The Townsville Bulletin Uncovers Corrupt Coppers … And Didn’t Even Know It

This week, whether through naivety or mendacity, the Bulletin was either dumb or deceitful when it applauded unnamed police officers for using corrupt practices, for blatant political activism …

Off with the fairies: former federal MP Cathy O’Toole’s personal dreamtime …

The Great COVID Con: how the media exploitation of ‘fear porn’ has completely derailed the initial sensible response to the pandemic, which has now descended into a deadly political pantomime…

Wild card in the election mix: Federal member Phillip Thompson in good odour locally and ready to do Palaszczuk electoral damage … he’s already drawn blood from a petty local state member.

Filling the gap: with News Ltd pulling the pin on the Burdekin Advocate, a new independent weekly paper based in Ayr launches next month, and the hunt is on to fill two crucial positions …

And it truly is a tragi-comedy … we both laugh and cry in the unholy battle for America’s soul …

Burns unit … a small collection of the best Twitter put-downs – known as burns – from around the place, dare you not to laugh out loud …

But first …

The Mayor’s Run Of Magical Mathematics Continues

She really does make it up as she goes along, it’s now an annual event which those among us with a taste for dark humour eagerly await each year.

Fresh from her spurious claims of ‘minimal rate rises in the council budget’ – ignoring hefty utility hikes and mammoth job-killing rate hits on big business properties, this weekend Mayor Mullet has trotted out her annual guffaw about the mystical benefits of the V8 SuperPests to the local economy. Mystical, because for the past decade, she has steadfastly refuses to reveal how she calculates the claimed financial benefits of the annual V8 SuperPests to the Townsville economy (Townsville in this case being the CBD, Palmer Street and the Strand.) AND IT NEVER INCLUDES HOW MUCH THE COUNCIL KICKS IN TO THE SUPER CAR OWNERS POT – commercial in confidence, y’understand.

But this time around, she inadvertently reveals just how seriously the pandemic has affected an already ailing economy. Her simpering on about $5million also includes the benefits of the Horn/Tyszu fight, so pandemic reality has forced to abandon her traditional $36million annual boasting boost to the town. Making this year’s modified claim even before all receipts are in is her usual weird clairvoyant form, and the annual howls of derision  at even this very modest ‘injection’ followed as night follows day – especially in the Astonisher’s comments on the story and in Text the Iditor.

But Bentley, wicked penman that is, reckons he cracked the formula of the mayor’s voodoo economics. It all came to him when reading Willy Shakespeare’s Macbeth …

The ‘Pie Is Feelin’ The Love

Well, somebody out there is reading this blog. The Magpie is the only one of local media to mention a council report that bobbed up a couple of weeks ago, suddenly spruiking a new mega art gallery for the CBD.  This led The ‘Pie to ask the polite question if this meant the council (read Jenny Hill) was planning on selling the heritage-listed Perc Tucker Gallery. Seems the Bulletin thought it worth asking the question, so we got this during the week.

Hahaha, The ‘Pie is greatly amused … The Magpie being called ‘irresponsible’ by Jenny Hill is like a jaywalker being called a sociopathic killer by Ivan Milat.

This Explains A Lot

Former Federal member for Herbert Cathy O’Toole is cooling her political heels for the time being, no doubt waiting for the shoulder tap from Labor’s backroom boys when a suitable spot comes up for her.

And why not, her CV  which is still up in the ”former members area’ of the parliamentary website, makes impressive reading. Especially her qualifications.

Qualifications and occupation before entering Federal Parliament

• BEd (Central Queensland University).
• CertIVWorkplaceTraining ().
• DipT (TAFE and Brisbane College of Advanced Education).
• DipTraining&Assessment (Southern Cross Connection).
• CertIIILadiesHairdressing (Department of Education, Queensland).
• CertIVBus (Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE).
• DipFrontlineMgt (Southern Cross Connection).
• MMSc (University of Sedona).
• DippCommunityWelfareWk (Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE).
• BMSc (University of Sedona).
• Business Owner and Apprentice Hairdresser from 1972 to 1987.
• Teacher at the Townsville and Kangaroo Colleges of TAFE from 1988 to 1991.
• Small Business Owner from 1990 to 2002.
• Program Manager and Curriculum Designer at TAFE, Townsville (Qld) from 1991 to 1993.
• Associate at Tropical Industry Training Associates from 1994 to 1995.
• Director and Owner of O’Toole Enterprises Pty. Ltd., 1996.
• Manager at Workplace Training Tropical Industry Training and Associates from 1996 to 1997.
• Managing Director and Owner of Future Skills & Training from 1997 to 2000.
• Chief Executive Officer at Advance Employment Inc. from 2002 to 2011.
• Project Development Manager at Supported Options in Lifestyle and Access Services Ltd. from 2012 to 2013.
• Chief Executive Officer of Supported Options in Lifestyle and Access Services Ltd. from 2013 to 2016.

