Naming rights and wrongs, cops cop out again, and - shock, horror - The Magpie gives The Mullet his full support!

There may be a cosmic force out there dedicated to our destiny, but this week, The Magpie is tempted to believe more in a comic farce dedicated to giving us the nervous giggles.

It is often cheap sport to make fun of accents, but a special nod must be given to that oily crook Sepp Blatter, the FIFA chief cheat, trained in the three wise monkeys school of excuses. On telly this week, he said he hadn't investigated corruption allegations because 'it wasn't in my moneyfesto'. He might have meant manifesto, but his prounounciation sounded far more interesting. And accurate.

This reminds The Magpie of the widow of Charles de Gaulle, when asked what she now wanted from life, replied 'A penis', which was a bit too forthright even for a French woman. It proved to be a monumental 'accent accident' - she meant ' 'appiness'.

For another example of comic over cosmic, there is that little storm-in-a-Y-front yarn from the US, where a Congressman and front-runner to be the next mayor of New York has done a public mea culpa. This star-spangled bozo has admitted he's been a naughty boy behaving badly on Facebook and elsewhere, sending supposedly raunchy pix of himself to women he met on the internet.

Among his offerings is a pic of his 'bulging' Reg Grundies - he was in them of course, although we only have his word for that. So what, you both cry. Read on.

All in all, while inappropriate, it was pretty tame stuff by today's standards of narcissistic exhibitionism and techno preenin.

But because of the identity of this particular tosser, it has generated a lot of the usual sanctimonious huff'n'puff.  Big deal, but in a classic example of life imitating art, this bloke's name is Anthony D Weiner. 

Which is pronounced exactly the same as wiener

Just in case, either of you readers haven't been informed by American Kultural Imprerialism on TV and the movies, 'wiener' - which is actually a frankfurt - is also a fairly prim term for penis. So wiener is as Weiner does, one a hot dog to be gobbled, the other a dirty dog to be ... err ...  ogled. And, in this case, nobbled.

This of course from the country which has given us Olympic swimmer Misty Hyman - comedian Adam Hills advised that anyone with that surname shouldn't name their kids with adjectives and wondered if she had a brother Rusty - (The `Pie opines that if Ms Hyman was ugly - which she is certainly isn't - she might have been called Dusty and the old bird is surprised she doesn't have a sister Ophelia). Then there's footballer Dick Butkus - and race car driver Dick Trickle.  (If sadistic parents and loopy names are your go, check out  20 of the worst monikers here). The Magpie's favourite is Victorian couple named Peacock, who christened their son Drew.

Of course, back in our neck of the woods, we have a public figure whose name invokes a comic reflex ranging from stunned disbelief to a quiet chuckle to thigh-slapping hilarity.

That name is, of course, Katter.  

One can but agree that Bob's heart has always been in the right place. The worry is with that other vital organ just above it. Put as politely and as subtley as possible, The Magpie sees no reason to believe other than that Robert Carl Katter is as crazy as a soup sandwich.

Let's face it, we electors don't mind making a maverick loon one of the most popular politicians in the country, but he's only there for his comic value - 'there are no poofters in North Queensland' - and his smack-down triumphs over the English language. Although sometimes it's hard to tell if it is English he is gushing and gurgling and squeaking at a rate of knots.

An honest, hardworking grassroots man for sure, helping scores of constituents every week, and rightly loved - and re-elected - for it. Bob isn't so much up himself as beside himself, then sudddenly behind himself, then above, then below, over there, back here, on your shoulder and then peeping out from behind that half-formed idea over there. 

So we should be very wary (read: scared s..tless) of letting him operate heavy machinery in the political engine room.

He says his heading down the party path with Katter's Australian Party, because, by his own admission, he has achieved bugger all as an indepedent over the past nine years. Bob believes that for all his efforts to influence policy 'I might as well have been talking to a telephone pole'.

If that chat was a debate, the the smart money would be on the telephone pole.

Yet this thought-disordered but lovable mutt is advocating a 'party of like-minded independents' , all of whom can make independent conscience votes on policy matters.

Huh? Even Alice would have blinked twice at that one. That is the exact equivalent of creating an Individualist Organisation for people who don't like joining organsations.

And it is Bob's policies that prove that while populist talk is cheap, implementing many of those policies will face an unavoidable Catch 22. Just like our PM, who wants us to embrace 'carbon rapture' without any details of how it will affect - read 'screw over' - our daily lives, Bob wants to whip us into a lather of knocked-kneed, pants-wetting anticipation of his Katternomics.

Cheaper petrol? No explanation of how this will come about, but logic (look it up, Bob, look it up) dictates that cheaper petrol will hurt somewhere and someone elsewhere in the economy.

Increased customs duty on imports, to protect local manufacturers? But the majority of local manufacturers depend on exports, and whacking up duties will inevitably attract similiar retaliation from other countries, damaging the very Australians he is so wrong-headly trying to protect.

