Blogging Townsville

2011-09-12T15:53:00.001+10:00

Housing

....seems to be a constant issue, in our neck of the woods. But it is not just the 'Ville struggling to keep a roof over everyone's heads. How do we find solutions, permanently? How do we address once and for all, the social issues faced by tropical areas - often prone to cyclones and heavy winds?

We innovate. We use Bio Mimicry. Bio mimicry - put simply, is the use of nature's ways, to our advantage. If we work with nature, we have a much better chance at creating lasting living spaces, and global longevity. I must ask the question: If we destroy this planet, where are we going to live?

As the warm weather edges towards summer, lets talk about SOLUTIONS, and focus less on problems.

Perspective

2011-08-19T13:14:00.000+10:00

via BoingBoing

Can you find the Townsville Bulletin?

2011-07-21T12:30:00.001+10:00

John Sherffius says it all again. Can you find the Townsville Bully in the trash pile?

I though that it could be the red speck about 1/3 of the way up on the left but then it's way too big and it's the wrong colour!

Any ideas?

Andrew Bolt's next conspiracy story:

2011-07-20T17:33:00.000+10:00

"It's all all a publicity stunt" or "It's all a result Julia's knifing"

Which will it be?

The funniest story on earth (as reported in the Townsville Bulletin)

2011-07-15T13:24:00.000+10:00

Yes, I'm still here! My apologies to any regular visitors for the 'little' hiatus in my posts - put it down to a combination of work and other things going on in my life and arriving at a point of total despair at the state of the mainstream media in Australia and locally.

So what would break me out of all of that and and lead me back to the blog? Why, the funniest story for decades of course, the one which brings an instant smile to my face with every new day's revelations - the crashing and burning of brand Murdoch (and potentially his empire)!

While there are plenty of others writing about what has to be the best and biggest spectator sport on earth at present, I'm currently particularly enjoying watching the developing blood-lust in (all but Murdoch) media's reportage of the action - it's sort of like watching Frankenstein's monster feeding on the corpse of the dead Doctor.

And of course then there's the Murdoch press reportage of the biggest media story for decades. And what better example is there of the Empire's commitment to truth and balance that our very own Townsville Bulletin?

Their coverage of the crisis engulfing their Empire over the last few days?

Wednesday 13/07 - nothing
Thursday 14/07 - a 7x6.5 cm piece on page 19 or 0.10% of the 40 page edition
Friday15/07 - a 7x6.5 cm piece on page 38 or 0.08% of the 52 page edition

And of course these little snippets are not available online and were hidden away in the "World Snapshot" section of the Bully - not so much because no one will notice it there but rather because when they do The Empire's local minions want the reader to be left with the impression that "the troubles" are restricted to quaint old England.

Surely there's nothing more pathetic than watching this blimp on the periphery of The Empire desperately protecting it's little patch while Rome burns. And burns and burns and burns.

Do nothing to p*ss this man off anymore than he is already!!

2011-04-07T14:00:00.003+10:00

Reading the news feeds and listening to the airways for the last two days, I get the firm idea that Stephen Smith is one very p*ssed off Minister. I certainly wouldn't want to be the one in uniform who has to deliver any more bad news to him over the next few days or weeks!!

In fact, I have the strong impression that Smith has been getting progressively more p*ssed of with Defence since he came Minister and had to deal the constant fallout stemming from their appalling culture and abysmal budgetary, cost and other management performance (not to mention their media management).

If he plays his anger right (with the Department and Defence Chiefs and publicly), we could see the makings of a great Defence Minister and a real contender for next leader of the ALP - along with Greg Combet who's ultimate (and equally as difficult) test will be to deliver a palatable Carbon Pricing package.

Recognition where it's due

2011-04-07T12:48:00.000+10:00

A great article by Evan Morgan in today's Bulletin about local legend Brian Doolan - it affords him the position and space that he deserves and most importantly, it affords him the respect as an artist that he seems to have no trouble attracting in southern Europe but that has been a long time coming at home.

Source: The Townsville Bulletin

Billy says it all really:

"The pride that came out of me when the respect was shown from halfway across the world ... I haven't experienced a lot of it here in Australia and to get it over there was amazing.

That my friends is one hell of an indictment of Townsville!!

And what a man - his plan to change a few Palm Island kids lives and world view by taking then with him on his next trip to Italy is fantastic and, I reckon, right on the money - I dearly hope it can be made to happen.

All-in-all, a much better effort than The Bulletin's last attempt to write about the man! Worth a read.

The Non-visible Councillor Bell - Another Tool

2011-04-07T12:13:00.002+10:00

Regular contributor Slim adds another to the Townsville's 'Bag of Tools'

I really can't recall the last time the ratepayers heard anything of any substance from the Non-visible Cr Deanne Bell. Well, other than outrageous travel and hospitality expenses. Every year.

Must be my recall facilities because surely the marvellous salaries we pay really bring out the best in our representatives, don't you agree?

The poor dear must be thinking she can get back the deputy dawg's spot if she can stick the boot into someone while David Crisafulli is focussing on Mundingburra and Dale Last is just looking for his next media opportunity.

So, who does she choose for targets in a newspaper article on 31 March but the city's landlords? Boom - one shot in the foot. But really it's a double barrell and a shot in the other foot as well - Boom. Landlords are ratepayers too, just like the most of the rest of us ratepayers.

Has this person actually got out of her office and had a look at the extreme drainage problems? In most cases caused by poor council planning decisions and poor council policies and requirements about stormwater.

We know we are having one of the wettest seasons on record and we know when we are being patronised and when arrogance shows its long nose and ugly face.

Has this person had a look at Deschamp Street; at McHardie Street; at Wotton Street; at Laura Court, just for a few examples - I have and I can see many houses abandoned for the duration of The Wet.

It's not such a bad idea to abandon your house and go and live with relatives in another state, for example, because the city is rapidly running out of land with reasonable drainage.

Nobody should be building houses on reclaimed swampland or river flats.

Here's an idea for the Councillor, if that's the best she can come up with to get herself noticed, it is time. It is time all right for her to go and live in another state and leave us to look after our residences in the best ways that we know.

The Townsville City Council is not capable.
Cheers, Slim.

So many tools you could open a workshop!!

Global warming - the cost of doing nothing

2011-03-25T08:15:00.003+10:00

From Pollyics Stream at yfrog.com via North Coast Voices

Nuclear Japan #2

2011-03-23T18:19:00.000+10:00

The Bully is late again!

2011-03-23T16:15:00.002+10:00

After yesterday's post in response to The Townsville Bulletin's story about Base Backpackers trashing Maggie Island, I discovered that the story was in fact first brought to light by The Magnetic Times the day before.
Editing Note: This piece originally claimed that The Bulletin plagiarised the Magnetic Times article,but following a call from Honest George at The 'Times and the readers comments below, I accept that both articles were written from the same release. My apologies to the Bully on that score - I got it wrong. But it cant be all mea culpa - The Times did break the story late after all!

Base Backpackers - Questions that need answers

2011-03-22T14:26:00.001+10:00

It was good to see the local Maggie Island Tourism lobby (TOBMI - the tourism operators group you set up because Townsville Enterprise aren't doing their job) finally having something to say about one of the negative aspects of their industry (and I suspect an operator who isn't a member of TOBMI) - Base Backpackers' monthly Full Moon parties. See today's Bulletin article here.

Base Backpackers post-Yasi.
Repairs were started but were far from
finished before the last full moon party

Now I've blogged before (here and here) about this Base Backpackers mob and in particular about the way they ~~manage~~ trash the unique and privileged absolute beach-front location that they occupy on Maggie, but today's Bulletin article has prompted me to put together the following list of questions for the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation, Townsville City Council and the coppers:

Was there any inspection of the Base Backpackers site post Cyclone Yasi and before they started booking guests in to ensure that the site was safe?

Was there any inspection of the site prior last weekend's to ensure that it was safe?

Were there any special restrictions placed on the numbers that could be admitted to that Full Moon party given that the venue is essentially a building site?

Will there be any inspection of the repair work currently being undertaken on the site to verify that it meets all relevant standards?

How is it that since their early days in Ko Pha Ngan, Full Moon parties have been synonymous with one thing - getting stoned and dancing - and yet since they started on the island I've seen the sniffer dogs once - town-side at the ferry terminal checking people before they came over? Goddamn it - even this old fella knows that it's the best place to score!

Is it correct that the Full Moon Party Friday is the busiest night of the month for the local coppers? Every month?

And finally, a question for The Bulletin: Could it be that you left the second sentence (in red) of the quote from the Chair of TOBMI out of your piece because Sunferries are major advertisers while Base Backpackers buy virtually none?:

Sunferries (also major profiteers from the Parties) are surely part of the problem and I know damn well you'd be up them if they followed the same practices on the Palm Island run!

"No tourism benefits flow from this event. Mostly the participants are inebriated before they arrive. They continue to drink on the ferry from Townsville because the cost of the liquor at the event."

What price for a Ponce?

2011-03-21T15:26:00.004+10:00

So Ponce WWW has been and gone. Although I promised that I wouldn't waste time on him again, I just can't help it - particularly after reading The Magpie's fantastic potted 'history' of the wonderful world of the Windsors.

While for days I've mulled over the writing of a tirade about the sycophantic treatment of the Ponce's visit by all of the mainstream media, I've decided to keep it brief.

The things that I noticed:

His 30 minute stop in Townsville to change flights probably isn't going to bring a flood of tourists

His 1 hour stop in Cardwell must have been a real fizzer for the locals and the hundreds that drove up from Townsville for a gander

That almost to a man (snide joke), Editors sent female journos to cover the visit

All of the still and video pics we see of the Ponce are set-up to maximise the "thronging masses" effect - turning 20 into what could be thousands

Most of those we see in those pics are women who seem to either be there for a perv or because they are trying to convince their little girls that yes a prince charming will really come along and make their life idyllic

None of the pics I saw had a black face in them - none of the mob that I know in the Hinchinbrook were to be seen

The BBC's coverage of this part of the Ponce's pre-wedding profile enhancing visit to the top disaster spots in the Commonwealth was brief, included the necessary happy snaps of the type mentioned above and was interspersed with dramatic file footage of the worst Yasi's rubble - not exactly the idyllic "back-in-business" images the Ponce boosters have been banging on about for the last couple of weeks.

And finally - I also noticed that the Ponce flew into Townsville on a RAAF VIP Jet and then out again (after shaking Les' hand) in a convoy of 3 Black Hawks which took him in a couple of leisurely hops up to Cairns for a bit of a crack in the Casino and to pick up the VIP Jet again to take him down south to the other disaster highlights of his tour.

Which of course got me thinking about the cost of all of this. Now, apparently, a VIP Jet costs $28,000 an hour...so to tie one up for the Ponce's 5-day visit of Oz's disaster highlights would cost something like $3.36 million!

And then there's the cost of the 3 Black Hawks for a day, and all of the security guys you see in the background, the coppers who are controlling traffic, the forward party who came through to check for terrorist danger spots and good camera angles, the Council crews that where were out the day before trimming the hedges, Anna taking a couple of days off work to hold his hand, etc, etc,

So... let's say the Ponce's publicity tour cost us $5,000,000 (conservatively I'd guess). Somehow, I don't think that the report I saw on the BBC is going to result in 1,840 poms deciding to come on their own tour of recent Oz disasters - staying for 27 nights and spending $2,717 each (the national average for international tourists).

However, I am quite sure that millions watching the meeja dribble in England will no doubt be seduced by the images of a kind and caring future ruler/saviour - just what you need in the lead up to once-in-a-lifetime souvenir sales opportunity.

The reality is folks - you and I have just been milked (as has always been the way of the Windsors) in order lift the Ponce's profile (and pre-wedding souvenir sales) back home.

Postscript: The Times has no mention of the Ponce or his Queensland visit on their site's front page and have aparently only published 4 stories about it in the last 7 days while The Sun (who make their money out of the celebrity con) has only published two!