‘Dip Training and Assessment’ sends one into deep contemplation, and one wonders just what exactly is  Southern Cross Connection. 

Hmmm, hang on a minute, what’s that we see in there? Not one but TWO university degrees.

And from an American university, no less.

Now that we didn’t know. Boy, doesn’t that just put this sneering old Magpie in his place, for all those times he made jeering and jesting remarks while making merry with The Tool when she was our local member.

So, let’s see. Her alma mater is the the University of Sedona, eh? Let’s see now … ah, here we go.

Now this sounds like ideal training for Canberra. Looks like Ms O’Toole has both a Bachelor and a Master degree. Let’s see now, an BMSc. sounds impressive, what’s our gal actually been awarded. Oh, here we are …

Well, The ‘Pie, who barely finished high school, is truly humbled … there is no way he could’ve handled a curriculum which, the Uni tells us, ‘synthesizes psychology, the holistic, transcendent, transpersonal and mystical, blended beautifully together through decades of higher consciousness research …’. All of which sounds like training for branch membership of the Labor Party. But a Bachelor degree sometimes doesn’t cut it when your out with your chums in a yurt, ‘ohmming’ away at the stars in the Arizona desert, so Ms O’Toole displayed her admirable thirst for knowledge … particularly dream interpretation … and went the whole hog for a MMSc. … a Master’s degree. And she got it, by golly!

And not only all those academic achievements, we see that Cathy also has Certificate 111 in Ladies Hairdressing from the Department of Education, Queensland. Talk about multi-tasking.

So The Magpie reckons Cathy is blessed with an innate ability to make the right life choices. The ‘Pie has been unreliably told that she had a choice when it came to securing her place in life. Wisely, and after much thought and tossing up the options, she chose to pay for the Sedona Uni courses instead of taking up the tempting offer of a 10% commission to help a Nigerian princess distribute $30million of her late dictator father’s fortune to his overseas relatives. Close run choice, but she dun right.

Besides, Labor Party pre-selection for a winnable seat is worth about the same anyway.

Good News For Ayr: There’s Going To Be Some Good News

With News Ltd closing down satellite newspaper around the Townsville region, it was feared there’d be a bit of a news vacuum for the smaller centres. The Townsville Bulletin cynically announced that Ingham, Ayr/Burdekin and Charters Towers would get a page or two each week (oh, yippee skip), but that meant people would have to buy the paper for a few items of outdated news and trivia, and certainly would not have any editor to champion worthy causes or decry local injustices. .

Back in June, we learnt that Ingham was to get a new on-line news site, which may still be happening but it all sounded a bit seat of the pants stuff (nothing wrong with that, go for it).

Now Ayr will go one better … it is to get a weekly printed newspaper. The Magpie was delighted to hear from his friend  Scott Morrison (the good Scott Morrison, DO NOT call him ScoMo), the founder of the excellent DUO magazine. He and his wife Stacey have moved to Ayr, and he emailed this during the week.

Burdekin Local News, so far, has a masthead, $2 cover price, printing organised with News, distribution via newsagents (and will continue if that model works), offices, production equipment, software..

I’ve met with other newspaper owners and received a lot of support, joined QCPA and VCPA, contacted all major advertiser, and signed up for Synergy software to run the show.  But it’s still only Stacey (my wife) and I doing it all and the first issue will be out on Thursday 17 September.

We really need an Editor / eager journalist and sales person to make it happen. 

Can you ask around or do you have anyone you can recommend?

With Scott and Stacey are behind this publication, you may trust it will be as professional as it can possibly be. The Magpie has always admired, and let’s be honest, surprised by the high production values brought to DUO magazine (if not all the content).  It seems the magazine is having a covid-inspired rest just at the moment, but if that dedication to detail and layout is transferred to Burdekin Local News, it will be major gain for the town and district. Best of luck, Scott.

Over you, readers, if you can help Scott and Stacey in their quest, contact them directly.

Scott Morrison

Publisher, Burdekin Local News

A 132A Young Street Ayr QLD 4807

M 0418 746 470

Meanwhile, (Sigh), Back At The Astonisher ….

