Townsville’s on a Bali Hai right now – can it last? And the intriguing Case of the Missing $200,000.

The uncritical hyper-spruiking of direct flights to Bali ignores the very real possibility that all this could end in tears – yet again. And all because of over-hyped expectations and self-interested one-sided self-promotion. Could be a few Steggles Egg On Face Awards coming up, if the punters decide Phuket.

The ‘Pie politely inquires into a little escapade that has cost the local economy 15 jobs … did Queensland Airports go into the RSPCA business and sell Rex Airlines a pup named Aviex?

And bad pun of the week goes The Magpie himself, when he tells you Bentley’s spirits are flagging and he’s feeling a bit sheepish. Just how awful the pun is you will discover below.

They Dubbed Him Chris But Now He’s Shawn

Light-hearted stories involving Canberra and sheep are usually about the docile ‘sheeple’ of the electorate being fleeced by pollies, and don’t feature the actual animal. That wasn’t the case this week, when a sheep named Chris turned up near the national capital sporting an impressive woolen burka he grew while lost in the wild.

Being a metro-sexual style-maven, Chris went straight to the hairdressers, and was soon his old self, plus a scratch or two.

His fleece weighed in at an impressive 40+kgs, and sparked hundred quips about ‘wool’, ‘eyes’ and the word ‘ewe’. (Sigh). But Bentley thinks Chris went to the wrong barber.

Meanwhile, Elsewhere In Canberra

The political yarn du jour was the growing storm over the disgraceful kick in the bollocks to Australian workers in the new free trade deal with China. There will be no traditional test that Aussies could fill the jobs on any Chinese project costing more than $20million, and there will be no checks on the competency or – despite a lot of lying – the pay rates for these modern-day ‘coolies’ imported as – in a term no one will openly say – cheap labor. Gina Rinehart must be thinking of taking out Chinese citizenship.

Amidst all this, the week featured Australian Flag Day. Bentley is again at his best and says it all in one telling stiletto of a ‘toon, featuring the country’s most notorious Speedophile.

Here In the ‘Ville, The Foaming Lunacy of the Verbal Double-Dealing Reached Fever Pitch

Like most things Astonisher, the one-sided hawking of the spurious benefits of direct flights to Bali was laughable if it wasn’t so pathetically transparent.

Instead of a sober and cautious optimism of a good news story, the Astonisher went into its familar puppy-dog-wetting-itself-with-excitement mode, with all and any claims that sounded you beaut printed without any critical examination or question. (10,000 seats already sold? Really?)

Nothing really new there, with The ‘Pie simply harking back to his June 6 blog, where he quoted Hong Kong-Australian businessman and JCU lecturer Warwick Powell on the issue.

‘Whatever happens with the Bali runs, and I suspect they will result in net losses in tourism expenditure to the NQ region, they should be treated as a regional “loss leader”. A mass exodus of North Queenslanders to Bali via Townsville will see tourism expenditure head in one direction mainly; the return flights will be dominated by hung-over Australians full of memories and perhaps regrets. It’s doubtful that there will be a compensating volume of Indonesian tourists coming into NQ to make-up for the Ozzie $’s that will flow the other way.

Then, you may recall, Mr Powell turns his attention specifically to Townsville Enterprise’s activity that masquerades as performance on tourism.

The City’s peak tourism promotion body – Townsville Enterprise – recently signed off on its Tourism Destination Strategy. China and Japan both get a mention. Good, right? Not really. They each only get a single mention in the entire strategy.

The fact is, the so-called Strategy has totally missed the mark on the international dimension of growing regional tourism. Totally.

The excuse? No direct international flights. That’s what the TEL CEO said in December 2014. I guess back then they didn’t know the Commonwealth was going to help re-open the local airport to direct international flights. After all, the TEL Chairman is the Airport Supremo, (Kevin Gill) and the tourism strategy was crafted after extensive “engagement” with government agencies … well, I guess it’s a case of the left hand not knowing what the right one was doing; or was it a case of effective Chinese Walls?

Either way, the excuse doesn’t wash

That by far is the politest way of suggesting that Kevin Gill is either an ill-informed dill, or was – ahem – economical with the truth. He’s in a tricky position as chair of the Dudley Do Nothings down at Wishing Well House, but one can almost smell the self-interest.

But for now, we’ll have to hum along to the strains of the Townsville Troubadors – Gill, O’Callghan , Hill, Heywood and Jones – crooning Bali Hai. That is, until the chickens coming home to roost from Bali are cleared to land on runway 1.

Two Questions Of The Week:

#1

We remain with Mr Gill here, and the remarkable timing of his (well, Queensland Airports) sale of its maintenance outfit Aviex to Rex Regional Airlines. Just a few short weeks after the sale in July, the business suddenly becomes unviable and 15 people were out of work when Virgin announces it’s taking its maintenance business down to Brisbane.

Certainly it was excellent timing – well, of course, just pure luck, one supposes – by Mr Gill to unload Aviex, and no doubt he was just as flabbergasted ‘Gosh I had no idea, fellas, Virgin never mentioned it, fellas, fair dinkum’ as were the unlucky Rex Airlines with the closure.

It also avoids a bad look for his other job, chairman of Townsville Enterprise, incessantly and inanely talking up all sorts of self-interested fairyfloss about future jobs and blue-sky projects his rate-payer funded outfit warble on about. Not that Rex, who depend on good relations with the Queensland Airports monopoly in the region to operate smoothly, are likely to say anything.

Maybe it will be a good tax right off, who knows.

So, the question: Just who knew what and when?

