To End The Year, A Mini-Magpie With A Mini Mystery.

Has mega-fraudster Craig Gore skipped Australia? And if so, why hasn’t this been reported in the media – especially since he is supposed to have made a midnight flit the very day after a judge refused to allow him to leave?

In other matters, one has to admit that the Townsville Bulletin is consistent … it has ended the year as it started, continuing its weekly Olympic-standard shambles.

And Mongrel the Barrister has left us … lawyer Mark Donnelly, the man who inspired a much loved Magpie character has passed away.

…and our final visit to Trumpistan for 2018.

But first …

It’s hard to keep a good man down, and our fav ‘toonist Bentley is nothing if not a good man. Even in the holiday season, he casts his jaundiced eye over the news, and brings us a different and rib-tickling perspective. This week, he was much taken … as most of us were … with the drone drama at Gatwick Airport in the UK. A ‘professional’ drone was reported in the airport’s approach and departure air space, and thousands of travellers were stuck when the whole shebang was shut down for a couple of days while the wallopers tried to go hi-tech and trace the source of the bastardry. It’s not fully sorted yet, but Bentley thinks the drone may have already met its fate.

Why Aren’t All The Gore-y Details Available?

 Now to our mini-mystery.

On December 19, this report appeared in the Courier Mail.

Judge denies disgraced former rich-lister Craig Gore request to travel overseas

Vanessa Marsh, The Courier-Mail

December 20, 2018 2:21pm

• A DISGRACED former rich-lister accused of ripping off almost $800,000 from investors has broken down in court after a judge refused his request to leave the country to visit family.

Lawyers for alleged fraudster Craig Gore today launched an application in the Queensland District Court, seeking for the former businessman’s bail conditions to be altered to allow him to travel to Sweden to visit his wife and children.

But Judge Paul Smith denied the request, saying Gore faced a “long time in prison” if convicted and there was a “real risk” he would not return to Australia to face trial.

Gore is facing 12 charges of fraud over allegations he swindled about $800,000 from self-managed super fund investors in 2013-14.

He also faces three charges of managing companies while disqualified.

Now that seems pretty definitive and eminently sensible.

But The Magpie was informed two days later, by a regular contact and mate who has always been on the money in the past, that Gore went back to court the next day on another application, and had his passport returned so he could be with his family in Sweden at Christmas. He was to return in three months to face trial and possibility of a lengthy striped suntan. The ‘Pie’s contact says Gore was on a flight out of Brisbane that night at 11pm, accompanied by a lawyer (that was apparently part of the arrangement) who will return with certain paperwork. Gore will be expected to make his own way back to face his fate in March. Yeah, right.

Now all that is as it may be, BUT THIS SPECTACULAR REVERSAL OF A JUDGE’S IMPLACABLE DECISION HAS BEEN NEITHER EXPLAINED OR APPEARED IN THE MEDIA. Well, not that The Magpie can find, after days of searching to verify.

If it is true, there will be a hell of a lot of very pissed off people – Gore’s victims and the tireless investigators who nailed him – who know just how long are the odds that we will ever see this shyster again. Shades of Skase!!

Perhaps we will never know how this came about – if it did come about – because there will be a lofty judicial silence of unaccountability if he is a no show – but surely the second hearing was an open court? Hard to fathom why it wasn’t reported.

Mongrel The Barrister Is No More

The Magpie’s good mate Mark ‘Sludge’ Donnelly – the man who partially inspired the popular Magpie character Mongrel the Barrister, died in his family home in Cairns last weekend.

It is fair to say that Mark was my best mate in the halcyon days of Portraits Bar in the Exchange Hotel all through the Noughties, the years when I was reporting court matters for the Bulletin. We were part of a memorable and disparate group, the bar crowded with our marvellously mixed group every Thursday, Friday and sometimes Saturday nights. (The fondly remembered Portraits became Poseurs Bar in the newspaper column and then in this blog.)

Mark was universally known as Sludge, which he happily answered to, but never fully explained, even to me, its origins – apparently it had something to do with a memorable comment from a lecturer or senior teacher suggesting Mark’s behaviour at that time some comparable to something from the bottom of a pond.