But the best of these electoral lollies at the schoolyard gate is limiting Woolies and Coles each to the strangely precise 22 and half percent of the national supermarket business. Short of turning on its head the free-market concept of the Australian economy and some necessary heavy fiddling with company law, this is A-grade cloud cuckooland stuff more suited to Big Sister ALP social engineering.

But all this blather seems to be contagious, and Bob has rattled Brisbane's blustering Fighting Bantam sufficently for Campbell Newman himself to adopt the Katter Chatter style that earns him the contradiction of the week. This from an AAP report:

'But Mr Newman would not be drawn on whether Mr Katter would erode his vote.

"I'll leave that to the political commentators," he told reporters today.

"People need to understand that if they dabble with independents or minor parties they'll see (Premier) Anna Bligh get back in potentially.' 

Which in fact could have been rephrased 'Yes, I do believe Mr Katter could well erode the LNP vote'.

And so on, this is going to be a bumpy ride.

A couple of other points, and here The `Pie apologises for stating the bleeding obvious.

Not one among this confetti of the Mad Katter's policies has anything to do with state issues, they would all be decided at federal level, yet Bob and his band of brothers is - he says - about to chuck a spanner in Queensland works at the next election. Any hint of what's on offer, Bob? Anna Bligh will be puckering up with smooches of gratitude next time she sees you.

On the national scene, Bob will soon learn that outside North Queensland, voter fondness for his odd ways is finite, and few below Coolangatta will vote for a bloke they regard as a buffoon from the Queensland boondocks. Katter's Australian Party will rapidly follow in the tracks of the risible Jo For Canberra push, and be relegated to a footnoted aberration in Aussie political history, along with One Nation, Cheryl The Feral Curnow and the Douglas Credit advocates in the 1930s, who wanted to eliminate money in favour of bartering.

The sad thing is that all this may lead to oblivion for Bob personally, and that is bad news for scribblers like The Magpie.

We need people like Bob around for light relief and levity. Notice how dull these weekly words have been since Capt Snooze made an honest man of himself and retired, and since the electors did the same favour for His Radiance?

So - don't rub your eyes in disbelief - The `Pie will say this once, and once only: 

God bless Jenny The Moaning Mullet Hill and keep her safe in office for a long time yet! 

There, it's been said.


If The `Pie lost The Mullet, he might just have to close up shop.


So long may she remain the sweet, melodious, consensus-seeking, honey-dripping boon to our public life ...  and therefore remain a continuing Magpie morsel.

Speaking of wasting taxpayer's money, showground boss Chris Biffo Condon reckons the Queensland Police Service could go broke if they keep up what he believes is a vendetta against him.

The way Biffo tells it to The Magpie, in October last year, the traffic wallopers pulled him over in his truck on the Malborough stretch of the Bruce pothole north of Rocky. They said he was doing 110 in a 100 zone. Biffo, being the shy retiring type he is, gave them a one-word bovine assessment of their claim, and then pointed out that the truck was fitted with a speed limiter of 100k/ph. Biffo tells The `Pie that the officers also failed to give a sensible answer when he asked them how fast they reckoned another car was doing when it  passed them - and his truck - while the cops were tailgating him.

He was booked anyway.

There followed a lot of to-ing and fro-ing over the next few months, but the coppers stuck to their guns.

Not one to be bluffed, Biffo and his counsel flew to Rocky on April 3 but at the courtroom door, the police prosecutor told him he would drop the charges if Biffo copped the costs.  The linguistically ever-economical Biffo this time used just two words in reply. The impeccable logic here is that the charges are either right and can be proved, or can't and are ergo wrong. So why should the financial burden fall on the falsely accused?

But the police NETO'd - No Evidence To Offer - the charges anyway, and the beak awarded Biffo a whopping but deserved $3300 in costs (air fares, travel and legal foghorn). And just yesterday, a newly minted brand spanking new Government cheque for said amount landed on Biffo's desk, thank you very much.

If there is, as Biffo believes, a 'Get Chris Condon' element in the QPS, it is also proving to be a burden on the taxpayer.

The $3300 court loss can be added to the thousands in lost costs of the previous eight times that laissez faire police work has resulted in charges that have most embarrassingly failed to nail their boy. (Biffo believes he could have been targetted in this latest episode when the traffic cops did a registration check on the truck before pulling him over).

Surely that sort of record just might prompt some of the shiny bums in Brisbane to have a look at all this. The bottom line is that if Biffo breaks the law, by all means throw the book at him, but always remember, fellas, you have to be able to prove it before tossing the tome.

After all, it is ultimately our money, which we pay the bluebags to lock up the baddies, not indulge in personally targeted fishing expeditions.

Enough now, it is away to Poseurs' Bar, perchance to bebubble a comely companion of a certain age and inquire if she idolises Madame de Gaulle as a role model for later life. One can only 'ope.