Who’s a pretty boy then?

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Welcome to the spruced up Magpie’s nest, it makes the old bird feel like an eye-catching parakeet rather than his traditional two-tone self.  But do not labor under the misapprehension that this will lead to soaring wit, wise analysis and masterful insights … no, it’ll still be the same old load oif great steaming cobblers, full  of innuendo, half truths, rumours, slanderous opinion, mockery and low grade japery.  So let‘s get to it.

First up, here are the rules of language The Pie shall be following.

Next matter: fresh from the Uh-Oh File. Although The Pie prefers to avoid peek-a-boo journalism, he will on this occasion just state the following conundrum. Which Townsville City councilor appears to be running very close to the wind  regarding outright conflict of interest provisions? The ‘Pie understands from several sources that the matter involves a block of land owned within the councillor’s family, and the push for council to provide ‘access infrastructure’, that’s the $10 way of what you and The Pie call ‘a road’. No names no pack drill at this stage, but given The ‘Pie’s generous attention he regularly affords his favourite goof, Messagebank Walker, he will categorically say it ain’t him. Probably not smart enough to be crooked anyway. Watching this one closely.

Now moving on to a bloke who would be a councilor if he could, but may not meet requisite standards.

You’ll remember Daniel Whipps, the co-founder of the Townsville Ratbags Association aka Ratepayers Ass. He was due in court yesterday (Friday, Feb 28) to answer a charge of making threatening phone calls.   As it is in the judicial world, the matter was further adjourned to Thursday May 15, but The ‘Pie has heard that the allegations against Mr Whipps are not trivial given the circumstances under which they were said to be made.

It is alleged that our boy has a very short fuse, which, when it blows, shuts down the brain and creates a bluster storm of a very unpleasant nature involving threats to deal out what he sees as summary justice.

And at last report Mr Whipps is obviously one of those not privy to the old legal axiom ‘a person who represents themselves in court has a fool for a client’.

Self-representation is always good for a laugh in the public gallery but magistrates take a somewhat dimmish view with those who haven’t a clue about procedural matters and evidence, which is so often the case.   Mr Whipps might be wise to reconsider this course, but then, that statement answers itself really, doesn’t it?

There’s another murky matter floating around down on the Gold Coast, which involves a couple of folks well known in Townsville. It really comes under the heading of The Thigh Bone Is Connected To …Dept of. Joining the dots is more than of passing interest.

Workplace bully and greyhound fancier Peter Typo Gleeson is currently presiding over the demise of The Sunday Mail, but that hasn’t stopped him using it as a bully pulpit to push his mates’ agendas.

Here’s part of what he had to say in an editorial a couple of weeks ago.

Sorry, not too clear – click on it to enlarge it.

BUT ‘Tree hugging greenies’?  ‘Political treachery’? ‘Blackmail’? Apparently Typo believes the News Corp Code of Conduct about balance, fairness, truth (and civility) doesn’t extend to his editorials. And Pete, you were never too hot on the legal niceties.  Remember when The Pie stopped you just in time from using a headline “Murderer Walks Free’ on the story of a man acquitted of murder ? That saved you a mill or so.

Well, here you are now accusing opponents of Mayor Tom Tate of a criminal offence, that of blackmail.

Listen, me dear old dolt, any group threatening to vote a certain way isn’t blackmail, it’s called democracy. Perhaps it’s political horse trading, but it’s been legal since Caesar invented his salad. It’s the stock standard way any lobby group legitimately works. It’s bloody legal! So surely the editor of the state’s only high-circulating Sunday paper ‘threatening’ the Newman Government to go a certain way for your mates interests (they being inter alia GC Mayor Tom Tate and his political Svengali, ex-News Ltd heavy and Typo’s old boss Bob Gordon) or cop a pasting in the paper affecting the already shaky polls, is closer to blackmail than anything ever done by those ‘tree huggers’ you sneer about.

And by the way – that bit about The Spit being ‘home to vagrants and political predators’.   The police have emphatically and publicly denied those claims more than once. Are you calling the cops liars, too?

Typo famously banned Mayor Tom Tate from the pages of the GC Bulletin a year or so ago, because Tate was heard telling a group of people that ‘I don’t read that fu#king rag’, and if it’s one thing Typo hates it’s the truth.

