This week, the Townsville Bulletin rewrites a sacred Australian oath to now read '... and at the coming up of the sun, we will exploit them' ... and boy, didn't they do just that this week, in spades. And The Magpie REVEALS EXCLUSIVELY (cop that, Astonisher!) the Bill Gates big cover-up and why when the world's best job starts in a couple of weeks, it won't be anywhere near Australia.

The 'Pie also tells why those Sri Lankans who sailed into Geraldton are almost certainly lying little Lankans ...

Mayor Mullet's rise in the world stopped abruptly albeit temporarily ....

Local wannabee politician Cathy O'Toole wrestles with geography - and the compass ...

and we present a clutch of some of the best cartoons floating around the place at the moment, with resident doodler Bentley hinting that Clive Palmer wants more than just The Lodge.

That, plus the saying of the week and Mongrel the Barrister's barroom misadventure, all here in the nest at www.townsvillemagpie.com.au

This was without question the image of the week.

All the talk this week is about that poor hapless copper coming to a screeching halt at water's edge while in hot pursuit of an escaped prisoner. Everybody's had a go at him - around the world, poor galumph - so The 'Pie will only note the the Police Union's Ian Leavers' knee-jerk defence included the risible suggestion of 'croc infested waters' which will come as a big surprise to all those families who paddle, fish and picnic on the banks of Three Mile Creek every weekend - and have done so for years. Ya just gotta love those southerners, ain't cha?

But the incident prompted the best Saying of the Week, from one of the philosphers who inhabit the Old Farts' Bench at the local BiLo. He suggested that when the miscreant disappeared into the mangroves, he could have been easily trailed and caught, except for the fact, quoth the sage '... these coppers could'nt track a leaky sh-t cart in a flour factory'. 

Colorful, but the rozzas did get their man eventually, although he managed to get as far as Mt Isa.

Speaking of things hard to catch, here's a nice post script on Australia's favorite gee-gee.

Catching up is the task ahead our favorite porkster Clive Palmer, who wants to revive an old political party and take on the political establishment at the next federal election. Now Clive's got money, Clive's got ambition and Clive's got more front than Myers - in more ways than one. And Clive's got a lot of friends.

Clive rings the bell to call his followers.

What Clive hasn't got is a clue. 

Politically, it will be nigh on impossible to keep his promise to get the 150 candidates for every available seat in time for September, likewise formulate and circulate any serious policies - if he has some. So at the moment,  he now stands as a chubby chops who has seriously got his ambitions mixed up with his abilities. 

The Cliveasuarus has openly declared he wants to become Prime Minister (he'd probably put Gina Rinehart in as Treasurer, who wouldn't be any bigger disaster than the current incumbent). 

But our resident doodler Bentley has cocked an eyebrow at this, and reckons our man has much bigger ambitions.

Poor bloody iceberg hasn't got a chance.

Well, you've got to have ambition if you want to be a pollie, which brings us thudding back onto home turf.  

Mayor Mullet's vaulting ambition to reach for even higher political office (like maybe the state seat of Townsville) is well known. But her rise to the top literally came to an abrupt halt on Anzac Day.

Mayor Mullet is still hobbling about with a busted ankle, following a tumble while she was walking and talking down in Brisbane recently, where she was no doubt discussing a politician's need for sobriety, what with being under such close public scrutiny all the time - she herself says she's been on the wagon for a couple of months now.

After attending Thursday's dawn service on The Strand, where she managed valiantly to hobble up to lay a wreath, our gal then hied herself off to the RSL for presumably an in memoriam morning cuppa. But when using the lift for the disabled to get upstairs - quelle horreur - the lift stopped mid-journey. She was stuck. Then quelle horreur again - they got her out - The 'Pie is told it took officials 15 to 20 minutes to extract the mayor from this predicament, and that she was cheerful and gracious about the incident. (The 'Pie's informants aren't always 100% accurate).

That trauma would merit a good stiff drink, but The 'Pie has no reliable knowledge that she fell off the wagon and faced the possibility of another injury from the fall  - if she can do in her ankles when sober, who knows what mayhem awaits if she takes a tumble when a bit Oliver Twist. Possibly get run down by a V8 while heading across to hand out the Townsville 400 trophies this year?

But on Anzac Day, she for once, had a legitimate reason for her habitual 'grand entry lateness' for she has become amusingly predictable.

But it would appear that another local female wannabee pollie doesn't need booze to get addled. 

Cathy O'Toole or Dora the Explorer?

