, is a former Brisbane political backroom boy, and was media boss at the council during the reign of His Radiance, so naturally he knows The Kid. So why not, as a professional of long experience, have a friendly chat. Mr. H was always on good(ish) terms with all councillors, including The Kid.

But somehow, the two sharing a coffee and shooting the breeze suddenly developed into a cyclone of potentially damaging hot air, which had them going into business together, planning to create a mega, multi-sided, carbon fibre, political lobbying outfit with gold taps and musical toilet flush and hot-and-cold running secretaries.

It was Rumorgate Olympic gold medal stuff.

And, not surprisingly, utter tosh.

While Mr. Hayes is very guarded whenever contacted by The Magpie (the old bird wasn’t very generous about his last gig, carney barking for the super stadium), at least he takes the old bird’s calls. And this time, it was satisfying to give him a good belly laugh. While pouring hot-scalding scorn on the idea – if memory serves, the phrase ‘That’ll be the bloody day’ featured somewhere in there – Mr. H had some colorful character readings for people who displayed a 2+2=5 grasp of maths of which Astonisher Iditor Pinocchio Heywood would be proud. ‘How’d they come up with that?’ he kept asking.

The ‘Pie’s knowledge of Dolan Hayes over the years is that he is as straight an arrow as a person involved in politics and PR can be (not saying much, I know, but ….), so the old bird has no problem accepting his eloquent summary – ‘Utter crap’. (Ah, a wordsmith to the end.)

Moving on.

Looks let’s be honest about this – when your a journo, you like to be read. And it’s even better to be first .

So it was with barely suppressed joy that almost caused a warm moist feeling in the area of his cloaca that The ‘Pie noted with pride that he can indeed count among his – if not devoted, at least avid – readers, his old admirers down at the Astonisher.

Young Anthony ‘The Galoot’ Galloway decided on Tuesday there was some substance in what The Magpie has been saying publicly for some months now – that the council may well be looking at bringing Economic Development back into the Walker Street fold, taking it away from the hapless Dudley Do Nothings, with a commensurate reduction in the $734,000 stipend ponied up by the council on behalf of increasingly irritated ratepayers each year.

And Tuesday’s mousey squeaking iditorial, three quarters of which as usual just lazily repeats what we’ve already supposed to have read in the news pages moments before, gives the lie to who has the iditor by the short and curlies. We are urged to support and not attack TEL, which is indeed a strange attitude to take for a paper that would have us believe they are intrepid reporters without fear or favor. (Ha!) Some much for shining a light in dark places.

One line that tickled The ‘Pie’s crusty brow was ‘(The council) are also unhappy with Tel campaign efforts during the recent state election, which cost the ratepayers $125,000.’

Funnily enough, the paper nowhere seems to have pursued this blatant waste of money. And they almost certainly won’t. Because that ratepayer-funded exercise in sophistry was almost exclusively spent on large ads in the Astonisher which seemed totally pointless – just a wish list of what ‘we’ demanded from whoever was elected. Is there someone at Wishing Well House or Walker Street who seriously believes state pollies are going to take heed of whining demands when there were much bigger fish to fry, like asset sales? But Rupert thanks you, anyway.

A digression: Rupert certainly won’t thank the British cartoonist who came up with the following as a comment on Rebekah Brooks having all phone hacking charges dismissed.

And you thought Bentley could be savage.

But, back here in The ‘Ville, modesty prevents The Magpie from taking any credit in assisting the Bulletin to catch up to certain realities heh, heh, heh. But both The Galoot and the Iditor parroted each other in giving Ewen Dumbo Jumbo Jones a well-deserved ‘right old kickin’ for his dunderhead Canberra arse-licking on the woeful ADF pay deal.

Even the paper won’t buy the guff that Jones worked hard to get the 2% deal, and it looks like he’s made an implacable enemy in Flinders Street West as the federal election looms.