Sludge was one of the wittiest people I’ve known, and his memory was nothing short of astounding, not just for quoting legal precedents but in all things, particularly pop music. He always commandeered the music machine at parties, and was a pretty good DJ. He also had an eye for a well turned ankle, and his way of getting ladies to talk about themselves endeared him to more than one.

Like many a member of the Portrait’s push, Mark liked a drink, and some believed he was a bit too enthusiastic in this direction. But I would say that rather than having a battle with the bottle, he just had frequent skirmishes with it, as we all did  – and any excess rarely affected his work at the other more sedate bar, where he often shone.

Mark left Townsville when his father died, to live with his mother in the family home in Cairns. He didn’t practice in Cairns, and went into virtual retirement, which was plagued by ill health for some time. He returned to Townsville annually for his birthday, but I lost touch in the past few years, for which I feel a bit miserable now. Sludge is now undoubtedly arguing the finer points about the Laws of Entry with St Peter … for that is certainly where this witty, soft-hearted old friend of mine now is –  because we all know God loves a larrikin.

Mark was 62.

They Really Don’t Understand Language at The Astonisher, Do They?

And they even get the wrong WORD for a headlines. Even when they’re trying to make a pun,  which kinda depends on the right word, yes?

But we got a headline quoting some bizoid saying ‘Townsville is bracing for a great 2018′.…

“Bracing for’? Ahem. You’ve managed to say EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what you meant. Here’s the dictionary definition of ‘bracing’.

verb [with object]  • prepare (someone or oneself) for something difficult or unpleasant: both stations are bracing themselves for joblosses | police are braced for a traffic nightmare.
So although this paper goes through life like a bouncing Hari Krishna who’s visited the medicine cabinet once too often, giving us totally unquestioning, unexamined glop about our economy (usually from someone with a vested interest), it seem to have inadvertently hit on the truth here.

However, the most tedious aspect of the paper of late is the dreary attempts at humour in headlines, particularly about crime, a subject no one in Townsville with the exception of you folks in Flinders Street, finds the least bit funny. AND EVEN THEN, LANGUAGE FAILS YOU – let alone a sharp sense of humour. Take this major front page fail on Thursday.

Swindler?

My dear headline writer, stay with me on this and read slowly, feel free to move your lips as you must. Now let’s see, a swindler is someone who fiddles some unsuspecting victim out of something. That person would be called a fiddler, and if hidden in a ceiling, could be described as  – ta da – a Fiddler In The Roof. You see, this would then coincide with the hit musical of the same name – oh, how we would have all fallen about, clutching our sides in mirth, and holding your superior wit in such esteem!!!

But swindler? Now we’ve just got a headache from smacking our foreheads yet again.

And this one in simply NOT TRUE. This online …

The actual number of people who said (or may have said, who knows, it’s probably a fiddled fantasy anyway) was 55% of the 700 or so people who responded to a totally uncontrolled survey. If there area 220,000 potential readers (ha! you wish) in the circulation area, the percentage is not even .5 of one percent. But we all know that the on-line edition is sloppy, so the paper itself will temper the outlandish claims, won’t it?  Errr … no.

This is simply lying, and treating people like morons. And still they wonder …

But barely have we swallowed our anger before we start scratching our heads over weird … genuinely weird … stories like this, which would suggest that English isn’t TEL boss Patricia O’Callaghan’s first language, or she was suffering mild sunstroke when she was penned the media release from which the story was transcribed.

This story is selective twaddle certainly straight off an unedited media release from the Dudley Do Nothings, meaningless twaddle in which Ms O’Callaghan specialises. It has often been said of her that she has the gift of the gab, and ain’t that the truth, just about all of what she has to say, in The ‘Pie’s experience, is just that … meaningless gabble that sounds good until it is more thoughtfully examined. Like this:

The Museum of Underwater Art, located within the heart of The Great Barrier Reef, is a proposal based on the works of international sculpture and underwater artist Jason deCaires Taylor.