But one Bob Gordon then oozed his way into the dispute (he is Tate’s spin meister/advisor, having retired from the GC Bulletin), organized a bit of a love-in, and chucked in a China junket for noted arse-kissing Bulletin reporter Shannon Willoughby (known as Shallow Wannabee).   So the push is on for the environmentally questionable cruise terminal and nearby casino, where developer Tate has his fingers in some developmental pies (no relations … whew!).

But what happened this week is more than a bit interesting.   The Pie received this message from his Deep Throat on the Coast.

‘Steve Gration the president of Save Our Spit busted Gleeson’s wife checking out his profile on LinkedIn (it tells you whose been perving on you).   Perhaps she got herself a gig on the Gold Coast cruise terminal proposal and is eyeing up the enemy.’

Guess who Typo’s missus works for? Emanate Legal, which The Pie understands is still owned by – ta da –

our old mate Big Bazza Taylor, Typo’s bestie.  Although the unconfirmed word around Townsville legal circles is that Bazza is about to, or already has, unloaded his Emanate practice here, possibly to Shine Legal, he it’s believed he has retained his interest on the Gold Coast.

Your multi-million dollar pad at Noosa looking more and more attractive, is it, mate?   The ‘Pie is watching developments.

The Pie promised you another reporter report card, so this week, he rates the fragrant and very agreeable Shari ‘Shazza’ Tagliabue.

It is a timely examination, what with the advent of that strange idea of the Behind the Bully blog, which has popped up and down for the past few weeks. Shazza just might be the person for some timely advice in the matter.

Shazza came to the Astonisher as the editor’s secretary when Mick Carroll was the boss. She’d always had an itch to write, prompted by big sister and then senior Bully journo Christy Vena, so started an internal blog. It was a big hit with the staff, being witty, funny and informative. ‘Hilarious’ one old stager described it … but being something to do with the Astonisher, The ‘Pie would add ‘intentionally’.

So good was it that Shazza got a gig as a journo. She was old enough, smart enough and keen enough to know many of the media ropes anyway, and promptly proved herself with restaurant reviews that featured honest, clever but tempered assessments and some great turns of phrase. She is now in charge of Saturday’s Eye insert, and she and ever-reliable Janine Lucas turn out a very classy and readable product.   Shari continues to write a weekly column, and given that she has a few sea miles under her callipyginous keel, she has fashioned a reliably amusing and sardonic style of her own (unlike some of her depressingly self-obsessed younger colleagues).

So the report card was going to be an A+, especially for ambition and ability, but there is just a small matter that The Pie noticed last year.

In the run-up to the federal election, when News Ltd’s red-hot charge against Labor was being run out of Sydney and being led by the Telegraph, two or three detailed, well researched, and politically and financially focused columns appeared under Shari’s byline.   The writing was so analytical, informed and such a startling departure from our gal’s normal style and ambit, The Pie immediately raised an eyebrow. He put it to a couple of other folks who follow these things, and the unanimous consensus was that these columns were imported from the south. We concluded that it was a fair bet that Shari was told to insert a local reference or two to Townsville or North Queensland to make it seem local, and go with the rest untouched. The Pie makes no inference of plagiarism or that Shari nicked the stuff from unauthorised sources.

Now this may seem like a grave injustice and a mighty slur if it is not true.  But if untrue and you authored them yourself,  well Shazza, you’re wasting your time dicking around with fashion, TV and the other fripperies of life that make up your professional world. Those columns were national standard … so the old bird is either greatly complimenting you or grossly insulting you.   Since folk down at The Astonisher are used to the latter, The Pie will stay true to his established form and give you an A -minus, just on suspicion.

You’ll recall last week, The Pie berated The Astonisher for breaking their own rules about photo shopping with a hokeyed-up shot of Corby in Bali.   But Photoshop isn’t all cloak and dagger … have a look at this effort from Sydney’s Terrorgraph,  during the week.

Bill Shorten and the rebarbative Stephen ‘Cover-up’ Conroy as Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels  in the 1994 comedy Dumb and Dumber.