Nuclear Japan

2011-03-21T15:26:00.000+10:00

By: Kap, Cagle Cartoons, Spain

The Townsville Bulletin - Murdoch's very own digital kamikaze?

2011-03-21T11:52:00.004+10:00

(Too) Much has been written about the likely success of Murdoch's plans to turn his newspapers into online earners and I have to admit that for some time I've been meaning to add to that debate with some pithy localised comment like "the Townsville Bulletin can't even get people to buy it's hard copy edition - why would they buy its crap in digitalised form?"

But today comes the clincher. The New York Times has announced its digital pricing strategy and it's gonna cost you just $15.05 (AUD) a month to read one of the most prestigious rags in the world over your breakfast.

But, if you're still hungry for real news after reading the product of over 600 journalists and some of the best commentators in the world, you can also purchase a digital copy of our very own Townsville Bulletin for a measly $30 a month!!

Either the Bully's local management is just plain commercially stupid (we have written about that quite a bit - 97 times in fact - as of course does former 'insider' The Magpie) or Murdoch is setting them up to see just how quickly a paper can die in the digital age.

My guess is that it's the former.

Postscript: Should the Bully wake up and drop their digital prices anytime in the next year or so, I of course will take full credit :-)

Prince, Ponce or profiteer?

2011-03-15T14:53:00.002+10:00

Ponce W.W.W.
PLEASE DON'T FEED.

I wasn't going to post about Ponce Windsor Willy of Wales' (WWW) visit to this year's disaster spots in the white parts of the world, including of course our own North Queensland. I didn't really want to draw any more attention to the bludger than he's already getting

But having to explain to my 15 and 12 year old who exactly The Ponce is, why anyone would care and whether anyone does in fact care, has lead to this.

While no doubt a few octogenarians will get a kick out of it, I can't help but think that the Ponce's visit is, in fact, nothing more that the royal souvenir industry's equivalent to the movie, book and music industry's pre-release publicity tour.

The reality is:

the Ponce is getting married some time soon (I have no idea when but that is irrelevant to the argument)
the Family finances aren't real flash and there's talk of cutting their tithe
that wedding is gonna be expensive
the Family is also coping heaps at home from the peasants as they get screwed by the new Tory Government

So......Souvenir sales in lead-up to the wedding are critical to The Family
So......Blanket coverage across the white world of the Ponce communing with the huddled masses has to be good for sales.

Of course, apologists like those journalists and politicians who cream themselves at the thought of getting a gig with a Ponce will tell us that it will help our tourism industry by letting the world know that North Queensland was open for business.

When was the last time you watched the evening news, saw some Ponce eating sausages in the rubble of a disaster zone and thought "I must book my next holiday to that place tomorrow"?

If you happen to see him while he's out and about - tell him to go home and get a real job.

Is this worthy of the Front Page? Actually, is this a story at all?

2011-03-15T13:43:00.001+10:00

So let me get this right...

A punter calls the Townsville Bulletin to complain that her daughter is going to get kicked out of school because she wears a few studs to hide scaring on her ear.

Realising there's no chance of a classifieds sale here, the switch puts her through journalist Alexix Gillham who immediately spots a bit of a human interest story.

Being the true Murdoch professional that she is, Gillham checks the story out. She discovers that:

The kid isn't getting kicked out of school
The school has a long established uniform policy which includes rules about jewelry
That policy is based on sound health and safety logic. That's, HEALTH and SAFETY
The Parent and the kid both signed their acceptance of the policy on enrolment

Seeing the conflict (and even the human interest) draining from the story, Gillam goes back to the Mum in an attempt to bring the dying story back to life: ..."teachers at the school had far more piercings than her daughter" - avoiding the fact that everywhere in life there are (necessarily) different rules and different HEALTH and SAFETY concerns for kids and adults.

As for the pun headline, "Lobal warfare" - it's as p*ssweak as the story itself

For the record: My daughter attends Pimlico. We both think it's a great school. She'd love to wear more jewlry too but, hey, we both signed the policy.

RIP Owsley "Bear" Stanley

2011-03-14T11:45:00.000+10:00

If you don't know who "The Bear" is, you're either are too young or you had too much of his product in the 60's!

Think "Purple Haze" and listen to The Master's tribute to the man who help change the world's consciousness (or at least a generations'), inspire some many of rock-n-roll's greatest, and was largely responsible for the Wall of Sound:

Ah! - the olden days.

See also The Bear's self-penned biographical notes or browse through his essays. If you're too lazy but still want more, his wikipedia page is here and the San Francisco Chronicle has a good article from 2007

It's all about what's not said

2011-03-03T11:29:00.001+10:00

Did you happen to see the piece on Palm Island artist Billy Doolan on the 7:30 report? If not, it is well worth a look and Billy is certainly deserving of the national attention and recognition given the quality of his work and growing international reputation . (Transcript and video here).

Watching it reminded me of an unfinished post which I'd started in response to a Townsville Bulletin article on Billy back on 17 Feb. While that article also gave Billy local attention and recognition, at the time it annoyed me that the Bully tagged Billy as a "Townsville Artist" where of course he is a Palm Island man and that the article was run well back into the paper and not (for example) headlined in the weekly Arts Section.

There was also something very familiar about the paper's pic of Billy which I couldn't put my finger on - until I found this piece by Chris Johnson in The Age. As soon as I read there that Billy had been a resident of Happy Valley (for non-locals, Townsville's equivalent to a "fringe camp" or "town camp") the penny dropped.

I had met Billy at Happy Valley a number of years ago. I now clearly remembered him as a strong and proud man, a leader - far from the image of Happy Valley itinerants and drunks that The Bulletin (among many others) are so fond of betraying.

And of course, while effectively regurgitating The Age article published 47 days beforehand, the Bully managed to exclude (airbrush) any reference to Billy's association with the Valley. After all, we wouldn't want people to get the wrong idea about that mob would we?

Their attempt to appropriate Billy as a "Townsville Artist" (that is, one of our own) became all the more annoying when I read that Billy has been living in Melbourne for half of each of the last eight years (he's clearly a smart businessman too).

Oh - and I also discovered that Billy is in fact a "major Queensland artist" - certainly worthy of more than a throw-away piece in the local rag of the town that likes to claim him as their own.

While not really surprised by The Bully's approach, I have been particularly annoyed by what appears to me to be the complete ignoring of Billy Doolan and his international standing by the arts establishment in this town - and believe me there is one. Search the Bulletin's site for "chamber music" and you'll get 67 results. Search Billy's name and you get just one.

Say no more

He's done it again

2011-03-02T14:15:00.000+10:00

This is getting to be a habit - The Big Ewe has just been warned again by the Speaker!

I bet that at school he was one of those want-to-be's who shouted insults from behind the real bullies

There's something fishy in Townsville's water

2011-03-02T12:06:00.006+10:00

Click to open full-size

Today's report in The Townsville Bulletin on the federal Government's response to Townsville City Council's request for clarification about it's powers to change local water pricing answers one question but raises some serious others.

Clearly from the federal Department's response (right), that power rests with the Council.

Equally clear but far more revealing, the Council has failed (consistently since 30 June last year) to meet federal guideline requirements for them to submit a pricing implementation plan. Of course, why TCC failed to submit their plan is totally unclear.

The other thing that is very unclear to me is why exactly the CEO of a Council would write to an Assistant Secretary over a matter of some significant financial and political import.

These days, Assistant Secretaries are between 4 and 6 on Departmental food chains. So why would a CEO write to No.4 in the opposite structure?

Would Clive Palmer write to a TCC Exec Manager (No.3 in the food chain) to get an issue resolved? I don't think so! In fact, given that Palmer is Owner and Chairman of the Board, he would write to his opposite number, the Minister - just as Mayor Les should have!

Or perhaps they were hoping for some wriggle room in the response they would get from some clerk down the pecking order?

All-in-all, a big c*ck-up and a very fishy tactic in response if you ask me. It will be interesting to see how fast the want-to-be Member for Mundigburra, David Crisafulli, and the want-to-be Mayor, Dale Last, run away and hide from this one!!

Jenny Hill has her own questions too. I reproduce her Press Release below because I don't expect it to get a run in the Bully:

The letter from the Assistant Secretary of Urban Water regarding Townsville City Council request for water pricing changes should raise the eyebrows of every rate payer in this city.

If this letter is correct and I have no reason to doubt its content then the Director of Water Ken Diehm, the CEO, the Mayor, his Deputy, and other councillors involved need to be accountable for the deception they have perpetrated against residents of this city.

It clearly shows (see second paragraph of letter attached) council failed to supply any information to the Federal Government on how it would charge for water as per the agreement. "The government can not tell council what to do or how it can charge because council failed to provide the required information to the Federal Government." Cr Hill said.

The questions that need to be asked is

1. Why didn’t council staff prepare a full report on water pricing options and discuss it with the Federal Government as per the agreement? What was the direction given by the CEO regarding this matter?

2. What did the mayor and deputy mayor know?

3. Was the pricing structure implemented more about revenue to pay our massive $400 million rather than complying with the agreement with the Federal Government?

4. Why weren’t council staff directed to look at charging methods and options and prepare a report to council on these options?

"We are paying our CEO and some of our directors more than the Prime Minister, hence not only myself but the community deserves better than the trite we have been dished that ,Its the Federal Governments fault. The Mayor needs to stay home and work this out, travelling to Canberra isn't the answer."

There is nothing in National Water Initiative pricing principles that states council had to implement the current tariff and methodolgy to its water and wastewater pricing.

No it’s not the state government, its not the Federal Government, Council determines its own fate in these matters. We have borrowed too much and now the only way this council can manage its massive $400million debt is to hike its rates and water/wastewater charges to the point that they are pricing people out of this city.

End.

Another Big Day Out for The Big Ewe

2011-03-02T11:01:00.002+10:00

I see that the Big Ewe made yet more contributions of note in our national Parliament yesterday:

And just to confirm, The Ewe got an additional mention yesterday - a warning from the Speaker during the Suspension of Standing Orders debate:

Source: OpenAustralia.org

Well, well, well

2011-03-01T15:57:00.002+10:00

Tomorrow's frontpage of the Bully:

I could say "I told you so" but rather why not another prediction instead?:

The next major sporting flop in North Queensland will be the V8's

And as Rate Payer of West End posted in The Bully's comments at 3:36pm today:

"What happens to the TCC's $1M guarantee then????"

The Big Ewe's latest contribution is....

2011-03-01T14:17:00.000+10:00

I don't really know, but I do know that the Speaker's response in Question Time today was "The Member for Herbert is warned"

Slim's Pickens: BOM V GOD and another somewhat well-known Queensland tool

2011-03-01T12:13:00.003+10:00

In follow-up to his earlier comment, regular contributor, Slim writes:

Staying with the parliamentary performance theme could provide some revelations about the fading career of one who is far less "representative"; a line you may recall in relation to 'swill' and Keating.
John Quiggin has been amused by events during recent Senate Estimates hearings: Perhaps I am more saddened by the discovery of another parliamentary tool, but the religious tool nearly made it all worthwhile.

"The idea that the Bureau of Meteorology is part of a global conspiracy to destroy Australia’s economy impose communist world government (or in some more prosaic versions, to increase itsfunding[1]) sounds like the basis of a bad comedy sketch. But, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, this claim is put forward, in apparent seriousness, by numerous anti-science advocates in Australia (Andrew Bolt, Jennifer Marohasy, and Warwick Hughes are leading examples) and implicily accepted by many others....

Back in October last year, the Senate’s Environment and Communications Legislation Committee agreed to table a letter from Cardinal Pell which quoted heavily from Heaven and Earth to claim there were “good reasons for doubting that carbon dioxide causes warmer temperatures”.

The Director of the Bureau of Meteorology Dr Greg Ayers has now responded at an estimates hearing, demolishing Plimer’s bogus claims and pointing to numerous scathing reviews of his trashy and dishonest book. Ayers is great value, but the real fun in reading the Hansard transcript comes from the frantic attempts of Senators MacDonald and Boswell to stop him talking...