What’s that bit – ‘…located in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef’?’  Has there been a Krakatoa-like geographic shift we haven’t noticed? The Underwater Museum, one of several planned along the coast, will be, at last report, just of Maggy Island, the GBR is a at least an hour or more away by fast cat . But in it goes to the story, with a newbie cub reporter just churning out this PR bumf. But wait, there’s more. We then get this prize piece of meaningless gabble from the top executive charged with attracting and promoting tourism to Townsville:

“It’s a project that is going to enhance the Great Barrier Reef experience and also educate visitors on how we manage and live with the reef everyday” Ms O’Callaghan said.” 

That is absolute poppycock that is totally meaningless. And ‘We?’ Bloody ‘WE?’  FFS, girl, get a bloody grip.

Insulting, uppity tripe from Ms O’Callaghan and lazy, presumably unsupervised ‘reporting’ (read: select all, copy and paste) by a very uncurious junior ‘reporter’ (read: stenographer). Really, a monkey using scrabble board would’ve made more sense.

The clusterfuck continues – no wonder we’re so deep in the shit.

Other matters

As if golf didn’t already have enough hazards.

 

Words of Wisdom From Two Funny Men

The cleverest quote of the week comes from the Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle in the Guardian. But first, his preamble touched a chord for The Magpie, who can vouch for it when Mr Boyle writes:

The plight of the satirist, such as it is, is a compulsion to look at the grimmest, most important thing they can think of, and then for reasons that probably wouldn’t survive a really good therapist, try to make it funny. To try to address the iniquities of their society, the satirist must manufacture some hope that what they’re doing might make a difference, then type it all up and send it off somewhere before they remember that it never does. Looking back over the events of this year is a bit like holding a doll for a therapist and pointing to where the bad man hurt you.

Mr Boyle’s point is a universal one, which can be shared by Townsvilleans looking back over the past shambolic year. But his prize quote is so subtle, that you may have to think about for a while … The ‘Pie roared after a few seconds.

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabia is another very difficult subject to find the lighter side of, unless someone in the Ecuadorean embassy has clipped the story out and stuck it to the fridge.

(Sigh) Dear Mystified of Mysterton, it means that the Ecuadoreans might be giving their Wikileaks guest Julian Assange a hint.

The other funnyman worth a quote is the inimitable Dave Barry , the American columnist who talks about Florida the way The Magpie talks about Townsville – only he is far funnier, proof being that The Magpie pinches more of his lines (many)  than he does of The Magpie’s (none). This was his challenge to a graduating class, but it can just as well apply to the year 2019.

How are you, Class, going to respond when the Clock-Radio of Challenge emits the Irritating Buzz of Opportunity? Are you going to roll over and hit the Snooze Button of Complacency? Or are you going to wake up and, after performing the Bodily Functions of Preparedness, boldly grasp the Toothbrush of Tomorrow?

And no matter what you do in the coming year, make sure you’re always politically correct, so no snowflakes will melt before your harsh words.

And So To This Week In Trumpistan

First, compare Trump as Commander In Chief of real US soldiers, on his surprise visit to Iraq …

…with this.

And now to our final gallery of the year about the man Frankie Boyle described as ‘this troll-doll King Lear, who looks like something you’d pick off a baking tray after cooking pizza above it.’

And Finally … How The Hell …?

The ‘Pie has been occasionally upbraided for the use of naughty words in this blog … well, one word in particular. He is aware that it can be confronting, but it is the other ‘F’ word – Frustration – that compels him to sometimes resort to other for emphasis. Anyway, so what, if it’s good enough for Sesame Street, it’s good enough for The ‘Pie.

……………………..

So that was the year that was, and what a rip-snorter we have coming up. Turns out this edition wasn’t so mini after all. Comments run throughout the holiday break 24/7, so you don’t have to wait to have your say. And the New Year will look even rosier for the old bird if you think the Nest is worth a small donation to keep it neat and tidy. The how to donate button is below. HAPPY NEW YEAR, Y’ALL.