Apparently already confused about which side of the political fence she is on, (seelast week's blog) it seems Labor candidate for Herbert Cathy O'Toole is also on shaky ground when it comes to geography.

In a pointless but self-serving letter to a meekly compliant Astonisher this week, Ms O'Toole made a bold bid to join the paper's iditor in the Guinness Book of Platitudes as she wittered on - at length - about Anzac Day. Now fair enough, Ms O'Toole has every right to wax lyrical in the paper with her personal opinion about Anzac Day, as unremarkable and yawn-inducing as that opinion may be.

But two things caught The Magpie eye.

In mid-gush, Ms O'Toole told us of the thrill of pride she gets at the dawn service on The Strand as she watchs 'the sun come up over Magnetic Island'. 

Cathy, m'dear, that'll be the day ... the sun actually rises nowhere near Magnetic Island if you are at the Anzac Memorial on The Strand ... it comes up over Cape Cleveland, well to the right of both the ceremony and the island - about a quarter of a compass away from Maggie. And unless you linger on the spot as the crowds disperse, lost in your golden poetic thoughts, the sun doesn't actually come up until a good 10 to15 or so minutes after the dawn service is finished. Well, look, The 'Pie is probably being a bit harsh, after all, you as an aspiring Australian politician, were simply indulging in a little poetic license - a necessary stock in trade for an Oz  pollie these days.

But the other thing that is of note was that you signed the letter - and the paper duly published it - as 'Cathy O'Toole, Labor candidate for Herbert'.  And what, pray tell, is the relevance of your thoughts on Anzac Day to your personal political ambitions?

Rather than a humble and heartfelt Cathy O'Toole - North Ward (or wherever), it seems you couldn't resist using Anzac Day for banging the political-profiling drum with a statement of the bleedin' obvious (unless The 'Pie has missed some pollie somewhere coming out against the Anzac commemorations). 

Gosh, Cathy, anyone would think you're getting your campaigning advice from some sort of egomanic.

Or perhaps you have taken to heart WIN TV's boo-boo, and you were just trying to 'catch' the public spirit.

But this is of course a mere pecadillo next to the cynical use of Anzac Day by The Daily Astonisher itself.

Here's how a serial misreading of public sentiment went down during the week, fuelled by a floundering attempt to be a big bad newspaper like the Courier Mail, or dare they hope, the Sydney Terrorgraph.

On Monday, four days before Anzac Day, the paper beat up within an inch of its life a slender statistical tale of the number of soldiers getting themselves in the poo with the brass.

The gasp-horror element behind this silly 'say nothing' headline was - apparently - that 211 Townsville-based soldiers had faced disciplinary action last year for a few instances of a bit of biffo in the ranks, four - yes, only four - cases of being a bit Oliver Twist while on duty - (which, OK, is a bit scary given the weapons around nowadays, but no one has gone on even a mini kick-the-cat rampage, no doubt much to the disappointment of the Bulletin) three cases of theft and 17 cases of illegally going bang in the night - well, The 'Pie assumes their talking about rifles when they say 'negligently discharging weapons'. That's 28 cases over the year out 211 - and it's safe to say the other charges must have been really piddling if even The Astonisher didn't regard them as worthy of ripping up their nighty about. 37 diggers also fronted civilian courts, mostly on drink driving matters - and that represents a percentage well below the civilian average for this favourite NQ pastime.

But to hear the paper tell it, you'd be led to believe that the Army was a balmy army and the whole defence establishment was falling apart, particularly here in Townsville. To try to reinforce this dopey inference, the post traumatic stress disorder was trotted out, touted to balloon in coming years as the boys come home from Afghanistan. You could almost feel the wish becoming the father of that thought jumping off the page at you.

That upset pleanty of diggers, current and former, to the point of almost having to disinfect the MagpieFone after a string of ...ummm ... forthright calls.     

But the paper seemed to again mistake loathing for love - c'mon,  a reaction is a reaction, they reckon - so on Tuesday, we got this.

The paper had sooled their star 'revealer' Anthony Simpo Simpleton - sorry, that's Templeton, apparently -  on to an even more minor and inconsequential matter regarding an order to soldiers taking part in Anzac Day activities not to drink before lunchtime.

As poorly written and as thin as a scrape of boarding house butter (as The Magpie's WW1 granddad used say), The Astonisher deserves some sort of Razzie Award for managing to fit five cherished headline elements in just six words covering soldiers, Anzac Day, booze, ban  and and emotion (fury).

