Jenny’s jalopy; the Mystery of Mayor Mullet’s new car is solved – and the editor of the Townsville Bulletin upsets many with the Clanger of the Year.

It was something he hoped wouldn’t be noticed, but tough cheese, me old Iditor, you get the Blooper  of the Year – if not the decade – award. But the unintentional hurtful aspect has enraged some sections of the community.

Also, the King of the Nicknames Les Messagebank Walker earns yet a new moniker for some weird antics …

 … and as the national discourse is writ large in ever more purple prose, The Magpie has found the the ideal compromise candidate to take over in Canberra - judge for yourself.

All that and  some of the quotes of the week, all here in the nest at www.townsvillemagpie.com.au 

Last week, The Magpie  … just askin’, y’know … queried the origin of Mayor Mullet’s new set of council wheels, that ALP red Commodore SS V8 hoon car in which she now tools around town. The ‘Pie was reliably informed that Madam Hill gave the finger to local dealers and leased her $55,000 + ratepayer-funded chariot from outside Townsville.

Well, that’s just what she did, she travelled to Brisbane to mega-dealers Zupps, and did the deal down there. The ratepayers then ponied up an extra non-specified amount to have the vehicle shipped to Townsville, where madam excused herself from official duties for an hour or two so she could pick it up and bond lovingly with it for a while.

Red dress - red car - red face?

This is an interesting and arrogant look for a person elected to the highest position in this community, a large part of whose responsibility is to boost and encourage local business. Also from one who is endlessly simpering about the trials and tribulations of the ratepayers.

Mayor Mullet’s explanation, when the ABC’s Pat Hession directly checked The Magpie’s assertion with her was that part of her responsibility regarding the mayoral vehicle was to ‘get the best deal for Townsville ratepayers’. She said the local Tony Ireland franchise quoted a lease price $10,000 more than Zupps offered. (Anyone at TI Holden care to comment?)

Now, Mayor Mullet’s on-going mud-wrestle with maths has long been a constant source of bemused contemplation, and she is now telling us that a Brisbane dealer was knocking off 20% in an end-of-model deal. Really?  On exactly the same model? 

And we’ll ignore the cost of shipping it up here.

But even if that is accurate, Mullet m’dear, if you are so concerned about the cost to ratepayers, why a V8? Why not a V6, say, which would also help the ratepayers by not gulping so much fuel?  Or do you expect the ratepayers to foot the bill for your Lara Croft self-image?  Well, actually, the obvious answer to that is yes.

It all sends a wonderfully positive message to local businesses, doesn’t it, when Townsville’s representative to the world encourages people to shop in Brissy if you can’t get the best deal up here.  In a free market economy, absolutely nothing wrong with that mindset if you’re a private citizen. But this is ratepayers’ money.  

Even some of those businessmen leant on by Bagman Bazza Taylor to donate to your campaign see this as a finger to certain businesses who donated to Townsville First’s mayoral campaign and not yours.

There are those, and plenty of them, who are suggesting that using public money – ratepayers money - for a spiteful political get square ain’t a good look from any angle. Even if that isn’t true, it sure looks like it is.

You seem a little shame-faced about this anyway, and know there might be some awkward image problems with your Brisbane deal.  Would it be because you know that it is not a good look for our community leader to be supporting southern business over locals?

Otherwise, why would you have all decals and number plates identifying the dealer removed from your new buggy? It would look a tad conspicuous parked in the council car park next to the other councillors’ vehicles, all of which proudly display dealership decals and/or plates … Townsville dealerships every one. Except yours.

Anyway, poor choice of vehicle all round, Mullet. You should of bought a Jeep.

“I should’ve bought a Jeep, Magpie?’

‘Yes, Jenny, you should have bought a Jeep. And here’s the exact model which would suit the manner of your mayoralty so far.’

Air conditioned, too.

........

Funny things, nicknames. Yeah, well, that’s why they’re nicknames, they’re meant to be funny. The Pie remembers in the NRL years ago … the 70s in fact … TV’s George Negus had publicly vowed that he would not do any work outside his current affairs hosting on Channel Nine. There was at that time a pretty good albeit aging footy player whose one fault was that his performance fell off markedly in the latter part of games. He was dubbed ‘George Negus’ … because he only worked for 60 minutes. Boom tish, indeed.