It’s great to see the Bureau taking a leading role in the defence of science. Sadly, some of those who should be speaking out, most notably the Australian Academy of Science, have been missing in action. ...

It’s also amusing to see leading figures on the political right like Pell, McDonald and Boswell expose themselves as gullible fools, along with most of the rightwing commentariat. While not everyone on the right thinks this way (as witness Turnbull’s near-victory over Abbott a year or so ago), the number willing to raise their voices in defence of science remains tiny.

Footnote1. Advocates of the conspiracy theory tend to shift between global communist and grant-grubbing theories, in a manner reminiscent of the (possibly apocryphal) Tasmanian politician who promised voters that, if they supported Federation they would build a glorious new nation under the Southern Cross and get higher prices for their apples."

Quiggin's description of Senator Ian Macdonald as a leading figure of the political right is laughable, of course. But what is hilarious is the Hansard Report between pages 104 and 109.

Cheers, Slim

See also Tim Lambert and Graham Readfearn

Of intelligent policy contributions and short memories

2011-03-01T09:59:00.002+10:00

I see that Member for Herbert, Ewen Jones, has made it another incisive contribution to the national debate on climate change!

Although Hansard doesn't record his actual words, you would like to think that he was perhaps interjecting with some new data on the rate of melting in the arctic permafrost or a science-based solution to the projected death of the Great Barrier Reef within the next 20 to 40 years.

To be fair, The Big Ewe did make one contribution of some substance during his day in the big house yesterday. His speech on Warren Entsch's motion on the "Loss of the Malu Sara" was, at times, considered and compassionate. Though, it is a bit of a pity that his only acknowledgement that the five deaths that is the "Loss of the Malu Sara" happened under the former conservative Government's watch was this little line:

"I do not excuse the Howard government for their role here, but..."

By applying the same logic used by Tony Abbott to vilify Peter Garrett over the deaths of pink-batt insulation installers employed by shoddy contractors, surely the least the Big Ewe could have done was clearly acknowledge that the Howard government was responsible for the deaths of Wilfred Baira, Ted Harry, Valorie Faub, Flora Enosa and her daughter Ethena! Or maybe even apologise for his Party's culpability?

Ewen Jones: "The Townsville Tool" or just an idiot?

2011-02-24T19:16:00.002+10:00

Slim writes in follow-up to my earlier post about The Big Ewe's contribution to the national debate and to creating a viable and sustainable policy framework for ~~the~~ our future

A different type of 'substantial contribution' may not make it into local print media.

On the Crikey web site on 23 February in a report by Bernard Keane (behind their subscriber paywall) about Li'l Bil) Shorten's parliamentary performance the last three paragraphs of the report give a rather sad insight into the parliamentary performance of the Member for Herbert, Ewen Jones -
"It’s only early in the parliamentary year but a low point was plumbed right at the end of question time when Kevin Rudd rose to discuss the Middle East and, in particular, Libya, revealing the Libyan ambassador had been called in for a dressing down and that he’d spoken to the Bahraini foreign minister about the killing of protesters there.

This was, plainly, a matter of complete non-interest to a number of Coalition MPs who used the answer to offer doubtless witty advice to Rudd. Peter Dutton and Greg Hunt both heckled and interjected. And sitting up in the back corner, Queensland MP Ewen Jones spent the entire answer jeering and laughing as Rudd discussed Middle East protests, the slaughter of demonstrators and the presence of Australians in Libya.

Classy."
What a representative of the citizens of the greater Townsville region!

Cheers,
Slim

Note to Slim: what exactly is the difference between identifying him as a 'tool' rather than as an (my preferred) idiot? Both are equally dangerous aren't they?

Mind you, "The Townsville Tool" (or even better the "Tool of Townsville") has a certain ring to it. But then, "Idiot" is a lot more to the point and "Schoolyard Idiot" would be even more descriptive....

Libya. Viva la Revolution!

2011-02-24T15:13:00.000+10:00

Yet again, Mr Fish gets it in one:

There's important news and then there's REALLY important news

2011-02-24T14:04:00.000+10:00

Just in on my RSS Reader.

Ah!, priorities.

Ewen Jones - talking sense for Townsville

2011-02-24T09:42:00.000+10:00

Parliament is sitting again, giving local representative, The Big Ewe, his chance to again contribute to the national debate and make his mark on the country's policy directions and priorities.

Checking OpenAustralia.org for The Ewe's contribution so far this sitting, I was particularly taken by his first entry in Hansard for 23 Feb 2011:

To be fair, The Ewe also made some more substantial contributions yesterday: There's a nice little suck-up to one of The Ewe's major sponsors, The Townsville Bulletin, and we learn that the Federal Flood Levy will be result in the death of charity in Australia

Perhaps today he'll get to turn his mind to more mundane issues like this prediction out today that the world's reefs (including North Queensland's pre-eminent economic and natural asset, the GBR) will be dead within 40 years - that is, by the time his kids are about as old as he is today. We'll see.

The end of the bookstore (as we know it)?

2011-02-17T16:35:00.000+10:00

Makes you wonder hey?

...and the coppers get it very wrong

2011-02-17T15:37:00.002+10:00

'Poof' goes that warm and fuzzy feeling from my last post:

Quigley attacks WA police commisioner By Josh Jerga, AAP, February 17, 2011 - 3:49PM

Western Australia's shadow attorney-general John Quigley has launched a blistering attack on the state's police commissioner for distributing what he calls "a litany of lies".

In state parliament, Mr Quigley criticised the role of Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan in "vilifying" an Aboriginal man who was tasered up to 41 times in a week by police and corrective services officers.

The behaviour of officers in arresting Kevin Spratt and his treatment at Perth lock-up was the subject of a Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) inquiry in December.

Mr Spratt's treatment came to light when a video was released last year of police tasering him 14 times while in custody at Perth Watchhouse on August 31, 2008.

Following the release of initial video, which pixellated Mr Spratt's face, WA police issued a flow chart to media outlining the events leading up his tasering and involvement with police, including charges previously brought against him.

Mr Quigley told parliament that when examined against police documents and evidence before the CCC, the flow chart was a "litany of lies".

He called on the government to get to the bottom of the creation of the document, which he said was compiled by the WA police internal affairs unit.

"What discussion (did they have) with Commissioner O'Callaghan and Deputy Commissioner (Chris) Dawson before they so willingly went out into a press conference selling these lies to the public of WA to vilify Kevin Spratt?" Mr Quigley told parliament.

"It is beyond imagination as to why they did it ... but it's got to mark them down as the worst commissioner and deputy commissioner in Australia by their conduct."

Mr Quigley told parliament Mr Spratt had complained to Mr O'Callaghan about his alleged vilification, but was told via a letter in October that police did not identify him.

He said that following the press conference in which Mr O'Callaghan released the flow chart, a Seven Network TV news crew went to the home of Mr Spratt's parents, who told them he was at work.

"The commissioner of police would want us to believe this eye-wash, that there was no communication with Channel Seven of the address or person ... that's just a lie," he said.

Mr Quigley said the flow chart stated Mr Spratt had acted violently and obstructed police at Perth lock-up before being tasered, and as a result had been charged over that behaviour.

However the CCC hearing in December was told Mr Spratt had not been violent and had been convicted on the basis of a misleading statement of facts.

"There's a day of reckoning coming," Mr Quigley said. ...read on

Now, that's much more familiar behaviour from the coppers

The coppers get it right

2011-02-17T14:27:00.000+10:00

News just in from the 7 News site:

Police officer sacked over alleged Indigenous alcohol breach Kim Lyell, ABC February 17, 2011, 2:42 pm

A central Queensland policeman has been sacked over allegations he took alcohol into a 'dry' Aboriginal community.

The Queensland Police Service says a 44-year-old senior sergeant from the central region has been dismissed.

It has issued a statement saying the dismissal followed allegations he transferred an "excessive" amount of alcohol into a community subject to restrictions. More...

It might not exactly balance the ledger but a damn good response (and a damn good message) I reckon

Barney Joyce is an idiot - the proof

2011-02-15T07:14:00.005+10:00

News from the Courier Mail this morning that Barney Joyce, representative of the man on the land and all things rural and agricultural "has written off an $80,000 taxpayer-funded four-wheel-drive after trying to drive through a swollen creek before Christmas."

This of course is the same idiotic practice that resulted in the deaths of quite a number of people in the lead-up to and during the Queensland floods.

Joyce's excuse? "There was no flood indicator, the road was not closed and there was a sign saying ''drive slowly."

In other words, "It wasn't my fault it is the fault of whichever Government is responsible for road signs." Clearly the man is totally reliant on the nanny state to tell him what to do and what not to do and what is safe and what is not.

Despite not being in his familiar home patch (the incident happened in Burren Creek, in northern NSW) he failed the most basic farmers' test when confronted with a swollen creek - get out, roll your pants up (only if you're gentry, not a working farmer) and wade in to check the depth and strength of the flow.

Not only is this proof of what we've long known in our hearts (that the man is an goose), it also demonstrates that, while he might be a member of the Nationals, he isn't really OF the land. Dare I say, it also shows him to be a bad example to little children, grey nomads and young ute owners.

Given his stupidity, I wonder if he has to pay the excess on the car insurance ?

Update: Just to highlight my point further, the Murdoch News site reports that he was actually driving through country very familiar to him - making him an even bigger idiot. They also report that "... he said he didn't feel threatened by the flooded creek which was "more like a lagoon than a raging torrent" - a bit like a 19-year old ute driver who thinks he's infallible - making him a 44-year old idiot!

Update #2: Could it be - a Queenslander who is even more of an idiot that Barney? While I feel sorry for this guy and his family, why would you use petrol to start a fire (he clearly was never a Boy Scout) and, if you did, why exactly would you choose stand next to the fire with the petrol can by your side? And just like Barney, this idiot's family figure it's all the fault of Government

Cut everybody's welfare (but not mine)

2011-02-14T09:13:00.000+10:00

It's good to see that the Business Council is acting according to script. The ABC reports today that the BC (an appropriate abbreviation really) is calling for cuts to disability pensions and oversees aid to fund disaster recovery. Of course no suggestion of any cuts to business welfare:

The Business Council says cuts to disability services and foreign aid should be considered as alternatives to the flood levy.

...in its pre-budget submission, the Business Council, which represents Australia's top 100 companies, says the government should instead press ahead with returning the budget to surplus through short-term spending discipline.

Council president Graham Bradley says all current spending should be reviewed and disability pensions may not be the best use of government money.

Read on and you'll even find the word "incentivised". Now I haven't heard that one for a while!

Stupid rich people do it in Adelaide too

2011-02-11T14:17:00.001+10:00

Just to show that it's not just stupid rich people in Queensland who build homes in stupid places (and stupid planning authorities that let them), there's this from the Adelaide Advertiser's site about the foothill slopes of the Mt Lofty Ranges behind Adelaide - a city where any property on elevated land is worth a absolute motsa:

Creek dams won't protect 3500 homes from floods
MORE than 3500 homes would be flooded in a 1-in-100 year downpour, even if two dams were built on Brown Hill Creek, a new report has revealed.

The report has reignited tensions between five local councils struggling to strike an accord to protect local homes from flooding along Brown Hill and Keswick creeks, the Hills & Valley Messenger has revealed.

With the April 30 deadline looming for the councils to reach a consensus, Mitcham Mayor Michael Picton has admitted it is unlikely the date will be met.

“It’s unacceptable to have so many properties without protection after over $100 million is being spent,” he said.

A draft report to review a 2006 master plan on flood management along the creeks was recently released by engineering company WorleyParsons.

It states 3500 homes in the lower reaches of Brown Hill and Keswick creeks would be flooded - even if the recommendations in the 2006 plan, including building two concrete detention basins in Brown Hill Creek, were implemented.

Forget about storm and tempest - God protect us from Local Governments and planning authorities!