But Mr Galloway fell into the sin of omission with this comment, in a column just before Wingnut advised the revised paydeal:

‘With troops now being ordered to leave their families and risk their life (sic) overseas, the pay offer seems downright cruel.’

(Huh? ‘troops’ – plural-, ‘their’ – plural and ‘life’ – singular. Expect a visit from the Grammar Nazi soon, sir, just as soon as he’s completed he’s weekly visit to The Magpie’s Nest.)

While The ‘Pie agrees that the pay deal in another Wingnut stuff-up and unfair – even adjusted – The Galoot overlooked that when an ADF member is deployed overseas, he or she gets a daily ‘danger money’ payment which varies according to the level of engagement. For instance, Afghanistan used to be $200 per day, but now we’re not supposed to be in direct engagement, it is $150 per day. Iraq would be about $200 a day. And this is on top of the entire regular pay being tax free for the duration of the deployment. And there is a ‘home or Rome’ clause for those posted overseas for more than six months. After each six months, the serviceman or woman is given the choice of a flight home to see family for a fortnight, or a flight to Rome for a two week break. So it isn’t what we do for our troops when they are overseas, it is our policies and attitudes when they come home that is the major problem.

One thing the Astonisher will no doubt be feverishly canvassing will be what the TCC can do with $100million pledged by Labor for the ‘super stadium’. It’s hard to see such a sum as ‘a shag on a rock’, but it’s mighty lonely in this context. That amount will hardly build the toilet facilities for the project, and the Feds – who never wanted a bar of it anyway – will probably plead poverty when our representatives head to Canberra with the begging bowl.

Speaking of which,  begging and promoting silly causes seems to be a talent for the new leadership down at Wishing Well House, and it was taken to new heights during the week. This from the blog comments.

The Magpie March 5, 2015 at 5:53 pm  (Edit)

A MASTERSTROKE!!!

It doesn’t happen often but The ‘Pie must eat his intemperate words about TEL’s putative CEO Patrcia O’Callaghan, when he suggested she was somewhat lightweight, featherbrained and easily manipulated, and was not up to the job of being responsible for more than almost three quarters of a million dollars of ratepayers money. He unfairly raised doubts about her holding her own in the rarified air of business confidence and the dignity required of her (supposedly) influential position. The dastardly old bird even went so far as to suggest she would be a sock puppet for powerful TEL board members and the Townsville Bulletin.

Oh, bad, bad ‘Pie, who is now forced into an embarrassing climbdown after today’s uplifting (pun intended) story of a dignified Ms O’Callaghan taking a cardboard cut-out of Prince Harry for a not inexpensive helicopter ‘joy ride’ (the paper’s description) over the city and Magnetic Island. This masterstroke was devised to support the incisivley intelligent, Bulletin-inspired circulation booster ( they think) of the #handsupforharry campaign.

To recap for those of the 250,000 potential buyers of the Bulletin in the region who haven’t bought the paper (i.e. 235,000 of you), Prince Harry is scheduled to do some army time here in Oz, and Townsville is one location that has been mentioned. In a cringingly embarrassing and pointless PR exercise, TEL has sent a letter to Buckingham Palace (arrghhh!)n beseeching that Her Majesty send her son to Townsville. Yeah, that’ll do the trick.

As Effie used to so famously say ‘how embarrassment.’

But the aerial pic raises a few questions, viz

1. How much was this oh-so-valuable little aerial jaunt cost?
2. Who paid for it?(TEL=ratepayers, Townsville Bulletin = ha, yeah right!)
3. What return on outlay can we expect?

4. Who thought it was a good idea? And why?

5. Which image in the photograph is the cardboard cut-out?

Finally, you will remember many years ago, a catchy tune called Elephant Walk was all the rage. Perhaps some bright musical spark could come up with a similar tune to highlight this truly remarkable little video from Portland in Victoria. The ‘Pie is a boy from the bush, and has never, in the wild or in captivity, seen this sort of bold aplomb from a koala bear. Amazing.

And a teaser for next week … The ‘Pie is in the running for an award. details next Saturday.