But the local champion to attract nicknames is our old pal, Les Messagebank Walker. The Magpie bestowed that nickname way back when Les was asleep at the wheel as a Mooney pet councilor. He was known not to take calls, and not to answer messages left for him.

Messagebank - the Ghost Who Talks -
and now ......

But in his new guise as Mayor-In-Waiting – yes, he is that deluded, he’d give David Moyle a run for his money – Les has developed a habit of making a blustering goose of himself in council meetings, deigning to instruct his non-Labor colleagues of the error of their ways. Hence, the Townsville First folk have taken to calling him The Ghost Who Talks. (For those not up with the Phantom comic strip, The Phantom, aka The Ghost Who Walks, sometimes finds it necessary to don street clothes for disguise, calling himself Mr Walker … geddit, geddit?).

But those Townsville First jolly japesters have been rolling about at their own cleverness following a bizarre incident a couple of weeks ago. When the mathematically challenged Mayor Mullet handed down her budget, four or five of the Townsville Firsters met at one of their homes for a private meeting to discuss possible amendments and the general thrust of how they wanted the financial year to shape up.

Apparently, Messagebank got wind of this ‘secret’ meeting, and drove around the streets of Townsville, and – cue Pink Panther music here - snuck around various coucillors houses like a local version of Inspector Closeau, seeking the meeting to which he somehow hadn’t been invited. And thus, as Bentley gleefully illustrates, Les now has a new nickname.

With strains of Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘With Cat-like Tread’ ringing in his ears, our Ghost Who Stalks was said to have been lumbered in the act, and angrily complained that he wanted in - he was upset that he hadn’t been included in those budget chit-chats. Oh, yes, he’s a political realist is our Les.

But as KRudd used to say, guess what? ... The Magpie agrees with him!!

Yes, Les should be included in those cosy little Townsville First extracurricular get-togethers to discuss the merits of various matters. But not every meeting and not all the time, mind, but … hmmm, … let’s say about as often as Fay Barker and David Crisafulli were invited into Tony Mooney’s pre-council, closed-door Labor caucus meetings all those years ago. Yep, that’d just about do it.

It’s boot foot-swapping time, Les, me ol’ darlin’.

................

Here’s a little jest that may be instructive down at the Daily Astonisher.

Hey, has The ‘Pie got it wrong or when News Ltd sacked local sub-editors and gave the jobs to Brisbane and New Zealand, wasn’t the trade off that we’d get a better, slicker and more error-free product?

Well dream on, it is apparent it was just about money-grubbing, not grammar. It has reached the stage where The ‘Pie lets so many of the cock-ups slide without comment, they are so many and so frequent. But examples abound every day. Like today, a court story had the following:

Commonwealth prosecutor Aaron Guilfoyle said the shipwreck sight was one of the world's top wreck dives in the world and needed to be preserved.

Mr Guilfoyle may well have said that, but being an educated and eloquent young chap, would never have written it, confusing ‘sight’ for ‘site’. Subs are supposed to back up busy reporters and have always been a self-regarding breed parading their wordly superiority at every opportunity. Bit hard to effectively upbraid them when they're thousands of kms away, and often not even in the same country. 

But that slip-up is absolutely nothing next to the truly unfortunate cock-up this week … and it was yet another one by the Iditor himself, Lachlan Heywood.

Here’s what went down.

On Wednesday, several of the worthies of the town – and the Mayor Jenny Hill – slept out ‘rough’, to raise awareness of homelessness for a St Vinnies’ campaign. Among them was Bishop Michael Putney, who insisted on supporting the cause with his presence, despite of recently having been diagnosed with stomach cancer, and has been given only months to live. A brave and principled man if ever there was one, it was also the eve and the start of what was in all likelihood, his final birthday.

The brave bishop was inspirational figure for the cause, and the Bulletin’s Emma Chadwick wrote a straightforward but touching story about the bishop’s night out and the event (Emma is one who knows how to let a story tell itself). She mentioned that Bishop Putney turned 67 that day.

Then we pop through to the editorial, which was full of comments of genuine regard and praise for a unique man of this community.

But then – disaster … no lesser word will do in editorial terms, given the blunder right at the end.