ET brought a lemon - Stupid rich people and that Cyclone

2011-02-11T09:06:00.003+10:00

Stupid rich people's toys.
Port Hinchinbrook post Cyclone Yasi

Most of my posts about Cyclone Yasi (and the SE Qld flood for that matter) have at some point discussed stupid rich people buying or building houses in stupid places (like foreshore sand dunes).

There is no better example of this apparently universal malaise (so energetically supported by planning authorities) than Port Hinchinbook just south of Cardwell. If you're interested in stupid rich people getting sucked in by property developers to build in stupid places have a read of Critics predicted damage to Port Hinchinbrook by Matthew Moore and Tom Reilly at the SMH but note, their piece doesn't even begin to touch on the graft and corruption that enabled Williams to develop the Port Hinchinbrook site (think Jo and the White Shoe Brigade).

And if you need an example of how stupid stupid rich people really can be, check out this little report from the Nine News site on Andrew Ettingshausen's plans to return to Port Hinchinbrook. Of course, no mention that he really doesn't have much choice given that he failed to sell his property in 2009 and that it would have been failing in value ever since (and would now be even more unsaleable).

The Townsville Bulletin and Magnetic Island. Again!

2011-02-11T08:27:00.001+10:00

I hate to harp on about this, but this morning's Townville Bulletin has done it again.

Their 32-page "Wrath of a monster" pictorial supplement (not available online) includes some 118 great pics and not a single one of them relate to Magnetic Island!!.

If you are interested in the Island (or not) DON'T visit The Bully's online galleries as it only encourages them - rather, check out these great island pics in The Magnetic Times or even those in my earlier Yasi posts here and here

The young people are revolting and their revolution is live

2011-02-11T07:39:00.004+10:00

One of the interesting things about being largely isolated from the world and self-absorbed in the priorities of getting power, water and food during and immediately after Cyclone Yasi, was hearing snippets of information about the people's revolution in Egypt.

This morning our time, Mubarak as essentially given the people of Egypt the finger by installing his vice-president to "lead" the nation.

I suspect that today the real revolution starts in Egypt.

Image: Tahrir square crowds, Feb. 11, 2011. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

Watching all of this unfold this morning reminded me of the fantastic Gil Scott-Heron track The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Written for an earlier young people's revolution, it still hits the mark. (I'd also argue as others have that Scott-Heron was one of the originators of rap and hip hop, or street poetry as it use to be known)

I love it when young people are revolting - after all, it is they who create change, not self-interested old men like Mubarak. However, we know from previous revolutions large and small that, without a clear idea of and manifesto for the change you want to create, the revolution will be unlikely to achieve it's potential, let alone its objectives.

I fear the young people of Egypt aren't organised in this way and as such their organic revolution will either flounder or, in the long-run, result in a worse than status-quo outcome.

I hope I'm wrong.

Finally, some great coverage about Cyclone Yasi's impact on Magnetic Island

2011-02-10T15:47:00.001+10:00

At last, someone has filled the gaping hole in the mainstream media's coverage of the impact of Cyclone Yasi in this region and on Maggie Island in partcular.

The Magnetic Times has again delivered what The Bulletin and many others have failed to even acknowledge. It's a great read with some fantastic pics including the one below. Read it here

The Painic Bay Jetty walkway
Source: The Magnetic Times. Photo: George Hirst

Yasi repair priorities

2011-02-10T14:20:00.001+10:00

The Erosion Patrol article in today's Townsville Bulletin about repairing the city's beaches says heaps about both the Bulletin's ability to critically appraise the spin that comes out of Council and Council's priority setting for its Yasi clean-up efforts.

From the article we learn that:

Rich idiots built/brought a house on a foreshore sanddune in the city's northern beaches
The sea persistantly tries to reclaim it's dune
Nobody is responsible for approving the developments or choosing to live in them
All taxpayers are responsible for restoring these front yards (and property values)

You'd also assume that, after the Strand, these were the only beaches damaged by Yasi's storm surge. Mayor Tyrell (or should that be Mayor-in-wanting, the very quiet Dale Last) and the Bulletin would be much better informed if they actually visited that other suburb, Magnetic Island. If they did they'd see damage like this on the Nelly Bay foreshore:

By my reckoning, this part of Nelly Bay has lost about 15 metres of beachfront!

I would have thought that Tyrell or Last would have worked out by now that:

Magnetic Island is Townsville's prime tourism asset and as such produce an economic benefit for the whole city,
Part of the Island's sales pitch is it's 23 beaches,
Beachfront mansions in Bushland Beach are of no productive benefit to the city or its economy

Naive me!

I also learn in the Bully's hardcopy that Mayor Les has actually flown over the Island in a helicopter. I wish I'd known - I'd have given him the finger back

Footnote: I should also point out that, while the damage in the pics was caused by Yasi's storm surge, the reason for the damage is the reshaping of the Bay when the western end was blow-up, bulldozed and filled-in to make the Nelly Bay Harbour which you can just see the beginning of in the bottom two pics.

What I learnt from Cyclone Yasi

2011-02-09T21:02:00.000+10:00

While Yasi's winds here were equivalent to a severe Category 2 or weak Cat. 3 cyclone there are some useful things I learnt (or were reminded of) for next time:

The wind follows the land - the gullies and valleys - just as fires and flash floods do

Get a manual coffee grinder

Solar houses don't have to wait for the power to come on

Get an alternative mobile phone charger - car, solar, wind-up, whatever

A surprising number of people build stupid houses in stupid places

Building on or immediately behind the foreshore dune is dumb - it's a sand dune for god's sake! It has a purpose - to move, to replenish the beach!

The ONLY media that works/adds value in a crisis is local ABC radio and a battery powered receiver - it must be defended at all costs

There is no such thing as too much duct tape

Don't assume that because there's a cyclone, it's gonna rain - fill the bath all the way.

Emergency alert text messages are great - if you have a mobile

Charge the camera beforehand - taking pics on the mobile chews up battery time

Tell everyone beforehand to only text you and not to ring

Get more ice beforehand, fill the fridge up with it (unless you have a solar house of course)

The Internet is invaluable until you lose power - but only because in enables you to track the cyclone closely.

News sites are hopeless and facebook is downright dangerous in the hands of a teenager who cant discern rumour from fact or possibility from probability.

Print media is useless unless they can can get an edition out before the power comes on

The BOM site is fantastic but I suspect most people don't know how to read the forecast maps

Most people have no idea of the country on which they live or how it works

Most people (and journalists) have no appreciation of the geography of Queensland

Don't wait for the last minute to buy your beer supply and when you do don't forget to get extra for all of those chats with the neighbours after

Always be nice to the Ergon and CityWater guys - they are worth their weight in beer at the very least. They do an amazing job in appalling conditions

And finally, when everyone is locked down and until the storm passes, you are starkly reminded that ultimately in this world, you are on your own baby.

What is it with The Townsville Bulletin and Magnetic Island?

2011-02-09T12:09:00.003+10:00

The Bully (like much of Townsville) has a funny relationship with Magnetic Island, just 3km off the coast and closer to the CBD than most suburbs in the town.

Their coverage of Cyclone Yasi's impact on the Island since their first edition on Friday has been woeful and amazingly, they haven't even bothered to send a photographer over to capture the impact on the region's major tourism asset. Then of course, the probably haven't sent one over for the last 6 months either.

But they are determined to make good - in their own inimitable style of course. They've put Mary Vernon's phone pics up in a gallery (including one of her street number for some reason?) and Maggie actually made front page today! And a humdinger it is too! "They've all gone batty" is the witty little editor's effort to headline a story about a guy drinking at the Picnic Bay pub who got bitten by a fruit bat - no doubt because he tried to handle it or was so p*ssed that he fell or walked into it.

Don't bother following the link to read the story as it only encourages them, but to summarise, the innuendo is that Islanders are about to get raped and pillaged by marauding bats whose roosts and food trees have been destroyed or stripped.

Of course, I suspect that the real reason they ran the story (other than a rabid bat scare always sells up here for some reason) was that they finally had a professional Maggie pic (slightly p*ssed man with bandage against a lovely blue backgound) without having to send the photographer to the Island.

As I will expand on in a separate post at some stage, in a natural disaster the print media are a waste of space (as is social media pretty much).

It's just that, with the exception of their first post cyclone edition which consisted almost entirely of pictures, The Bully is a waste of space most of the other time as well.

Cyclone Yasi hits Magnetic Island - the pics

2011-02-09T11:11:00.002+10:00

A week after Yasi started getting serious, the Island is slowly being cleaned up. For those who have enquired, here are my phone pics of the aftermath. (Not to self: Next time don't use your precious mobile charge to take pics!)

Picnic Bay after Yasi - looking more like the after effects of a super-drought or bushfire

Yasi's cruelest damage. Picnic Bay Jetty, so familiar to all of those generations who's ferry trip to the Island started and ended with a walk down the Jetty. If we are lucky, Council and the Port Authority will leave us with maybe half. If we are really lucky they will cut off it's 'head'. Given neither authority wants the burden of maintaining it, there is a real danger of losing it altogether

Picnic Bay - one street back from the foreshore. One old paperbark down
and the rest stripped of leaves and bark. Their trunks appear bright orange/pink the morning after.

Yule St Picnic Bay

Trees stripped bare on the Picnic Bay Golf Course

Our Place - Before and after the initial clean-up

Our Nelly Bay house - on the way home from the beach
on the morning after

Bob's Nelly Bay BBQ - the site of many a Sunday lunch, kids birthday
and meeting of the right wing of the Townsville ALP

Almost high tide on the morning after.
Storm surge damage on the road to X Base and Picnic Bay

After the storm surge and high tide. 50cm of sand on the road to Picnic Bay

Lost! The morning after and this Black Cocky (Red Tail) let me get within a metre.
The island flock seem to have got separated during the storm and spend a couple
of days after looking for each other. The 10-12 strong flock seems to be back together again.

Nelly Bay Harbour. The little boxes of ticky tacky survived but not their sales pitch

Nelly Bay Harbour. Hard to see, but some people don't know how to tie up their boat.

But Johnny Elliton does - his recently launched, home built trimaran didn't move an inch

Hoop Pine down on the Picnic-Arcadia hill

Geoffrey Bay foreshore

High Tide Horseshoe Bay the morning after

Horseshoe Bay looking West - The storm surge was hours earlier

Horseshoe Bay looking West a few days later

Horseshoe Bay looking East towards the shops

Horseshoe Bay after the road was opened

X Base Backpackers Trashed! But don't blame it on Yasi

2011-02-07T10:24:00.009+10:00

Before Yasi - The Boardwalk
and beachfront rubble

I posted some time ago about base Backpackers (X Base) here on Magnetic Island and their apparent disregard for both the environment they seek to make money from and for the responsibilities that come with having one of the most unique commercial tourism sites in North Queensland.

As I understand it, X Base Magnetic Island is the only 'resort' (loosely defined) in Australia and one of the few in the world where you can lean to scuba dive on coral from the beach. To do so anywhere else involves a boat trip and associated expense and is a prime reason for backpackers coming to the island - it's the cheapest place to learn to dive and or get your hours up for an instructors ticket.

Before Yasi - Part of the pool retaining wall
showing broken infrastructure and rubble

As the first two pictures show, the Recreational Tourism Group Pty Ltd, (the owners of X Base who are in turn owned by, amongst others, Babcock & Brown and Accor Hotels) have for a long time treated their absolute beach frontage with contempt. The second of those pics is of their beach frontage damage that was never repaired/removed after (I think) Cyclone Tessi in 2000 or maybe a king tide since.

That second pic was taken on Tuesday afternoon - the day before Yasi hit. The 'resort' had (rightfully, given its location) been fully evacuated by then. On my Yasi night post I wondered what would be left the next morning.
The results are below:

After Yasi - This more or less corresponds to the second of the before pics.
The spot in the before pics is on the left of this one, next to the bolder.

After Yasi - From a different angle - there is/was a swimming pool behind that wall

After Yasi - The (private) ramp to the beach which has to stretch below the high tide mark.

After Yasi - The boardwalk corresponding to the first of the before pics.

