Cheery smiles down at the Daily Astonisher, frowns at WIN TV as it continues its astonishing wrassle with written English … and joy and apprehension in Canberra ; KRudd goes overseas, then comes back!.

Also The Magpie comes to the aid of those state politicians so appalled at having to take massive pay rises …

… and the hard lesson of the Streisand Effect – trying to suppress something gives it wider publicity – is about to be visited on Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate.

… and sitting down on the job:  a great Nanny State Award proposing that blokes who sprinkle when they tinkle should do the ladylike thing  - all here in this week’s nest at www.townsvillemagpie.com.au

URGENT MEMO

TO: CAMPBELL NEWMAN AND GEOFF SEENEY

FROM: THE MAGPIE

Just a friendly reminder fellas.

You say you have no choice but to accept massive pay rises illegally blocked in 2008 by Anna Bligh, because you are supposed to have salaries just $500 below your federal equivalents.

Your heart-wrenching argument is that you have no choice, can’t help it, folks, no say in it, good people, not allowed to reject it – BECAUSE IT IS THE LAW!!

Err, fellas, here’s a tip – YOU ARE the people who make the laws of this state. If you are not a lying bunch of politicians (whoops, tautology time) pass another law to back up your otherwise mealy-mouthed, Joh-style grasping of the public by the nuts.

That way, you can press your prim thighs together and simply say NO … and remember, no means no.

Yours in Utter Disbelief

The Magpie.

And they haven’t escaped Bentley’s baleful eye, either.

What a woeful pack of grizzle and grunts.

Media matters.

Tricky business, magazines … timing is everything but the events in Canberra over the past week or so have really caught some mag editors on the hop. But it seems the Womens’ Weekly has been nimble on its feet. Having just done a big spread on the (then) PM looking all domesticated and airbrushed, the Weekly is planning to look abreast of the rapidly changing times. Here’s a sneak preview of a forthcoming cover.

Indeed, the photoshoppers of cyberspace have been having a field day, commenting with glee on the return of the greatest twicers this country has seen in a long time.

This one let's itself down a bit by featuring a real alien  (R) in cowboy hat
But from one fantasy...

... to another.

And that swordsman must be Bill Shorten.

The Magpie fears we'll soon see that's it's no laughing matter.

French egghead pantsman Jean Giraudoux once said (in a line later pinched by comedian George Burns) ‘The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made’. PM KRudd has a ways to go before he attains that ideal.

The Magpie gives the general public about ten days to catch up to the old bird and suddenly start remembering why this bloke got shafted in the first place. His popularity then was about the same as Joolya's when she got hers last month.

Thanks, Bill.

The ‘Pie’s toes were curling from the very start of the return of that oh-so-careful enunciation of the simplest statement, peppered with the old faux-fashionable interrupters like ‘guess what?’, ‘I’ll tell you what …’ I’m not into ….’ And a various selection of ‘bunches of’ – promises, experts, presumed idiots, everything except a well deserve ‘of fives’.

Kevvy, old son, you’ve obviously been having a fair shake lately – but not of the sauce bottle variety.

Words are one thing for our phoenix PM who has arisen from Labor’s ashes, but maths are apparently even trickier. 

On the ABC’s 7.30 Report during the week, when KRudd was being given the rounds of the kitchen by Leigh Sales, he managed this mini-howler when suggesting Mr Abbott doesn’t have a policy he just ‘has a three word slogan – turn the boats back’. Umm, Kevvy,  luvvy, has Wayne Swan been teaching you how to count – that’s four words, mate  – perhaps you meant a four word slogan ‘stop the boats’, eh? Anyway, The ‘Pie has to concede he takes your point – let’s see how you go.

Boo 

The ‘Pie does not lie (he never does, of course) when he tells you he is immediately on edge when KRudd's  pale Assange-like visage pops up on telly. The Milky Bar Kid (or Tin Tin) shock of fine, almost albino-esque hair, the dead-fish eyes, and the tongue darting out asp-like between those disturbingly moist pink lips. (The ‘Pie can never see that cat’s bum gob in action without trying not to speculate just how much ear wax has disappeared down there over the years.)