And #2:

This involves an on-going Townsville court case, where two parties are in a stoush about a restaurant lease. The details of the he said-she said variety don’t bear repeating here (The Astonisher’s Victoria Nugent has done a good reporting job on the case) but there is one question that has everyone hanging out for an answer. It is claimed that $200,000 – apparently in CASH – changed hands, but the plaintiff claims the accompanying deal wasn’t honoured. And at this stage, it seems there were no witnesses to the handover, and no paper trail of proof has been offered.

$200,000?!? In cash? C’mon pull the other leg, it yodels, as Nana used to say.

The question: No matter what the outcome of the case, if no further explanation is made about the 200K, how long will it be before the ATO comes knocking on the door of both parties?

And an ancillary question: Will the legal profession follow up on Judge John Baulch’s bollocking from the bench directed at the Brad Robins Legal Centre for representing both sides during contract and settlement negotiations, which The ‘Pie is told is a big enough legal no-no to get a arm-breaking wrist slap?

Someone’s Being A Smartarse

The Astonisher is back on the stand-alone stadium bandwagon again, with all sorts of twisted drivel aimed at setting up the Big Lie. All very tedious but one a couple of things caught The Magpie eye.

This from the blog comments during the week.

• Clr Tony Parsons 

  September 3, 2015 at 11:54 am  (Edit)

  What we have stated as far as council is concerned is that the preferred location for the Stadium and Entertainment Centre is on the Devine land. Council supports an integrated facility – not a stand alone stadium. The unanimous decision was made in the best interests of Townsville ratepayers.

Sometimes it isn’t the headline that is wrong , more the reader’s first impression.

When The ‘Pie saw this in the Industry Advocate newspaper …

… he thought his old chum and publisher/editor Rob Dark had gone over to – shall we say – the darker side. The old bird shot the article off to another old chum, Colin Edwards (who coyly calls himself The Dildo Man) at Sweethearts Adult Shop, thinking it might be of technical interest. Alas, a later more thorough reading showed The Magpie to be more a magpie goose.

But then again, there may be something in it for you, Colin, like the finer techniques of Shaft Alignment and Reliability Improvement. And maybe you could have a cosy chat with lecturer Clyde The Vibe Volpe to swap notes, because we all know you also have long years of experience translating complex (mental) concepts into practical (and vibrating) applications.

Rupert Gets The Last Laugh This Time

Caption of the week goes to the on-line Sydney Morning Herald, which had the great misfortune to make the blooper in a caption involving arch-enemy Rupert Murdoch.

Just in case you can’t see it, great is ‘gtreAt’.

The ‘Pie, – remembering the blood and thunder at the Townsville Bulletin when someone spelt Rupe’s mother’s name Elizabeth (it’s an ‘s’, not ‘z’) – asked the ‘gtreAt’ man what he would’ve done had the cock-up happened in a News Corpse publication. He replied:

Incidentally, the thrust of the Murdoch message was an election now but still vote for Wingnut. It is heart-warming to realize how our most influential publisher so accurately monitors the mood of the electorate from his 35^th floor NY penthouse (or whatever).

Brut Thets Chiken Fead Next To Bookdom’s Best Typos

The funniest typos have two major elements – the best are ribald and truly offensive to some; and they also go against the general tone and mood of what was intended.

Perhaps the best (or worst) typo ever popped up a couple of years ago.

Romance writer Susan Andersen wasn’t smiling – more panicking – when checking through the ebook edition of her latest bodice-ripper ‘Baby, I’m Yours’ and found the following on page 293: ‘(Bounty hunter) Sam McKade stiffened for a moment, but then she felt his muscles loosen as he shitted on the ground’.

Perhaps appreciated by an niche market of those indulging in exotic erotic proclivities, but an appalled Ms Andersen insisted she’d written ‘shifted’.

Indeed, it’s the scatological more than the sexual that produces the greatest laugh out loud responses.

Well, that’s how The ‘Pie kept warm when he was a toddler – worked a treat.

For The ‘Pie, it doesn’t quite top the London Times headlining a report on Queen Victoria’s visit to the new Menai Bridge over the Thames: THE QUEEN HERSELF PISSED GRACIOUSLY OVER THE MAGNIFICENT EDIFICE’.

An activity much of the lordly aristocracy still indulges, one hears.

Writer Drummond Moir, author of ‘Just My Typo – from ‘Sinning With The Choir’ to ‘the Untied States’ (Three Rivers Press) has unearthed hundreds of other mishaps. He notes that the Washington Post was credited with  one of the most famous typo ever when the paper intended to report that President Wilson had been ‘entertaining’ his future wife, Mrs. Galt, but instead wrote that he had been ‘entering’ her. In that era, one assumes it was a mistake, but nowadays … you there, Bill?

But Moir’s favorite is this regrettable effort from an unnamed newspaper.

Other examples The ‘Pie has found include not so much typos as a monumental unawareness of multiple meanings.

Even academia have their stumbles when the typing finger fumbles … a whole print run of an introductory booklet for students at a Texas Uni had to be pulped. The goof was amplified by the same cover carried the slogan ‘Unlimited Possibilites’.

Seems they had the wrong president … now if it had been the Clinton School, that would have a hint of accuracy.

Then there’s the double whammy, which had indeed trapped The ’Pie once or twice. When you take to the bully pulpit to harangue the wrong doers, you’d better get it right yourself. Fox Nation didn’t.

And corrections are a bear trap for the inattentive. A NZ paper once carried the correction and apology ‘Yesterday, we described William Burton as a defective with the police force. He is, of course, a detective with the police farce.’

But The ‘Pie’s favourite because of the sheer misinterpretation of class language appeared in a small county paper in England in the 1930s. ‘Clarification: In the report on the marriage of William and Sofia Wainwright, we reported that the happy couple would living with the bride’s father. They will in fact be living at the Old Manse.’

And The Fnial Wrod on TrypOs

It would be this.

And Finally, One Not For The Easily Offended.

mm