In case you can’t read it, Iditor Heywood’s editorial ends with:

The Townsville Bulletin would like to wish Bishop Putney a very special day on this his 76^th birthday.’

What really hurts – and it hurt and angered many, many people – is that a minor piece of sloppy unprofessional work is magnified tenfold because it is offering its well-meant wishes for a birthday everyone, including Bishop Putney, knows he will not live to celebrate. And while he is an upright man who no doubt will readily forgive in this matter, there are others in his flock who cannot bring themselves to be so generous.

One would hope that there were some red faces and some toe-curling embarrassment when the error was discovered – for discovered it was, the on-line version of the editorial enjoyed but a half-life, disappearing quickly into the ether from which it should never have emerged, not to be found anywhere.

Subs are meant to know that things like this are incorrect, they build up years of this sort of minor knowledge of ages, birthplaces, all the minutiae that goes to make up a life of a person, a project, a community - experience that is now lost to Townsville. Editors are meant to know these things, too, and Mr Heywood would’ve surely known this if he read his own paper. The many stories about the sad circumstances of Bishop Putney have filled many pages of the paper over the months, and nearly all have made reference to his age.

The ‘Pie points this out to again demonstrate what we have lost with the wholesale sackings at the paper, and the cheap importation of other often irrelevant news just to save a few bob.

Lachlan Heywood

Oh, and special note to you, Lachy old son. The last time you made a mistake in an editorial – you confused the words ‘loose’ and ‘lose’ in your own editorial headline, no less – The Magpie reported the matter. On seeing this, you promptly called in your chief sub-editor of the time (he is no longer there) and accused him of ‘deliberately undermining’ you. It was a grubby accusation against a person who had given the paper decades of loyal and principled service, long before your southern parachute so unfortunately opened over this poor bloody city. An apology to the bishop would be nice, too.

Who are you going to blame and bully this time, Lachlan?

Try not to be too bitter when you contemplate the wisdom of Omar Khayyam .......

‘The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

In most cases, no hankies needed, the moving finger now just reaches for the delete button, but this was not one of those occasions. But then, piety and wit seem to be in short supply at The Astonisher.

Still in the How Wrong Can You Get It Dept but on a wholly different matter, the old Omar's quote was no doubt on the mind of one letter writer years after he wrote this dismissive little bit of ‘how wrong can you get it’. It was from a BBC bod asked to judge the possibilities for a proffered comedy series.

But it must be said, without John Cleese, he may well have been right.

But boy, back home, when it comes to the federal Labor/Coalition circus, the moving finger is writ in the deepest of purple for its prose. Try this for size from Sydney Telegraph’s political correspondent Simon Benson.

''If this Parliament were a novel, it would be Cormac McCarthy's The Road - a post-apocalyptic nightmare of a civilised society descending into eternal darkness while humans wander a wasteland eating each other.''

Cor lumee.

The SMH and Age’s eloquent ranter Paul Sheehan at least stuck to some recognizable names and facts.

'I have never seen a gender divide like the one that now exists in Australian politics as a direct result of a cynical Prime Minister systematically and methodically insulting men and debasing feminism by invoking gender as a weapon to make false claims and cynical smokescreens. The result is as predictable as it is self-annihilating.

The implosion of the male vote for Labor, and the disaster unfolding for the party in Queensland, account for the rise of the living dead, Kevin Rudd.

But Rudd's supposed popularity is a myth, like the supposed massive public outrage and support for Gough Whitlam after he was sacked in 1975. When the electorate was given a chance to vote, it destroyed Whitlam.’

The short sharp message of all that comes comes from Paul Zanetti.

But what about the possibility of a compromise candidate for Labor? The Magpie thinks he’s found one.

Arrgh! The worst of both worlds. It’s enough to drive one to drink. In fact, it is away to Poseurs’ Bar, where The Pie will sock a few away … after all, if it’s good enough for Omar K, it’s good enough for this old bird.

And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,

Came shining through the Dusk an Angel Shape

Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and

He bid me taste of it; and 'twas--the Grape!

Actually, no angel he, it was Mongrel the Barrister who owed me a few glasses of White Infuriator, but as to why we need to drink - especially in an election year, we’ll let you Omar, you old soak, have the last word ….

The Grape that can with Logic absolute

The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:

The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice

Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute:

Yeah, right. You're ok, OK.