Hmm, political comment with humour ?? – The Pie must try that some time.

Hey, let’s have a go now, starting with that great goof, Ewen Dumbo Jumbo Jones.

His sterling effort in arse-kissing Prime Minister Rabbit for the push to drop a federally-funded food rating website results in the funny and confused but ultimately socially damaging interview with ABC brekky bloke Michael Clarke.

The Pie posted this comment that day.

So now it’s Jumbo Dumbo the Dietician – and a dangerously stupid one at that.

 Ewen Jones, in a jumbled, truly confused ramble on ABC local radio this morning, made a complete ass of himself when talking about the need to drop the food rating website run by the Feds.



The main blunder in his muddled reasoning and ramble was that ‘NO ONE IN AUSTRALIA IS FAT BY CHOICE’. Err, mate, with the exception of a very small genetic minority of the morbidly obese, EVERYONE who is overweight CHOOSES to be fat. They so choose through … wait for it, Dumbo, stay with The Pie here … the CHOICES they make about food types and amounts. You’re thoughtless grandstanding attempt at populism offers every overweight person the excuse that they didn’t ‘choose’ to be fat (your term throughout the interview) and they are actually victims.



Then there was the party political shot about the need to cut spending ‘cos those nasty Labor people left such a mess. Maybe they did, but chucking out any program that allows everybody to have information about what they are putting into their bodies makes a damn sight more sense than … ummm, let say, PM Rabbit’s ruinously unaffordable Paid Parental Leave rort.

And you had the colossal hide to sanctimoniously bray ‘(At) what point does the government get out of your life – out of your house?’ You could bring that to the party room if you some guts other than that full-blown spinnaker under your chins. And because you’re not just fat but also a prize fathead, you have developed a heart condition … it’s called no ticker.

Saying that all this is OK because you yourself are a fat man (your description) is just plain silly, and cracks about The Church of the Fatter Day Saints having communion in the form of a buffet, doesn’t add any gravitas to a subject that sorely needs it.

You giving social and dietary advice to the electorate at large is like getting marriage counseling from Kim Kardashian.      

Other matters encountered during the week.

The short list for the annual annual Diagram Awards for the oddest book titles for 2013 have been released. This is a perennial favorite of The Pie. Created in 1978, the prize was first awarded to Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, and since then has been given to titles including Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop, Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality, Managing a Dental Practice The Genghis Khan Way, and Greek Rural Postmen and their Cancellation Numbers .

But a couple of the list toppers this year require a little disambiguation, as Wikipedia is fond of saying. (These are all real titles.)

The Pie suspects poor phrasing is behind How To Poo On A Date.  A wild guess would suggest what is actually meant is ‘whilst’ on a date. Otherwise, it is a book that would apparently appeal only to a niche market  of enthusiasts of exotic recreational activities. (Which prompts a small digression about a recent headline reported on the E Entertainment website: ‘  “Cameron Diaz Encourages Women to Keep Their Pubic Hair in Her New Book.”  Reckon plenty of blokes would be happy to oblige as well. End of disgusting digression.)

Next on the Diagram shortlist is the punning title Origin of Feces a serious tome about the importance of poo in our history. The ever-charming wit of the military sums it up with the dictum  ‘If you don’t eat, you don’t sh#t, and if you don’t si#t, you die’. The author no doubt studies coprolites, which by coincidence is exactly what the Magpie so often does in this blog – coprolites are fossilized turds.

But the book which The Magpie will be plugging for is this one.

Pie-ography: Where Pie Meets Biography. It is reviewed as ‘women tell their life stories through the traditional narrative technique of pie-making’. Yeah, whatever, but suffice to say, it’s been years since any sheila tried to make The Pie, with the result that he is becoming a somewhat crusty old bastard.

But for all the quirky sides of publishing, it’s a wonderful literary world, full of wisdom and foresight.

So enough now, for, to paraphrase ol’ Alexander Pope, ‘ hope springs eternal in the Magpie’s breast’, so it away to Poseurs’ Bar with Great Expectations, seeking a pie-maker for what Mongrel the Barrister crudely terms The Sale of Two Titties.  But the Pie suspects the night will again (sigh) end in Bleak House.