Wingnut Abbott is no Brad Pitt, Jerry Lewis maybe, but at least he isn’t a short bespectacled version of Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird, waiting behind the door to scare the wits out of you. And at least Boo turned out to be harmless and gentle ... when not breaking a bloke's neck while protecting kids.

Other matters:

While The ‘Pie has a lot to say about the Daily Astonisher – well, they do lead with their chin - the old bird has noticed, courtesy of local ace snapper Cameron Laird, that there is a persistent noteworthy problem over at WIN TV.

Cameron is a word warrior as well as a A1 photographer, and he has been highlighting the dyslexical propensity of WIN News caption writers to make absolute howlers – you may recall ‘Catchy’ O’Toole for Cathy O’Toole from a couple of blogs back. Some of the cock-ups not always words but also understanding. Some are humdingers – wrong sunrise times in the weather segment and such - but this, the very best one making Media Watch a while back.

Feel sorry for the newsreader.

This is the sort of thing that happens when any news organization – in the name of the holy dollar – tries to remote control information from out of town. So the folks putting together the ‘local’ bulletin down south had no idea that a PET scanner is a Positron Emission Tomography scanner for humans, something even the TV kiddies up here would’ve known, it being such a big issue.

WIN’s persistent problem goes back years, and is no respecter of position or title.

Well, the Prime Minister bit was right at the time ... or is that ...oh, no ...
Prime Minester.

Then there was this one ....

Maybe it's a new word that means Bob likes talking about conservation.

It remains an insulting and demeaning fact that this persistent problem hasn’t been addressed. But the latest in the long line of spelling cock-ups, is this one, which in a way, is a double chortle.

That should be Daniel Whipps, another bloke seeking his 15 minutes of babbling fame through the delightfully daffy and eclectic Townsville Ratepayers Association – on evidence so far, the extra joke is associating anyone in that mob with ‘wit’ adds the frisson of comical irony to the original mistake.

Despite a constant caning from Mr Laird and others on Facebook, (more than 50 such errors have been reported on social media) WIN doesn’t give a stuff, it would apparently cost too much to employ someone who can acshooalley spel.

While we’re with the media, the Astonisher has moved into its new you beaut offices down on Flinders Street West. The ‘open plan’ office will, The ‘Pie is told, have journalists sitting cheek-by-jowl with advertising department types, breaking a centuries old newspaper tradition of keeping editorial and management/advertising well apart. Maybe Anthony Templeton could be seated next to ad flogger Amanda Gray … they could spend many a carefree hour swapping adjectives

Simpo: ‘Hey, Mandy, here’s one you can borrow – humongous – can you fit it into that column you’re writing about folding your laundry?’

Mandy: ‘Ah, thanks, Simpo … found a noun you could use – veracity!’

Simpo: ‘Huh?’

But some morale seems to be returning to The Astonisher with the move, and for obvious reasons. Here’s a little quiz; why are these gals from TownsvilleEye smiling?

Answer: Someone said, hey, girls, look at the ceiling – no asbestos!!  Yaaay!! One hopes they are still as happy in 10 or 20 years time when the incubation period for mesothelioma-related diseases ends and the failure of the Bulletin management under Michael Wilkins and Typo Gleeson to act responsibly becomes painfully apparent.

On that subject, The ‘Pie is reliably told that the old Ogden Street premises is still so riddled with asbestos it will cost a million dollars for its removal on demolition.

Moving on:

Hey, fellas, if you sprinkle when you tinkle, if your golden offerings to the porcelain god don’t always hit the mark, a nanny-state council in Sweden is about to smack you down – or more accurately, sit you down. In a spectacular entry into the Nanny State Awards this week, a far left wing (what a surprise!) council is spinning its proposal to make blokes plonk down on the seat for a pee. The argument is that being seated is not just hygienic, and not just good for you’re prostate but – yeah, real - also your love life! But as you will read here, it is really about the gals not encountering a fire-hosed cubicle in the genderless toilets. At least there won’t be any tiffs about up/down seats. Maybe all that should be filed under the Nappy State.

The ‘Pie always enjoys an amble off the well-travelled path of the more prominent matters in our life, and it is true that many of those who affect our everyday lives, for better or worse, slip away from this vale without much mention.

The Mighty Mouseman.