The rubble shown in that before pic has clearly moved. Some has been lost to the sea

These results were completely predictable - a sure bet. While none of the buildings at the 'resort' appear damaged, their sea frontage is a wreck for only one or, more likely, both of two reasons:

Their sea frontage structures should never have been built there in the first place. The seawall by the pool and the rocks under the boardwalk have to (at best) be on the high tide line.

The structures were extremely poorly (read cheaply) built and certainly not constructed to a standard that would survive the inevitable storm surge. Some closer pics of their seawall footings which I hope to get over the next few days will provide ample evidence of the shoddy construction.

While there are a lot of questions to be answered about why this was allowed to happen and/or never redressed, the reality is that the Recreational Tourism Group Pty Ltd and X Base are responsible for their structures and they have done nothing in the years that they have been custodians of the beach to ensure that those structures were both attractive to visitors and safe to the environment (and to visitors and beach walkers for that matter).

Given the damage that they will have inflicted on the beach and inshore reef, I reckon it's time to go this mob - after all, the damage was within in their control and as such is their fault, NOT Yasi's as they will no doubt claim to their insurance company and Authorities.

Copies of this post will be going to the EPA, National Parks, GBRMPA, Townsville City Council, local members and the relevant State and Federal Ministers over the next day or so.

Vandals!

Getting your bearings: Nelly Bay looking west on the morning after Yasi.
X Base is located at the end of the Bay, just out of frame. There are no other beachfront structures between where this pic was taken and where X Base are located at the end of the Bay

Blogging after Yasi

2011-02-06T20:07:00.000+10:00

Back online! Quite a strange sensation I must say.

The power came on at home at about 4:30 this afternoon - the cause of many hoots and whistles and yelps up and down the street.

We now have all of the essentials back on - water, power and ferries. We had supermarket bread this afternoon (Steve the local baker will hopefully be baking tomorrow night). High school opens tomorrow but the Island primary school (where I spent most of today) will be closed for one more day as the trucks continue to take away the green waste from the grounds.. Milk and maybe meat will land on the island tomorrow. The beer supply is low again and the limited choice is critical.

The espresso machine is roaring again - the first appliance turned on and a long black the first electricity drawn from the grid!

There's lots of stories to tell from the last five days but they'll have to wait for now. I'm buggered and going to bed. Normality of sorts returns in the morning.

Blogging Cyclone Yasi

2011-02-01T14:03:00.088+10:00

I probably should have started this on Monday and will no doubt get distracted by life from time-to-time but I'll try to update this regularly as Cyclone Yasi gets closer to landfall and for as long as the power stays on.

For those new to the blog, I'm posting from Magnetic Island, off Townsville - a small rural city somewhere east of Mount Isa and somewhere south of Yasi's projected path (we hope). The most recent post follows:

8:18pm 02/02 Check this out - it might be an hour or so old. Source

8:10pm 02/02     Just checked my blog stats - this has been great for my visitor numbers!!

The background roar is getting louder - I still cant work out whether it's the sea of the wind. One thing is for sure - they are both pretty wild!

The BOM is still forecasting a midnight crossing and has Yasi still as a Cat 3 when it hits the Atherton Tablelands - and they ain't built for that up there!

8:05pm 02/02     Just been outside for one of those cigars I got earlier. It is really blowing now - and from every direction.

Just heard that they have apparently evacuated everyone from Cardwell (2 hours up the track and 1/2 way to Cairns)- I'm not surprised as it's right on the coast and very low land. I hope Risty and his mob are ok.

All of the buckets are full and there's a days worth of dunny water in the bath - after that the gully outside will be running.

And I've almost run out of duct tape!!! That's mistake No 2 (No 1 being not getting a new stove top espresso maker). I have all that I need for tonight but I'm sure I'll need more in the morning. How could anyone run out of duck tape!!!!???

7:30pm 02/02     Just had a panic about what I'm gonna read by candle light in the bathroom for 5 or 6 hours!! Decided on a comedy.

You can watch Yasi here on the BOM radar- you can clearly see her eye relative to Cairns and Townsville and the rain we are copping.

Listening intently to local ABC radio now - they play an incredibly important role at times like this. It's good to hear first hand accounts about what is happening up and down the coast - it gives you a better idea of what to expect. There must be thousands of people along the north Qld coast camped in their bathrooms right now listening to their radio. They are broadcasting on AM, FM and shortwave - how damn good is that!

It's funny, when I started this I was going to blog on the press response to Yasi. I never did. Until now! And that's about the assessment - some of the coverage has been ok but most of it sh*t (as normal in other words) and ABC radio is essential

6:45pm 02/02      The office is shut down and all turned off. I'll keep this one running while I can. It's quite dark now - light nightfall but 30 minutes early.

10 minutes or so and I will pack this up too and maybe try a few posts by phone a bit later on.

Most strange - a wallaby (not Wally) has turned up for a feed. She has a joey so maybe just had to come out for food?? I certainly wouldn't want to be out in that - it has to be getting close to tree-over winds!

6:10pm 02/02     Just had my first brown-out but the UPS did it's job. It will start to get nasty in about an hour or so but I don't think power will last that long. Even though they just finished trimming the trees around the lines one of them has to get taken out sooner or later.

I will go and pack away the other computer and blog again if I can. If I can't - we're all sorted and the prognosis is good when compared to that for those in Mission Beach.

There is a dull rumble in the background when I go outside - can't tell whether is the wind or the waves!

5:35pm 02/02     There's a new Kookaburra nest created!! If you look closely in the middle ground there is a tree branch broken in three places - the Kooka's will love it!

Also, just saw what I think is a Garnet (very angular wings) and it reminded me - i saw about 10 of the same surfing the breeze (in formation no less) when I last went down to the beach. It was quite extraordinary as I'd seen no other birds all day and yet they were just hanging there about 25 feet of the ground in formation like seagulls surfing the wind currents off a cliff.

4:45pm 02/02 Crazy Hoyt across the way has just lost a tree - you might see it if you compare this pic with the similar one posted a while back:

It looks like I'll soon lose my Frangipani out front too.

BOM has us (Townsville) copping 100km wind gusts

4:40pm 02/02 All the windows are shut now and there are a few quite large branches down in the park across the way. My Internet connection is starting to drop out intermittently and the nasty stuff is still a couple of hours away and then could take 5-8 hours to pass.

I'm still glad I don't live Mission Beach! - or Mount Isa for that matter - those guys would have no experience of a cyclone and it's forecast to still be a Cat 1 when it gets out there (8-hours by road).

4:25pm 02/02 Just saw the coppers heading back home to Picnic Bay - Brenden and the boys will be very p*ssed that it had to be this week that their 4x4 went to town for maintenance and they get a sedan as its replacement.

4:20pm 02/02 The 4:00pm forecast - we're now officially starting to experience strong gale force winds but I guess I knew that.

4:05pm 02/02 I've just realised that Cardwell (North of us) is now forecast to get a storm surge PLUS 7 metre waves on top. Cardwell is just up the channel where Sunferries have apparently sent their boats for shelter (see earlier entry) - Idiots!

3:55pm 02/02 It's starting to get cooler (now down to our normal evening temp of about 25) and after every wind gust there's a flurry of tree leaves in the air. Looking up the hill next to me, the high trees are already taking a battering

The stories from Cairns are amazing - 2,000 people sheltering in a shopping mall with the supermarkets opening their doors to feed them.

3:40pm 02/02 The coffee won and it's a beauty. The front door is now shut as it's getting very squally outside. The wind is coming from all directions and the rain is starting to get horizontal - something that we're not used to up here - tropical rain is vertical.

Larger limbs are starting to come down in the park across the road and the wind is rising to the occasional whistle. I haven't seen or heard a car on Sooning St for at least an hour.

I bet lots of others are opening their first beer about now so bugger it, the coffee's drunk, why not?

3:30pm 02/02 Can't work out whether to have another coffee while there's power for the espresso machine or a beer!

3:12pm 02/02 Most of the doors are now shut and Tom's wrestling mattress is in the bathroom ready for the worse. Starting to get the documents and pics in plastic but will leave the hard drives as long as possible (or until the power goes).

The BOM 3pm forecast has Strong Gale Force winds arriving here in about an hour

2:40pm 02/02 The 2:00pm forecast has Yasi coming in a bit further to the south with the eye covering about 100km with Mission Beach at the centre. We'll copy the winds in the dark pink bit - officially described as "Destructive" - about the equivalent of Cat 2 or 3 Cyclone. (The grey shaded area is essentially the margin for error for the track forecast)

The winds should start picking up significantly in a couple of hours with the eye crossing the coast at about 11:00 tonight. I cant stop thinking that I'm lucky I'm not further north.

2:00pm 02/02 Back from my last drive for a sticky-beak. The winds must be getting close to gale force down there - Another before pic of X base for later on (see 6:13pm entry from yesterday below).

That will be my last drive. The car is parked up the hill in a clear spot.

Small branches are starting to come down as is the odd Banana tree and I'm no longer sure about the walk down to the beach that I had been planning for an hour or twos time.

Still flying the flag

1:41pm 02/02 This is literally true:

1:34pm 02/02 Outside the front door - a lot of those clouds are getting sucked out to Yasi at real speed - exactly opposite to their normal direction

1:18pm 02/02 Just made what will likely be my last espresso for a while and realised that I hadn't replaced my emergency stove top coffee maker It will be 1-cup filter coffee or Greek coffee in the morning

The news gets worse. It looks as if the worse winds will between Innisfail and Cardwell (about 2 hours north from us) which means we could easily have 150 km winds! Mind you, them further north will be copping 300 km winds!!!!

Finished taping the windows and outside is all organised bar bringing the bikes into the lounge.

The winds are constantly picking up now and I'd guess the we only have an hour or two before a line goes down somewhere and we lose power

I'd like to get out for one more look in the car but heavy rain has started and it doesn't look real flash out there - we'll see

12:51pm 02/02 Wow!

12:31am 02/02 Back from a quick drive down to "the front". The coconuts are starting to bend in the wind (exactly as they're designed to) and, believe me, you wouldn't want to be out on the water!

Satellite TV (all I can get) is cutting out because of the increasing cloud so it's radio from here on in - much more informative anyway.

Looking back to Nelly Bay - the sea is a lot angrier than it looks

Little boxes of ticky tacky at Bright Point - their first real test!

An interesting way of boarding up your restaurant windows!
But then would you take cyclone advice from a Frenchman?

11:45am 02/02 Most recent advice is a storm surge of 3m for us. I'll be fine as will the kids but it is quite possible that there will be no beer at the Picnic Bay Pub tomorrow either!

News is that Yasi has taken out the Willis Is weather station (off Cairns) - winds of 295km / hr!!

11:02am 02/02 Back from the shops for last minute supplies - matches for the gas burner and three days supply of cigars! I don't know who was busier - the mini-mart or the bottle shop!

The rain has started for real and the wind is quite gusty now. The tide is one the wane but the sea at Nelly is now very dirty - the kite surfers have gone home.

10:25am 02/02 Back from a quick trip around the island after dropping the kids off. It's morning high tide and a 2m storm surge (what we're expecting) on top of that would be pretty ugly. (I've rechecked the flood maps to comfort myself).

The sea is pretty angry on the south and eastern sides of the Island, but Horseshoe Bay on the north is almost a millpond (if a somewhat dirty one!).

The wind is beginning to pickup again, and I've just received my third emergency text alert for the morning. The Clinic has set up an emergency medical centre at the back of Nelly Bay just in case and the Ambo's building (HQ for emergency services) is a hive of activity.

The supermarkets are much quieter than I expected and will close in a couple of hours. Everything else on the island is pretty well shut down - except for the kite surfers in Nelly Bay who are having a ball!

Pics from my last venture out - with luck, I'll get out in a few hours for another:

Picnic Bay Jetty - You can't see it but the waves are breaking over
the jetty - something that normally only happens in a king tide

No beer at the Picnic Bay Pub today
The Esplanade is under mandatory evacuation orders

Horseshoe Bay - dead calm and bits of blue

8:29am 02/02 Believe it or not, the sun is out! Most of the heavy low cloud that was around earlier has gone and you can see the last them being sucked north , feeding Yasi as she lumbers on towards the coast.