Christ, talk about over-egging the cake, what a hoot. This threadbare effort -pure unadulterated beat-up bullsh-t - decried as 'un-Australian' the order to hold off on the turps until you'd finished your duty, lads. That cry was put in the mouth of an ex-digger, so what that's got to do with him is anybody's guess. Whatever happened to the old adage 'We march in the morning to remember, and drink in the afternoon to forget'.

The story however was framed in such a way that you were invited to think that the no booze rule was all day long.

BUT HERE'S THE KICKER.

Brigadier Shane Caughey

The Magpie understands through reiable sources that Brigadier Shane Caughey (Commander 3rd Brigade) decided to issue his reminder order because of the Bulletin's Monday front page story which had blown the misbehaviour of diggers serving in Townsville out of all reasonable proportion. So the paper managed to manufacture a second Army-bashing headline through its own actions.

The deeply hateful thing about the Townsville Bulletin's approach is yet again their astounding hypocrisy, for you can rest assured the first sign of a wobbly boot in the street march, and the Iditor and his 'revealers' would be puffing out the chests and strutting around like morally-outraged peacocks for such 'disrespectful' behaviour. We would certainly be graced with a bunptious and presumptious editorial decrying the evils of grog in our modern society blah blah blah.

Nothing is sacred for this mob, not even Anzac Day. 

The 'Pie has said it before, and will continue to do so as long as it remains valid - this community deserves a lot better than the ever less appetising diet of tabloid hucksterism fed to us by a clique of clueless southern carpet-bagging blow-ins and local self-servering fellow travellers. 

It's true that all newspapers face the same dilemma of relevancy in the rapidly changing digital age, exemplified by the plummetting circulations and the hasty construction of pay walls, but no matter in what medium it appears, a telling cartoon will always retain a cutting edge that words can't always guarantee.

And this one by Will Steacy sums up where precisely where we're at.

Other matters

There's been a lot guff and hype lately about a second round of The Best Job in the World, a clever marketing and publicity ploy by Tourism Queensland. There are plenty of suggestions as to just what that job may be - but forget it, whatever it is, it will only be the second best job in the world.

Because as of May 7th upcoming, it seems some 'lucky bastard' - to use Mongrel the Barrister forthright evaluation -  will start on what most blokes would nominate as the Best Job In The World ... but it will never see the light of day on the Tourism Queensland website, or probably on any other site, for that matter.

On May 7, all the submissions will be in, seeking the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation $100K - for the best new condom, and judging will get underway. And Bill doesn't want some rehashed bubblewrap re-run in the latest colour. If you want his hundred grand, you have to rise to some pretty stiff standards - like a design that makes sex better than not wearing a condom at all. And it has to be inexpensive.

Bill Gates - a cover-up job.

Now, this coming from Mr Gates, who looks like the original 'third Thursday of every month, whether I feel like it or not' sort of bloke, this isn't as blokey-centric as it sounds. Mr Gates is seeking the criterion of greater pleasure to ensure everyone will want to wear one of the new generation johnnies as the ultimate feel-good experience, and the gals have to give it the ...hmmm... thumbs up,too. Flavour of said article is said to be a core element (there was a bacon-looking and bacon-flavoured condom recently released onto the market.The Pie hasn't made that up, Google if you wish; and while it's going gang-busters in Deliverance country in the States, where the euphemism 'porking' arose from a popular local recreational activity, it's not doing too well in the Middle East or Israel. Just around the corner, maybe a mutton version for the Kiwis? ). 

No, Mr Gates believes this will stop the spread of AIDS, HIV, unwanted pregnancies and all manner of unpleasant morning-after surprises, except how you look in daylight.  And that, he believes, given all the strife that will avoid, it is well worth his hundred grand, a sum he earns approximately in the time between foreplay and the cigarette. 

Well, good luck with all that, but The 'Pie rues the opportunities missed, and not just for the rivetting possibilities of a 'My Condom Rules' TV show, with all the attendant  effort and ultimate judging comments (yeah, go on, send us in your best ones!). But the old bird wistfully wonders if only Messers Hitler, Amin, bin Laden, Gillard and Bligh et al had availed themselves of this great new product, life would have been much more fun for a lot of others. Tens of millions of them, in fact.

But on this subject - AN HISTORIC BREAKTHROUGH!!! It seems the Catholic Church ius going to allow clergy over a certain age and of a certain rank to use condoms. However, early evidence has shown that some divine guidance is needed to make the move infallible.

On the local front, a timely reminder that generally speaking, there are no bad dogs, just bad owners, as demonstrated by that Pallarenda poochopath whose had his several dogs confiscated and put down, they were in such a bad way. 