One such event happened this week with the death of one Douglas Engelbart. You may never have heard of him, but chances are you are right this moment using his most universal invention. Mr Engelbart is credited with being the far-sighted inventor of the computer mouse. This obituary tells the tale.

And while we’re around this bend of the river, last December another person who has undoubtedly touched our lives – probably everyone on the planet – checked out to that big scanner in the sky. 

Joseph Woodland

Joseph Woodland was the man who first dreamed up the barcode, (no, Mongrel, that doesn’t mean signaling silently for another drink, it’s those coded lines on all goods sold nowadays). It was an idea that came to him while doodling in the sand on an American beach. (And no, he used his fingers and did not doodle in the beach-sand same way that artist Jackson Pollock did – Jack the Dripper’s outdoor inspirational moments would certainly see him in strife with certain Swedish councillors.) But talk about serendipity’s winding path to the ultimate invention … a series of ‘sliding door’ moments in Woodland’s life makes for interesting reading.

Finally, have you ever heard of the Streisand Effect? 

Don't worry, dear, they probably wouldn't recognise you anyway.

For those of you who haven’t, this is the situation when efforts to suppress or ban material – photographs, words, videos – of some matter results in the attendant publicity ensuring exactly the greater attention and exposure that was sought to be avoided in the first place.  In 2003, Barbra Streisand tried to have aerial photographs of her Malibu mansion suppressed, claiming invasion of privacy. The particular shot was one of 12,000 publicly available and government commissioned images, taken to illustrate coastal cliff erosion. She was unsuccessful in the $50million lawsuit, but her name is now in the English language – before the suit was filed and became public, ‘image 3850’ had been viewed by exactly six people, and two of those were her own lawyers. In the month following the case going to court, 420,00 people accessed the photograph.

This is an effect that a certain Gold Coast mayor is suddenly becoming painfully aware of.

Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate.

It’s an absolute ripsnorter, and a cautionary tale for those reaching too quickly for their lawyer. And it is also a good indicator of the growing power of the internet to do things traditional media either can’t or won’t do.

In a nutshell, Mayor Tom Tate was involved in a business deal that went sour, and his former associates fell out with him, to the extent that, they say, he had them bankrupted. One of them is apparently a former mayor of Albury, one Amanda Duncan-Streclec. 

It has become abundantly and hilariously apparent that Amanda is a woman not to be scorned.

She built a website with the somewhat giveaway title www.tomtatescam.com, on which she has let fly a volley of accusations, allegations and general free character readings of various individuals, central being the eponymous mayor of the title.

It would appear that in the face of this, Mayor Tate got some very doubtful advice, or maybe it was just his idea anyway – he had his solicitor send our Mandy a ‘cease and desist and say sorry’ threatening letter.

Baaaaddd move!!  

What was coming was more obvious than Gina Rinehart at a dwarves’ convention. 

Mandy published the whole letter which detailed all her allegations and claims. AND THEN replied to every one of the claims, not backing down once, but adding her claimed evidence for the world to see.

The next move is up to Mayor Tate. Chances are his mate Typo Gleeson will give him a cuddly puff piece in the Sunday Mail, but fat chance any of that will do any good now. Mayor Tate finds himself in an interesting position – interesting in the Chinese sense of bad news. If he doesn’t proceed, people will draw their own conclusions. If he does, he can expect his every maneuver will be shared with the world of cyberspace.

Nothing like lawyers at 20 paces with a high-profile client, to pull in the punters. When you go to the website, the top two listed items on the left hand list tell the tale in detail – as said, it’s a ripper. (You'll love this, Greg.)

Maybe it ain’t over ‘til the lady with big beak sings, but methinks our Tom has come down with a severe case of Streisand Effect.

Incidentally, that Streisand Effect has resulted in a few strange outcomes. One was Billy Joel’s ‘Only The Good Die Young’ which was doing just that, being largely ignored, until the Catholic Church in some states in America had it banned for some of its lyrics – it immediately became a runaway smash hit.

If Fred Nile was into kick-backs, he could make a fortune out of his wowserism.

Enough now, it is away to Poseurs’ Bar for a …errr … stiff one. And if a comely companion goes to the loo, the old bird will ask her to leave the seat down ... for the sake of his prostate. But nudge nudge, you know the real reason, don't you? Heh Heh Heh.