This from comments during week

The Magpie 4,691 approved 138.130.174.115

Submitted on 2020/08/24 at 5:18 pmCORRUPTION CORNER.They really don’t think these things through at the Townsville Bulletin, do they? Astonisher reporter Shayla Bulloch Reporter Shayla Bulloch, although she probably doesn’t even know it, has made the stunning and unsupported accusation of widespread corruption by a number of unnamed police officers, albeit dressing up their illegality and abuse of power as some sort of noble Robin Hood action for the ‘little man’. And also playing the victim, claiming they are not handing out $1000 fines because of the abuse they get for their trouble. Goes with job, snowflakes, and if it gets too salty, you have powers to handle that, too. There is so much wrong with this story, it is hard to know where to start. First anonymity: the very fact that the officer quoted didn’t want to be named clearly proves he knows what he and the others he says act likewise is wrong, and is a form of corruption – not for personal benefit (so he says) but by using police powers for political activism, as evidenced in the very first paragraph: A TOWNSVILLE police officer says police have stopped handing out “obscenely expensive” new fines as they are copping excessive abuse, saying they won’t pay for the government’s bad decision. The officer, who does not want to be named, said he was not the only officer in the region who refused to slap motorists with a $1000 fine for using their mobile phone while driving. This is gob-smacking stuff in more ways than one, and because of the anonymity, The ‘Pie is entitled to believe this is actually made-up, beat-up bullshit. How can the reporter expect to be believed unless a name is put to the comments? Comments which quickly morph into political activism, using hot button words like ‘choose’ (you don’t have a choice, according to Mr Fitzgerald, mate), ‘hypocritical’ (wow!) and ‘obscenely expensive’  as in the following: The police officer said the move to raise the single penalty was hypocritical, considering no other penalties were raised, and that drug and drink-driving was still a huge issue. He confessed officers had stopped using their usual “eagle-eyed” approach and chose to seek out other offences instead. “The fines are completely out of proportion with every other offence,” he said.“We are turning a blind eye to it because we still have to justify the fine to ourselves.” WHAT??? NO YOU DO NOT HAVE TO, OR HAVE THE RIGHT TO, JUSTIFY THE AMOUNT OF THE FINES ‘TO OURSELVES’. What utter unvarnished bullshit. The ‘Pie would love to be in court the day some miscreant tells the judge ‘Your Honour, I will not be paying this fine or serving your jail sentence, because I cannot justify it to myself.’ Then there’s relevance in the reasoning: The police officer said they could not be expected to slap a driver with the huge fine when infringements for other serious offences were much less expensive. “Seatbelts are about $400, a speeding ticket is between $200 and $300,” he said. “If you have three or four cannabis plants in your back yard you won’t get a $1000 fine.” WTF, of course you won’t … listen mate, if you really exist – having three or four a ‘pot’ plants in your backyard won’t in itself kill or maim other road users. This is the sort of conflation we’re used to hearing from Peter Dutton – who is, of course, an ex-copper. Finally, journalistic protection of sources. Ms Bulloch and Iditor Craig Warhurst could have a few sleepless nights ahead (separately, one assumes) if the walloper hierarchy decide they want to know who gave her this interview. She can’t claim any sort of whistleblower sainthood, because her source is not blowing any whistle, more a trumpet, clearly admitting to corrupt behaviour, the sort that could quickly – if it hasn’t ready – devolve into ‘slip us a couple hundred, and I’ll drop the charge to a $500 fine’. Ms Bulloch, if you had a one-on-one interview with a fugitive criminal, you would need to give the authorities all information about him or quite reasonably face charges of aiding and abetting, and being an accessory after the fact. What’s different here? And a heads up, ducky, you should call Phillip Askern, the Bulletin’s excellent legal adviser … the big boys in blue are very likely to want a chat to you, for two reasons. 1. they take a dim view of their troops making up the rules for themselves, and 2. they will be getting their own arses kicked by a government with every right to ask why laws made by elected representatives are suddenly trumped by some political wallopers in Townsville.

All that said, The ‘;Pie simply doesn’t agree with the premise of the fine being ‘obscenely expensive’, in fact, if we live in an age where someone can be fined $5000 for just the possibility of putting others at risk of catching a virus, a grand for someone risking the life of other road users through banal, irresponsible  self-absorption is way too cheap.

The Coming Debate: The Great Corona Virus Con

No, The Magpie hasn’t donned a tinfoil hat but in an attempt to stay ahead of the curve of public discourse, he becoming is more and more convinced that we have been had – and are still being had, indeed openly conned – by a cowardly political leadership which has descended into destructive and false virtue signalling. And we’ve been cowed into silence by a media hungry for what has been termed ‘fear porn’, using extreme examples of known fruitcakes to stifle any rational and reasonable  debate … stuff like this …

And at the core of this coming debate in Australia will one vital question: why have our leaders ignored the lessons learned as we progressed from the initial ignorance of this virus to greatly expanded knowledge, and then did not opt for nuanced and balanced decisions encompassing medical, social and economic factors, for the whole community?

