The unasked question about the Mullet's mayoral launch this Tuesday, why we're heading for a Forest Gump council election, and Labor's latest hilarious hokey-pokey confusion over membership.

The best of the week is the local ALP's hilarious membership situation, where several people didn't even know they were in the party ... and one member didn't know he was out.  Gawd 'elp us.

Also, Typo says sorry - because of so many inquiries and emails of support, I will revisit a past matter for one final time, that being  the outcome of Peter Gleeson's email bullying and harassment of my daughter.

That later, but let's first ponder in wonder at some of the more mysterious questions of the week, all here in the Nest at www.townsvillemagpie.com.au

First question concerns that local bloke who was dismembered by his missus - and he didn't even know about it!

First we had allegations of branch stacking and such, with sugggestions of 'unsavoury' practices from at least one party member, with another claming that several people didn't even know they were ALP members until they received postal voting material in the mail. But if they didn't know they were in, what about one of our wannabe civic leaders who didn't know he was out, and no longer a member.

The way publicity hound and poltical pest (by any standards) Paul Jacob tells it, seven months ago, his wife sent an email to Labor HQ, resigning him from the party. And now that he wants back in, Mr Jacob is telling the world that he believed he was always a paid-up member, and didn't know of this apparently unilateral move by his wife all those months back. 

Paul Jacob 

What, not a dickybird over the Coco Pops, Paul? Not even a murmur during a pre-slumber marital ciggy, mate? Or even a casual glance at your email folder? In seven months?

So here's The Magpie's first question. 

Paul, mate, can you even dress yourself? 

While this has all the hallmarks of 'the dog ate my homework' yarn, deeper questions are raised if what you say is true.  Because you are also one of the blokes who seriously wanted us to believe that the Townsville City Council had secretly borrowed $40million to make it's budget book entries look better than they really were.

The Forest Gump Party? 

Secretly? 

Any Queensland council borrowing even five bob from the Treasury - which is the only place they are allowed to borrow from - goes through a process and procedure that is about as spontaneous as a Cape Canaveral rocket launch. ('Hey, guys and gals, listen up now, had this great idea driving to work. Such a nice day, why don't we send light the wick on a rocket, and see what we hit?) Our Mr Jacob seemed to envision the local conversation along the lines 'Hey, David, Les here - we need a lazy $40mill to plaster over our budget, and Kid, tell Treasury to have it up here by lunchtime - and tell them for God's sake, keep it hush-hush.' 

Nevertheless, The Townsville Bulletin went into immediate shock-horror council-bash mode, printed the allegation and then had to share the egg on the face with Mr Jacob and crew when the true nature of the matter - which was in fact beneficial to ratepayers and the city generally - was finally forced into the paper.

Paul, your efforts towards council deserve the name the Forest Gump Party, after Mrs Gump's sage homile to her son 'Forest, life is like a box of chocholates - you never know what you're going to get'. With you, it could be anything.


Maybe this is actually going to be the Forest Gump election for the same conclusion.

But The Magpie does hear that Mr Jacob is somewhat disenchanted with his colleagues on the Gump/Council Watch team, who seem to have been cracking a slab in one a backyard shed and solving Townsville's problems late into the night. There are some totally unreliable rumours that Paully-boy has been trying to get on Team Mullet, but even she is said to think he's too much of a liability - and coming from that quarter, that's really saying something.

But maybe not. Anyway, we'll know on Tuesday night.

Which brings us to another big question.

Why on earth would the Moaning Mullet choose The Brewery's swanky, opulent reception room for the launch of her mayoral aspirations this Tuesday night - doesn't she know they don't have any stackable seating?

And the betting is, that when she introduces Team Mullet, there won't be ten candidates for council under her - snigger - independent banner. Our gal was reported as late as last Wednesday ringing around and getting knocked back by all and sundry when offering a berth on her patched-up Titantic Mark 2, which she bought at a knock-down price from His Radiance Tony Mooney.

Another question: The Magpie is eager to hear how she intends to find the savings for her Joan of Nark cost cutting agenda (or, as she put it in The Astonisher recently 'enact polices that would reduce the cost of living for Townsville ratepayers').  