The winds are getting quite gusty and I can clearly hear the waves on the beach - quite unusual during the day.

Time to get the kids organised to go to their Mum's - we know that her's was one of the few in Picnic Bay to survive Cyclone Althea and while I'm confident about my place (block construction), it was built since Althea so we just can't be sure.

7:42am 02/02 Just back from buying the last of the milk and day-old bread on the island. Nelly Bay is very quiet - a few cars and trailers doing last minute trips to the dump and one lone walker on the beach. Most of the boats are gone from the Harbour (I wonder to where) but Johnny Elliton's new hand-crafted ocean-going trimaran is still sitting there - I hope he'll be ok.

One other guy came into Foodworks while I was there and, while buying his fags, casually asked Robyn whether the "storm" will come anywhere near us. She explained that we're likely to get Cat 2 or even 3 winds and flooding. He just looked at her blankly and shrugged - no idea!

The water is beginning to look quite angry and there is a lot of weed on the shore already. Back at home it is eerily quiet without any of the normal bird noise filling the background

Wally seems to have headed for the hills!

6:52am 02/02 Wally (the Wallaby) has just come in for his morning feed. He's a lot more skitty than normal at this hour when He'd be thinking of a daytime snooze. He was certainly looking for a cuddle.

It will be interesting to see if he hangs around here or heads for the rocks for the day.

6:22am 02/02 The rain has started.

6:15am 02/02 Woke to the news that Yasi is already a Cat 5 and is still on track to hit Innisfail / Cairns head on! They are reporting this morning that the eye of the storm alone is 100km across which means that both Cairns and Innisfail (and certainly any poor buggers left in the Aboriginal community of Yarabah on the coast up up there).

Here on the island, the sky is dark and heavy with cloud and the wind has picked up quite a bit since bed time 8 hours ago. It's a bit like the beginning of a squally storm except there is none of the bird noise and no sign of Wallaby's heading home after a night on the grass that we would normally hear and see at this hour.

This is going to be a long day but not nearly as long or as frightening as it is gonna be for those people in Cairns!!

10:05pm Tues 01/02 Well that's it for the night. With the news that some 30,000 people in the Cairns region are being relocated, I can go to bed fairly confident that we are going to be spared the worse.

The kids are getting nervous again - the 10-year old is asleep in my bed and the 15-year old is getting all sorts of cyclone advice from other 15 year olds via facebook.

I see from twitter that the Sunrise program have flown their weatherman into Innisfail so that he can broadcast the action live in the morning. Trouble is, the real action won't be until the afternoon by which time I'm sure he'll be out of harms way sipping G&T's somewhere. God, the MSM give me the sh*ts ~~sometimes~~ a lot of the time.

Tomorrow should be interesting

9:00pm Tues 01/02 This was taken at 7:30 tonight - Big bugger hey

8:39pm Tues 01/02 The breeze has picked up but only slightly and I can hear the waves from beach, but the sky is still filled with stars and the bush nightlife seems as active as ever.

It seems that with every release from the BOM, Yasi's trajectory towards Cairns/Innisfail and then on to the Tablelands becomes more certain.

6:47pm Tues 01/02 Just went out to feed Wally (the Wallaby - of course) and have a pat. Heard the last ferry going - we're isolated now until Friday I suspect.

Wally doesn't seem to worried about anything!

6:13pm Tues 01/02 Back from a walk on the beach. It's surprisingly quiet with fresh sea plants that have been ripped up out to sea the only real sign that anything might be up.

I took the opportunity to take this pic of part the sea frontage at X Base at the western end of Nelly Bay. I've posted before about this mob's attitude to their location and will be interested to take a pic from the same spot after tomorrow night's storm surge.

The rubble you can see was never cleaned up since the last cyclone and my bet is that, come Thursday morning, it will either be gone or joined by a whole heap of other rubble from their site. Either way, it will be off to the EPA!

4:45pm Tues 01/02 Things are getting very quiet on the roads around the Island and many businesses are already shut.

The shops opposite the Nelly Bay Harbour are boarded up - pretty smart when you consider that the hideous boxes of ticky-tacky on the Harbour are likely to be the first thing to blow away.

Everybody is saying 'take care' or 'stay safe' when you greet them or stop for a chat.

A social game is still going on at the bowls club and the bar is still open. There is an almost rideable wave developing at Alma Bay

And THE BEER HAS ARRIVED!! Thank god for Tommy

3:57pm Tues 01/02     Word has it that Sunferries are taking the ferries to the Hinchinbrook channel to ride out the storm. How bright is that - Hinchinbrook is to the north, between us and Yasi's forecast track. Doh!

On the other hand, Fantasea are sending their barges south to the Whitsundays. But then, they were always the brighter of the two companies.

3:23pm Tues 01/02     Just received an email from the Dept. of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation with a "Cyclones and storm surge checklist" for local businesses. A bit late but I'm sure they feel better!

2:37pm Tues 01/02     She might be scary but goddamn she's beautiful

From the Joint Typhoon Warning Center

2:31pm Tues 01/02      The Arcadia Pub is OUT OF BEER !!!!!!
The good news is that Tommy is bring 5 pallets back on the next barge. I better make sure I get there soon after!!

2:00pm Tues 01/02     Things are relatively quiet on the island. The ferries will stop at about 6:00 pm tonight and while there is a steady stream of cars leaving by barge there weren't many waiting to go on the last ferry - a few tourists and individual old-timers

The most recent BOM update confirms that (at present) Yasi is tracking towards Cairns.

Jeeze, I'm glad I'm not there (or worse, in Yarrabah). I was once told by a senior copper who had just returned from a disaster planning meeting in the city that the Emergency Management Plan should Cairns be hit head-on by a Cat 4 or 5 Cyclone was bodybags!

As it is, it looks as if the Island and Townsville will cop Cat 1 or maybe 2 winds, but let's wait and see. The real concerns locally now are the expected storm surge and then possible 3 or 4 days without power and water.

Both kids are now home from school (and a lot less nervous as a result). It will be interesting to see if they get back to the grindstone before the end of the week.

For now, it's off to get beer supplies for the next four days or so and then to cleanup the esky

How NOT to prepare for a Cyclone (or fidling while Yasi blows)

2011-02-01T08:35:00.000+10:00

Guest blogger Mr Gee on political madness in Queensland:

"Despite the Premier issuing the following announcement yesterday she, and her band of ministerial keystone cops, are still pressing ahead with the preparation for community cabinet this weekend at Airlie beach, Bowen and Proserpine. (Not many of our esteemed Minister's staying at the 3 star motels in Proserpine with nearly all opting for the more prestigious digs at Airlie).

Ms Bligh said the extremely serious weather event now looked likely to cross the coast overnight on Wednesday and all residents should now be taking precautions, including stocking up on essential items.

"Latest advice from the Bureau of Meteorology is that this cyclone will be accompanied by significant flood in low lying areas from storm surge," Ms Bligh said.

"Those residents in low lying and waterfront areas in the Innisfail to Mackay region should be making arrangements to relocate on Tuesday.

"Advice from the Weather Bureau is that coastal areas in Yasi's path will begin to experience wind gusts beyond 100km an hour early on Wednesday.

"So I implore all of those people who feel they may be facing a dangerous situation to leave their homes in plenty of time and relocate to friends and family.

"If you have family or friends on higher ground, go to them.

"I understand leaving your home will cause anxiety but I would rather people were inconvenienced for a couple of days than place themselves in dangerous situations.

So lets go through some of the impacts of this decision to proceed with the cabinet this weekend designed, no doubt, to shore up support for the sitting member Jan Jarrett and to send a message that it is "business as usual" for Government - despite Queensland suffering the most significant flooding ever seen and the imminent threat of the largest cyclone ever to hit North Queensland with the obvious risk to property and lives:

Many hotels and accommodation houses in the Whitsundays and Bowen are already evacuating residents because of the expectation of significant storm surges

Public servants in North Queensland should now be focusing on either assisting vulnerable clients and communities or taking steps to get their own family preparations underway (including evacuations as necessary) - not continuing to rewrite the "spin" for Minister's to quote at banal community meetings

Valuable resources such as Police and other essential senior regional government staff will be tied up in babysitting cabinet - rather than being available to provide assistance that will be needed elsewhere.

Our Directors-General should be in Brisbane coordinating what needs to be done to get through the latest crisis - again not providing high level babysitting and chaperoning of our politicians

This is political bloody mindedness - and it could cost some people their belongings - or worse - someones' life - by not being adequately prepared by having to cater to a Minister's latest "whim" for useless information."

Ya gotta get hot to play real cool

2011-01-31T16:56:00.001+10:00

This has to be the best Looney Tunes ever made:

Three Little Bops

Every 5-year old should be made to see it!

For a great bit of detective work on who played on it, see Marc Myers' post at JazzWax

The Townsville Bulletin delivers again for the Mad Katter

2011-01-31T10:05:00.002+10:00

Another scorching little piece in today's Bully by Nathan Paull announcing/marketing the Mad Katter's search for a publishing agent. You see, it seems that the Mad Katter has been writing a book.

This completely un-newsworthy effort gets a full half page in the new-look, all-colour-advertising Bully.

Why is it that this mob seem to run every press release The Mad Katter makes? Why do they continue to give air to Katter's magnificently crafted image as "man of the people" and "David against Goliath"?

I wish they (along with the voters of Kennedy) would instead ask what it is that Katter has actually delivered in all his years of making a good living playing the role of the independent maverick MP (and writing books while relaxing in a business class seat)?

As I noted some time ago - having (gutlessly) dealt himself out of the game in September last, the guy is as irrelevant today in federal politics as he always has been.

Mind you, the Bully loves a bit of colour!

A grubby little newspaper

2011-01-31T09:13:00.003+10:00

Well, I see that the departing Townsville Bulletin Editor is ensuring that the Bully's priorities are in tune with those of the Murdoch empire - lots of show and no substance.

On the day he launches his new look 'coulorful' broadsheet (way too colourful and cluttered for my liking) he also chose to run this little number accusing the Qld Government of hording donations made at the time of Cyclone Larry. The piece is, of course, a lazy rewriting of this nasty little effort published yesterday by their sister rag, The Courier Mail.

They of course failed to report Premier Bligh's response (published yesterday in Fairfax's SMH):

"There are some remaining interest funds and, as a report made public in August last year outlined, any remaining funds would be reallocated to future disaster appeals and that's what's going to happen," Ms Bligh said.

Maybe Nathan Paull and the others at the Bully have to wait for a hardcopy of the Courier Mail to get their news, because they certainly didn't publish any of Bligh's or Mackenroth's response available in today's Mail:

PREMIER Anna Bligh has rejected as "absolutely untrue" the claim Cyclone Larry victims had been denied funds donated to the 2006 disaster's appeal.

"Every single dollar that was donated to the Cyclone Larry appeal has gone to a victim of Cyclone Larry," she said.

Ms Bligh said remaining money was accrued interest which could not legally be transferred until all outstanding claims had been settled.

"There is one outstanding claim that is subject of a dispute between the owner and the builder," she said.

Ms Bligh said she was very distressed that claims over the Cyclone Larry appeal, in which $700,000 remained to be spent, could deter people from donating for flood victims.

Former treasurer Terry Mackenroth, who headed the cyclone reconstruction committee, yesterday pointed to his committee's 2007 report to Parliament which said any leftover funds would go towards future disasters.

"I can guarantee every cent that was donated has been spent," he said.

Mr Mackenroth said every claim that had been issued from Innisfail had been dealt with and laws had been followed.

"The appeal raised $21.8 million and every one of those donations was allocated and spent," he said. "We were never sitting on the money."

Mr Mackenroth also said criticism of means testing for current payouts from the Premier's Relief Fund for flood victims was ignoring federal law.

"The Tax Act actually requires that all the funds be means tested," he said.