James Allan, writing in Quadrant magazine, has clearly laid out arguments that find the words that The Magpie’s could not – it is one of the most compellingly argued dissections of the destructive mishandling of the pandemic over the past few months that crystalise The Magpie’s growing uneasiness. While it is somewhat over dramatic in spots, and The ‘Pie disagrees on some minor points – especially the superficial glossing over of the situations in differing American states – Allan makes a very strong case. Some quotes from the essay:

“Much of the press has turned itself into an unquestioning arm of the fear porn industry – breathlessly reporting each new case (rather than the death rate), never giving context (as in more people died of the flu and car accidents in most past years, and by massive margins), indulging in the report-your-neighbour thinking of the sort that flourished in the former Soviet Union.”

….

Even if some of our politicians privately now think they goofed, they can’t really admit it. They have to stay the course – lockdowns, maybe upgraded to curfews, fear porn press encouraged to terrify the public, daily press conferences announcing new cases (as if that matters one whit, we don’t care about flu cases, we care about deaths). 

….

And this echoes exactly what The Magpie said in last week’s blog and several times before.

Then there’s the awful way in which politicians not just here but around most of the democratic world abdicated key decision-making to a bunch of doctors or Chief Medical Officers.  This was done in the name of ‘expertise’.  But that claim to their expertise is mostly untrue.  In terms of whether lockdowns and heavy-handed responses are called for, or not, a medical degree is not (the require qualification) We want experts in statistics; experts in probability; people who take everything into account; economists at least as much as doctors… the medical side of this situation is only one of many factors.  Weighing them all up is the job of the elected politicians, not some bureaucrat doctor. 

And although not included in the article, this interesting graph supports this final quote.

This is in a world where for those under 45 the corona virus is less dangerous than the flu (another instance of ‘we are not all in this together’); where for those under 60 it still doesn’t break into the top 15 causes of death; where the young are having their futures destroyed, job prospects detonated, and university and school experiences turned into sterile, near-worthless ‘Zoom time’; where millions will die in the Third World from the coming poverty there. The list goes on.

It sure does.

Has Coralee O’Rourke Really  Chucked In The Towel?

There is evidence that … maybe.

She may just be playing hinting games with the paper, trying for a sympathy vote, by refusing to say whether she’ll stand down before the election on medical grounds – seems unlikely she’d go without getting a big Palaszczuk flea in her ear, since Premier Alphabet would be less than sympathetic at such a late hour withdrawal with no replacement in sight. The election is now less than eight weeks away.

And it appears the LNP believe they have an unexpected weapon in their campaign armoury … federal member for Herbert  Phillip Thompson. The ex-ADF digger has been making solid decisions and statements that hook directly into local public sentiment for a while now, and had the unexpected bonus – courtesy of some weird Palaszczuk zombie economics – of being able to promise a cool $195million of federal funds for yet-to-be-determined Townsville-based infrastructure.

Previous members for Herbert in recent times have had little impact on state polls, but this time, George Street is so on the nose that Thompson’s matter-of-fact statements – on everything from crime to water pipelines –  have resonated in an electorate fed up with the three local state buffoons.

And there seems to be proof that O’Rort is rightly rattled by Thompson, with a strange, self-defeating bit of petty and vindictive tomfoolery that is frankly, inexplicable and inexcusable … she barred Thompson from making a site visit to a new Townsville facility under construction for servicemen and women, this despite the Feds putting up $5million of the cost. Thompson posted about it on Facebook.

Sounds like they’re really on the run.

The ‘Pie Just Couldn’t Resist

The ‘Pie was bit chuffed with his tweet reply during the week.

Which brings us to our Trumpanzee gallery for the week, which featured Trump yet again telling the faithful he wanted to make America great again, totally unaware that it sounded awfully like an admission that he realized how things had gone since he became President. And it ain’t just corona virus that is sweeping the political landscape of the USA.

Finally, Here’s Hoping We Can Leave You With A Laugh

It isn’t just Trump who makes a prize goose of himself on Twitter. There a lot of dim bulbs out there who are blissfully unaware when making themselves a target for an epic ‘burn’ – the reply that shoots you down. Here’s a collection The ‘Pie came across during the week, and some of them are howlingly funny. Dare you not to laugh out loud.

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Bit of a bumper edition, and The ‘Pie expects a lot of sound and fury in the comments section over the coming week. Join in the thunder and lightning, comments run 24/7. And if you enjoyed these bits and pieces, and would like to support the on-going efforts here, a donation would be a great help, the donate button is below.