She sure as hell ain't gonna be cutting services, not with a gaggle of left-wing socialist touchy-feely females on her team. That faction's over-representation looks like some sort of deal has been done with Snooze ( 'I used to Speaker of Parliament, y'know, very important role that, y'know'), who can't leave well enough alone and is still swaggering around making a pest of himself in the local party bunkers.  So how will she suggest she's going to fund her grandiose promise? If it's cut the rates in real terms, local government reality will quickly intrude, one would think.

Yet another question is raised through the Astonisher interview, where Ma Mullet went for light comic relief when she said she would  'run the council from a purely independent standpoint, free of political persuasion or agenda'. Gasp, wheeze, cor lumme, you are a one, Mullet. 

Are you going to share with us this very personal moment of epiphany?


Just when and where did a shimmering white light blind you and a booming voice fill you with awe and dread when it thundered  'Verily Mullet, I say unto you, party politics and local government should not be mingled one with the other, and together they are not kosher. Mullet, I welcome you back to the fold of the righteous, you having so long been of the leftieous, but have now seen the light. Kneel before me, my dear, and receive my shower of golden blessings'. 

Oh, Mullet, please - purleese - share with us; who was that voice that brought this wisdom to you? Good bet it wasn't Gough Whitlam. Was it the wisdom of Windsor? The Oracle of Oakeshott? The wankery of Wilkie? Or were you just having a Kattertonic attack?

You will understand our curiosity about such a change. For more than two decades, you have suffered through those masonic-like Labor caucus meetings, always stayed true to His Radiance's one-armed voting aerobics (aka council meetings) and made what many a misguided person has labelled all sorts of spiteful and unfounded attacks on those both inside and outside the party who dared question the Light of the Hill. 

As noted in a comment on the last blog, The 'Pie hasn't been invited on Tuesday, but his spies - that is, half the local Labor Party and those from the South Townsville branch who can speak passable English - there's not many of them - will be there. Give them a wave from the old bird.  

Finally, let me put to rest the matter of the the bully of the Bully, Peter Typo Gleeson, erstwhile Townsville Bulletin editor and unlamented departee for the Gold Coast.

Gleeson has given my daughter a signed written apology for his email attack on her - over something I had written in this blog, which had absolutely nothing to do with her. My daughter works for News Ltd in Melbourne and has never met or spoken to Gleeson. She has nothing to do with The Bulletin, or this blog. Typo's brain fade involved sending her an email threatening her job and making an unauthorised bullying statement on behalf of the recently retired CEO John Hartigan. You can read the whole sorry saga in the previous blog 'The Measure of the Man'.


Gleeson apparently gave the apology oat the direction of the Holt Street HQ hierarchy, who my Sydney friends tell me were furious with him for such a blunder.

However, I do not know what was contained in the apology, because my daughter agreed to a standard News Ltd confidentiality requirement, which, being the honorable person she is, restricted her to telling even her father only that the matter had been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. But as her father, I know she would not have settled for anything less than the requested written and signed apology.

News Ltd has not deigned to contact me in any way, apparently on the basis that I am no longer an employee, therefore, despite the email being a club-footed attempt to influence my writings, which have often criticised The Bulletin and News Ltd, it was not any of my business. 

Or then again, maybe they didn't contact me about the matter because they just regard me as a pain in the arse. Hope so.

So I reserve the final word on this matter for myself. 

In the email, Gleeson offered the schoolyard jibe that '(Your father) never was the sharpest tool in the box'. That begs the question what then does that make you now, Typo, you cowardly goose? You're certainly a tool - my daughter has the the proof of that in writing. But cheer up, old son, there is no doubt a spot for your meagre talents on a News Ltd tabloid in London.

Actually, perhaps fittingly, the last word really should go to my daughter.


When, as a matter of courtesy, I told her what I'd written on the matter, she said she was just happy the whole thing was now behind us. I then made a light-hearted comment that perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on Typo, he's been such a rich vein of dumb-arse absurdity for me over time and here I am still writing about him. To which my daughter concluded the conversation with. `Well, Dad, I guess you'll just have to think of him as the git that keeps on giving'.

As a wordsmith, a proud moment for the paternal Magpie. 

Enough now, it is away to Poseurs' Bar to be-bubble and burble the night away, with hope springing eternal in the old bird's breast - for he regards Posuers'  as a Mrs Gump's bar; you never what you're going to get, chewy or nutty, dark brown or creamy white, or even coconut rough - a personal preference is for those with liqueur inside.  

Unfortunately, someone has usually taken the last choccy by the time The 'Pie gets there.