"The funds that are given as emergency payments aren't means tested but after that, if it goes into an appeal fund and people want to get a tax deduction it has to be means tested.

"In Cyclone Larry we made that a very generous means test but there was a requirement it be done."

They would have heard the same thing if they watched ABC 24 or Sky News yesterday.

Rubbish journalism

"But it can't transfer until all legal claims against it are finalised, and that is yet to happen."

Damn he's good

2011-01-28T09:48:00.002+10:00

Mr Fish's latest:

Like the post header says, damn he's good

Australia Day 2011

2011-01-25T17:42:00.006+10:00

Something to think about while waving the flag tomorrow:

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it". ~ George Bernard Shaw

"Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception." ~ George Orwell

"Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. "Patriotism" is its cult. ~ Erich Fromm

"A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and a common fear of its neighbors". ~ W. R. Inge

"Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress." ~ Thorstein Veblen

"There is a higher form of patriotism than nationalism, and that higher form is not limited by the boundaries of one's country; but by a duty to mankind to safeguard the trust of civilization." ~ Oscar S. Strauss

"Nationalism ... is like cheap alcohol. First it makes you drunk, then it makes you blind, then it kills you." ~ Dan Fried

"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." ~ Albert Einstein

"Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on his own dunghill." ~ R. Aldington

"It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars." ~ Arthur C. Clarke

“Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country's virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, "the greatest," but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.” ~ Sydney J. Harris

“(Nationalism is) a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands” ~ Howard Zinn

“Patriotism is a religion, the egg from which wars are hatched.” ~ Guy de Maupassant

“Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

“Patriotism - the virtue of the vicious.” ~ Oscar Wilde

“You’ll never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

See also: Australia Day — No time to celebrate by Jay McDonald

One can't live on politics alone...

2011-01-25T15:26:00.000+10:00

...fashion counts too:

Source: If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats

Worth a read

2011-01-25T15:01:00.001+10:00

A couple of good links found today:

Good on him: School chaplains facing High Court fight. A guy from Toowoomba has launched High Court challenge because he opposes the Commonwealth funding of chaplains in state schools. But check out the story's student flood victims angle - I wonder how many school Chaplin's are qualified trauma counsellors?

22 Minutes at Helidon on Monday, January 10: Amazing pictures at the Courier mail showing how fast the floodwater's rose at Helidon here

And finally, Murdoch link to hacking fallout deepens - just because I love stories that shine a light on Murdoch's ongoing abuse of power and because you won't see it reported in The Bulletin

Townsville City Council finally gets something right - maybe

2011-01-25T13:16:00.001+10:00

News just in that Council seems to have finally conducted a post-amalgamation restructure, including cutting 16 management positions.

While I received this on my rss feeder, I can't open the feed or find the story on the Bully's website or the Council's media page

As someone who's had a bit to do with Council professionally, I gotta say that this is not before time - it has been patently obvious since their last restructure that, by modern organisational and management standards, the organisation was bloated at the middle and particularly senior management levels.

Of course, the big question will be - have they 'sacked' the right ones.

More to come as I get the details

Update: The Bully's link is now working here.

It seems that the cuts are confined to Council's two comercial Waste and Water units. A good start but still way too much deadwood at the "Executive Manager Level" - Cafe Bambinis @ Woolies WILL be happy

Businesses acting responsibly

2011-01-25T10:16:00.000+10:00

As an olive oil lover, I was glad to see news that the Australian Olive Association is to introduce national standards for olive oil labelling within the next 12 months.

Contrast this responsible action of the local olive oil industry with that of multi-national big tobacco who "is hoping a new multilateral free trade agreement will enable it to sue the federal government if Australia introduces plain packaging for cigarettes in mid-2012 as planned."

Bastards!

But then, maybe it would be good if they sued - I suspect that it would be even more counter-productive than Stupid Rich Person, Gerry Harvey's, attempt at public relations

Young Australians changing the world - with skateboards

2011-01-21T13:36:00.002+10:00

I first got wind of this story via Truthdig -

... As soon as Australian skateboarders Oliver Percovich and Sharna Nolan dropped their boards in Kabul in 2007, they were surrounded by the eager faces of children of all ages who wanted to be shown how to skate. Stretching out the three boards they had brought with them, they developed a small skate school...

The founders’ success with their first students prompted them to think bigger: by bringing more boards back to Kabul and establishing an indoor skateboarding venue, they would be able to teach many more youth, and also be able to provide older girls with a private facility to continue skateboarding.

Check out skateistan.org and (coming soon to the Sundance Film Festival) the movie:

Following on from the theme developed in a previous post, the basis of their intervention is nothing new (in essence a youth development model), but goddamn it's a good one. And the Doco don't look as if it'll be 'arf bad either.

All power to them, I reckon! Fantastic stuff!

Update: My 15-year old just nonchalantly told me that she's known of this mob for a year or two!! Doh!

Friday Funny

2011-01-21T12:45:00.001+10:00

Kudelka is on to something here. The Monk may be digging a hole for himself unless he can find a new mantra that suits the current (changed) public mood.

…and The Lord spake unto Tony and said “Take with you two of everything, except slogans, of which you will be needing just the one.”

Will the Vatican's Bad Boy Strategy work?

2011-01-19T16:10:00.000+10:00

You have probably heard that the Vatican is in the throws of beatifying the last CEO of the multinational conglomerate, Pope John Paul #2. It seems to me that, like the rest of entertainment industry, the Catholic Church needs to continually create new celebrities in order to reinforce the faithful and maintain and hopefully grow it's market share. John Paul #2 was a consummate celebrity maker, beautifying some 1,340 celebs in his time - more than the sum of all of his predecessors since Pope Sixtus V#5.

And like any other celebrity industry (movies, music, sport, politics etc), they like to keep their celebrity-making pretty much in-house and under their control - which is presumably why they don't let outsiders verify John Paul #2's supposed miracle.

Of course, you don't really want too much scrutiny when, under the ex-CEO's watch, his Manager for Ireland at the Vatican wrote to Ireland's Catholic bishops urging them not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police and, it seems twice intervened and stopped attempts made by Irish bishops to defrock pedophile priests.

Like the sporting industry is learning - you need to be very careful about who you make a celebrity (think Favola, Henjak, Carey etc). Or perhaps the Vatican have deliberately embarked on a Bad boys and the cult of celebrity strategy?

Of Poverty and the Northern Territory Intervention

2011-01-18T17:33:00.003+10:00

I was taken by Don Arthur's post in Club Troppo yesterday. Do poor people cause poverty? in which he reviews an essay in the Boston Review by Stephen Steinberg in which he challenges the idea that poor Americans are trapped in a cycle of disadvantage that only they can end.

Needless-to-say, this 1970 quote from Lee Rainwater immediately made me think of the NT Intervention:

"The special ways of adapting by the poor suggest only that effective poverty strategies have to change their income situation before requiring changes in their behavior and attitudes. The major reason for the failure of most anti-poverty programs so far is that they require the poor the change their behavior before they have gained the resources that would change their situation (quoted in The Social Inclusion Agenda)."

And then today I see this nasty little piece from Gary Johns who the Oz are touting as a Former Keating Minister (well a Junior Minister, and one not exactly loved by his former colleagues) and a Professor at the Australian Catholic University (ACU doesn't rate in either of the ARWU or QS Topuniversities rankings of the top 500 or so of the world's universities.)

Clearly the ACU are quite happy to have their Brand associated with little gems like this:

"People now being recruited to university as indigenous are frankly embarrassing," he writes. "Many of these students would not have suffered any prejudice whatsoever and are generations apart from traditional society. "They are heralded as part of the success of a 'program' purely to keep up the numbers. The harm this sort of activity does is to undermine the work of those who actually have to change people's behaviour, not simply recruit those who would have made it regardless. The net impact of such programs is near zero."

Perhaps Johns and the Australian Catholic University could explain themselves to former NSW Indigenous Student of the Year, Dasha Newington and the hundreds like her:

Just exactly how substantial is "substantial"?

2011-01-18T15:47:00.002+10:00

I see that the Queen of all things English (and apparently you and me) has "made a "substantial" private donation to the Queensland flood relief appeal, according to a Buckingham Palace spokeswoman"

While initially I was pretty p*ssed off at the hubris in her issuing a press release to tell the world of her generosity - after all, I haven't seen most of the major donors on this list seeking international coverage of their generosity, but then I got to wondering how much she actually donated?

How much do you reckon would be "substantial"? - $50,000, $100,000, $1 million maybe?

Well within the next four years or so Australia will be spending just 0.5% of it's gross national income on aid programs. If Queenie were to contribute just 0.5% of her estimated $450 million (USD) net personal worth her donation would have been $2,250,000 (not accounting for what some estimate as her $17 billion in property holdings worldwide and certainly not accounting for the kids own 'accumulated' wealth).

My guess is that her "substantial" donation was a lot closer to 0.01% of her fortune ($50,000) than to 0.05%.

The sooner we are rid of her the sooner we don't have to put up with this p*issweak attention seeking (let alone the never-ending tripe about her bloody spoilt little children).

How to be right and oh so wrong

2011-01-17T09:31:00.002+10:00

While Barney Joyce and his sidekick the Mad Monk were predictably the first to try and exploit the devastation from the Qld floods, I was surprised to see Bob Brown having a go yesterday:

Coal miners to blame for Queensland floods, says Australian Greens leader Bob Brown

He might be right, but his timing is all wrong - a dumb move that will cost the Greens in Qld

UPDATE: I have removed the link to the Murdoch story to deny them the few extra click-throughs they might get. Instead check-out Pure Poison's analysis of the story.

I still reckon that Brown should have stayed quiet for a few more days (except for expressions of grief and support). It strikes me that the floods will either finally get Queenslanders really wanting action on global warming or it will get them blaming the Greens and the environmental movement for the whole disaster.

He needs to play it VERY carefully as the politics of this are quite delicate - which of course is why Martin Ferguson released this spray in response (a Murdoch link I'm afraid)

Great activists never die - their tactics live forever

2011-01-16T16:06:00.002+10:00

This story about residents of the small British town of Stony Stratford borrowing every single book from their local library in an attempt to stop it from being closed reminded me of an extraordinary 70-something who led a similar revolt (invented the tactic?) some 35 years ago - against the State Library in Adelaide.

Arthur Mortimer was what you'd call a radical librarian - as I remember him, a rather eccentric retiree who rode a bike, read nooks to children and kept time with a alarm clock (wind-up and with bells) that he carried in his shoulder bag.

The post-Vietnam 70's in Adelaide were (amongst other things) the days of the community media movement - a reaction during the late-60's and 70's to the corporatisation of the mainstream media and governments' manipulation of them during the Vietnam days. Pre-Internet and before Julian Assange was born, the community media movement ultimately gave rise to the network of community based non-profit broadcasters we have today.

Interwoven with the community media movement, community information activists (a combination of welfare workers and librarians such as Arthur) were agitating for community access and control over information - activism which led to the network of Citizens Advice Bureaus and Community Information Centres we see today around the country.

And it was within this context that Arthur committed himself to getting library services into the information and cultural desert that was the working class western suburbs of Adelaide.

Again, as my memory records it, Arthur's first step was to get a few mates together and create the organisation C.R.O.W. ("Concerned Residents of the West") - giving his one-man movement organisational legitimacy and gravitas and a base from which to launch his demands for a fair go for the West.

From there, Arthur launched two most stunning (and ultimately successful) tactics:

Assembling about 100 mates and mates mates, Arthur led a march from the SA Parliament down North Terrace past the Gov's place to the State Library where they preceeded to borrow all of the fiction under 'A' and warn that they would be back the following week for the B's etc. As I remember he got front page of The Advertiser on Monday and we never had to go back for the B's

Creating a national security alert (and national press coverage - about library funding!!!) when he sent egg powder in envelopes to federal Cabinet (or was it all federal MPs?) along with extracts from Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss (a slightly obtuse reference to the '75 Whitlam Government's Inquiry into Public Libraries chaired by one Mr Horton).