But the genuine love of animals - an emotion this troglodyte seems to successfully avoided - has been known to prove that such love is indeed blind. One man's Spot may to another be the owner's blind spot and is just a blot, you may love your Fluffy but another may see it as just scruffy. But rarely does love of an animal extent to the lengths of myopia displayed by not one but several Argentinians, who all bought what they believed where poodles but turned out to steroid-filled ferrets. Read the story here and then for a different type of animalia, click on the pic at the bottom, the one with the horse witha duck's head. Quite funny.

Here's something that is a bit of departure for The Magpie. It isn't all that funny but makes you think. Like a lot of people who run blogs, The 'Pie gets a lot of stuff sent in about boat people and the issue of refugees in general. The out-and-out racist stuff get pinged immediately, and some stuff is filed  and if it's funny, it generally gets used.

This is about that Sri Lankan boat with 66 people on board arriving in Geraldton harbour, purportedly coming directly from Colombo or a nearby port.

The following email makes sense and deals in checkable facts, and to allow 'David' to blow off some justifable steam, The 'Pie has left on the strong comments at the end. What has struck the old bird is that no one the mainstream media (that he has seen anyway) has even gone so far as a cursory glance at the atlas. The 'Pie hasn't checked the distances quoted in detail, and thinks the craft is somewhat longer than the quoted 42 feet - maybe 50 feet, but that hardly changes anything. And possible bad weather hasn't even been included in the calculations. But The Magpie's limited open ocean sailing experience makes all the other stuff ring true.

This is what was received a couple of days ago.

The unnaturally hale and hearty country-shoppers on board the SS Deutsche Bank

Reader David with some eminently believable and real-world sourced observations about the "Survivor, Geraldton"  country-shopping expedition, sponsored by Deutsche Bank: I received a call from my brother last night, saying something is not right about that boat story.  Bit of background on him first.  He is an old style boatie, has had boats all his life, has built three of his own, and has been up the reef at least 30 times in the last 40 years.  So he knows a bit about going to sea. He questioned the veracity of the story that the boat came from Sri Lanka and was 44 days at sea with 66 souls on board.  He questions specifically were: ·         ·         The journey from Sri Lanka to Geraldton, a distance of 2,780 nautical miles as the crow flies, longer if you allow for drift and course corrections.  Lets be kind and estimate 3,000 nautical miles. ·         ·         The fuel required to travel that distance at an average speed of 6kts would have been at least 5,000 litres.  That amount of fuel equates to 25 drums of diesel and would weigh in at (150kg x 25 drums) = 3,750Kg. ·         ·         Water for 66 people for 44 days at sea (drinking cooking etc) allow 4 ltrs per person per day.  (44 days x 66 people x 4ltrs) = 11,616 ltrs and weigh 8,131Kg. ·         ·          66 people would weigh around about 3,960kg. ·         ·         Total weight of fuel/water/people close to 15,841Kg plus food/provisions. His contention is that the boat in question (sponsored by Deutsche Bank) and looked to be about 42 foot long, could not carry enough fuel, water, food and provisions for 66 people at sea for 44 days.  Absolutely/absolutely impossible – it would have sunk before it left the dock!!! So the story of travelling Sri Lanka/Geraldton is absolute bullshit, or perhaps they made a stopover in Indonesia or were resupplied en-route.  And remember when they pulled into Geraldton they were only half way to their supposed destination – NZ. One thing I think we can say with certainty.   They'll be hard pressed to convince New Zealand authorities that they were fleeing the war in Australia - just like our authorities should tell the b#%%^ish artists who arrive here by boat from Indonesia that there's scant evidence of war-like activity in the Soekarno Hatta International Airport or the Jakarta shopping malls. So. It's going to be interesting to see what Mr Rabbit can pull out of his hat when kicks julia and Tim out of his new home in September. If he manage to somehow get this issue under control, he'll be Wingnut the Wonderous. Enough now, it is away to Poseurs' Bar, to counsel Mongrel the Barrister in the ways of wimmin. He is still bruised - literally - by an incident last week. It appears our  man had chatted up a rather plain Jane, for lack of any more comely possibilities. Seems Mongrel had finally talked her into a 'nightcap' hur hur hur  at his place, when she coquettishly asked what had attracted him to her the most, her sexy figure or her beautiful face. Mongrel looked her up and down for a long moment and then replied 'Your sense of humour'. He's still taking Panadol for the pain.