All great fun at the time but, the thing is, Arthur won!! - as Susan Marsden notes in her A History of Woodville (1977) (pdf here):

The "West" had long been deprived of good, local library services, and public agitation, led by the humorous, but determined C.R.O.W.'s ("Concerned Residents of the West") stimulated a profound change at State library level to a direct involvement with local libraries. The most dramatic period of expansion in public library services, provided in co-operation with Councils, was between 1977-1979 when 10 new services came into operation in the Western region, three of these in Woodville.

You won't find much about Arthur on-line although I did find this reference which is held in the SA State Library: Information and power : an activist view.

I wonder if Julian Assange has read it?

Enough for now. Sometime remind me to tell you the story of the Dewhurst's - a couple who saved some 300 young men from going to Vietnam from their Northern suburbs lounge room.

Rebuild 3: Qld Flood Benefit Concert

2011-01-15T15:47:00.002+10:00

Live in Townsville or on Maggie Island and at a loose end ~~tomorrow~~ NEXT SUNDAY afternoon? Why not take in a bit of local live music and help the flood appeal at the same time. Full details here at The Magnetic Times

Source: Magnetic Times

PS: On ya Mal

Bullsht survey proves bullsht surveys are bullsh*t

2011-01-15T15:15:00.001+10:00

So far, at least of my predictions about what you would read in The Bulletin over the holiday period seem to have come true. By my count, numbers 1, 3, 7 and 12 have been ticked off already with No 9 getting fulfilled today with the headline Victims pay for crime: Townsville region courts are sentencing criminals too leniently, a survey says.

Of course the data that this and the earlier ones base their conclusions on are totally meaningless - they only tells us about the views of that proportion of the population who read the Bulletin and could be bothered to then fill out and send off a survey form. To conclude or propose that people who read the Bulletin are like everyone else is a nonsense.

True to form though, the Bully report this bullsh*t as fact and on that basis spin a story about the need to get tougher on sentencing - including by interviewing the authoritative voice of the Townsville Residents Against Crime group (see: 0.01% of Townsville citizens can't be wrong).

The whole thing is nonsense (but dangerously so) and no more honest or valid that this press release accompanying the release of Blogging Townsville's own online poll:

POLL SHOCK: Murdoch's Townsville Bulletin doomed

An international survey released today reveals fatal reader anger about Rupert Murdoch's most peripheral outpost.

The Murdoch empire was rocked today with the release of a world wide Internet survey of attitudes towards the Townsville Bulletin

Globally, over 70% of respondents described The Bulletin as a shocker or as embarrassing. A further 11.5% of respondents had never even heard of The Bulletin.

It is thought that the five respondents who indicated that they viewed the paper as Rupert's pride were the only staff remaining at the Bulletin and were sucking up as hard as they could.

The two votes describing the Bulletin as 'cerebral' are being investigated as it appears that they were sent from the same computer in the Townsville Bulletin Editor's office

Note to The Bulletin:
Next time try Googling "perceptions of crime" - No. 2 on the 269,000 long list is this little number, for example: (Mis)perceptions of crime in Australia - Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice, Brent Davis and Kym Dossetor, Australian Institute of Criminology, July 2010. To save you time, you can even download the paper here (pdf 1.29 MB)

PS:
Any ideas for a new poll topic??????

The Magpie's Nest is full of it (again)

2011-01-15T12:33:00.012+10:00

It's amazing how quickly you can achieve something when yow what you're doing. It seems that it only took 14 deposits in The Magpie's Nest for Townsville's very own Magpie to get far enough up The Bulletin's nose to draw a reaction where it took me a year and a couple of hundred posts to draw a reaction!

While he's been dumping the dirt on the Bully's editor-in-command since his first droppings in the blogiverse, he seems to have generated a real fightback at Fortress Murdoch down in Ogden St. with last week's post revealing that Pete 'Typo' Gleeson is being transferred out by the Murdoch machine to spread his management magic in some other minor outpost of the empire. The post is recommended reading for those who'd like to know more about editor-in-command Gleeson's style.

I know that the language breaks the blog
etiquette rules but I just couldn't resist.
Source: Unknown and hopefully not litigious

Clearly demonstrating the old adage that "the truth hurts", The 'Pie reports in this week's post that the ~~commander-in-edit~~ editor-in-command responded to the Old Bird's outing of him with a bit of good-old, true-to-form smear.

While the Old Bird's post sets the record straight, for me it confirms a suspicion I've long held - that there really is a fortress mentality within Ogden St. and the Murdoch empire more generally (witness, for example, their reaction to the rise of the bloggers). It seems to me that this is symptomatic of a dominion under threat and in decline. And typical of all empires in decline, HQ invariably promotes to ~~commander-in-edit~~ editor-in-command those with the greatest ability to create a fortress mindset amongst the foot soldiers/workers.

Of course, eventually even the foot soldiers see the inevitable and start to turn on the crumbling empire!! Hopefully, The Magpie started the tide in this small outpost.

Of floods and politics

2011-01-13T14:03:00.002+10:00

I started drafting this post days ago but just couldn't bring myself to blog about the politics of the Queensland floods while the disaster was unfolding.

Thankfully, politics have largely been left out of the media during the height of the disaster. But now that the danger appears over a few observations hopefully won't offend:

Tony Abbott and John-Paul Whatishisname must have been spitting chips for days - watching Gillard and Bligh getting seemingly endless TV, radio and press coverage (e.g. Bligh's tears this morning will be re-run time and again for days). They sensibly didn't even try to compete but goddam they would have been fuming.

While not competing made sense - Abbott staying on holidays throughout was stupid (although not too stupid as it turns out because the MSM left him alone on that one). Showing up in Briz today (as I just see on the ABC he has) could be equally as stupid - if he gets time on the news tonight, everyone will be reminded that they haven't seen his mug since this started and see him turning up now as cynical politics

In the same vein, the disaster will be a political boon particularly for Bligh but also for Gillard - look for an early bounce in the polls which I suspect will be more significant that BlueMilk ponders in this piece at Hoyden About Town. The sad reality is that disasters and starting wars is great politics for an incumbent - if managed well politicians become leaders of a people facing a common 'enemy'. It's one of the reasons Bush and Howard took us to Iraq and why Howard used (so successfully) the "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come" line (and all those others designed to demonise). Religious nut-jobs have of course also know this since time immemorial.

It will be fascinating to watch how the Qld and Federal conservatives try to find political capital out of this. Certainly Tony Abbott's first two attempts - Let's dam Queensland and (bizarely) Let's stop the building the NBN - both seemed to have backfired or at least fallen flat. Again, I note that the religious nut-jobs were the first to attempt to make capital

Finally, and nothing to do with politics - I hope the people operating the Wivenhoe Dam get some sort of medal after all of this is over 'cause it strikes me that it was their good management that saved Brisbane from far, far worse.

X Base Backpackers - crapping in their own nest and everyone else's

2011-01-13T11:03:00.001+10:00

Without actually reading the story, the Council battles to keep beaches beautiful headline in yesterday's Bully reminded me of these pics taken a few days ago on the beach in front of X Base on Magnetic Island:

A thong, beer bottle, glasses and can scattered below the high water mark

Garbage on the beachfront rocks

Building rubble on the beachfront

Not only are X Base desecrating a public beach by failing to do a simple task like a daily beach clean-up, and are abusing the only absolute beachfront commercial property on Magnetic Island, by publishing these pictures, hopefully their brand will be permanently damaged by their environmental ignorance and abuse.

Then of course, from a straight business perspective - how stupid is it to have your front door and single greatest commercial asset littered with crap?

You can prove how dumb they are and help ensure that brand X Base gets it's dues by sharing this post with as many people as possible and by emailing base Backpackers at info@stayatbase.com and letting them know how you feel.

I understand that, owners of the X Base and base Backpackers brands, the Recreational Tourism Group Pty Ltd, ) is in turn owned by (amongst others) Babcock & Brown and Accor Hotels. Accor is of course one of the biggest hotels chains in the world and also owns the ~~Four~~ All Seasons on Magnetic Island (and a few in Townsville as well) so maybe an email to them will be helpful too. However, and interestingly, I couldn't find either a corporate or a complains email address for Accor Hotels or the Accor Group so I'll be leaving my comments on their Investor Relations contact form here.

The (never ending) Queensland Floods

2011-01-11T15:55:00.001+10:00

What do you say about a disaster like the Queensland floods? The loss of life and horrendous property and environmental damage is just astounding.

As someone who has been through flash flooding in both the Flinders Ranges and the Todd Creek, I have a fairly good idea of the terror and helplessness many down south must be experiencing right now.

There is plenty of other content online which I won't try to reproduce or match here but, for me, this BOM graph of river levels on the Lockyer Creek at Helidon says it all really:

"Mother nature has unleashed something shocking out of the Toowoomba region. What we have here in Queensland is a very grim and desperate situation" - Premier Anna Bligh

I was expecting the fruitcakes and global warming denialists to start coming out of the woodwork about now and I haven't been let down - see this item just in about 'christian' 'pastor' Daniel Nalliah from the Catch the Fire Ministries who has written on his website that Kevin Rudd is responsible for the floods because he "spoke against Israel" in December 2010 by calling on the Jewish state to allow international inspectors into its nuclear facilities

These fundamentalists (be they religious or political) are what give rise to that other big news story - the Arizona shootings - but that's for another post

Of dogs and defrauders and dams

2011-01-07T17:37:00.004+10:00

Koala 049
Pic: George Hirst, Magnetic Times

Reading in the Magnetic Times of another koala killing by domestic dogs on the island is a stark and bloody reminder of our apparent inability as a species to live in some sort of harmony with our environment.

Other recent examples include:

Big Agriculture's arguing that a once in 100 year flood event means that attempts to rescue the Murray should be put on hold - unbelievable! Read Gary Sauer-Thompson's full post here at Public Opinion

Tony Abbott and Barney Joyce's response to a whole heap of people who built/brought on a flood plain ending up wet (and to Julia wining the daily news cycle for the past week or more with pics of her hugging damp Queenslanders) - a committee of farmer-MPs (presemably expert in hydrometeorology, surface hydrology and hydrogeology), to compile a list of dam sites! He didn't actually commit to build them but imagine if he did - just before a 1 in 200 year flood event. See also Ruchira Talukdar's response here at The Punch

Sadly, all true stories I'm afraid

Stupid rich people - Gerry Harvey

2011-01-07T15:24:00.002+10:00

Personally, I reckon the whole GST on internet purchases thing was the invention of Solomon Lew. I'f I'm right, Gerry Harvey is even more stupid than it seems:

Idiot! and as for the company who's providing him with brand positioning advice ..............

Labour market policy 101 - victimise the most vulnerable

2011-01-05T16:02:00.000+10:00

From Paul Norton's letter to the Fairfax press - published in Larvatus Prodeo today:

The Federal Government’s response to the National Welfare Rights Network’s call for an increase in the unemployment benefit is, predictably, to reject this call on the grounds that the best way to help the unemployed is to help them to find work. This is humbug, for two reasons.

The first is that the unemployed are hindered, rather than helped, in their job seeking efforts by things such as undernourishment, lack of medical care, poor mental health, bad teeth, underspending on clothes and grooming, and unstable housing situations, which are all predictable consequences of having to live on the current level of unemployment benefit.

The second is that the Federal Treasurer is on record as claiming that an unemployment rate of 4.75 per cent – that is, about 500,000 people on the dole – is “consistent with full employment”.

The result is that the unemployed are currently being crucified between two metaphorical thieves which have robbed modern Labor of its intellectual and moral fibre – on one side, economic policy orthodoxy based on neoliberal dogma concerning the supposed “non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment”, and on the other, tabloid and focus group mythology about “dole bludgers”.

I also liked this contribution by 'Huggybunny' at comment #8 to Paul's post:
When I started work the unemployment rate was about 1%, Menzies was in power and all the “reffos” were working two shifts. You could walk out the gate of one factory and into the gate of the next and change jobs in five minutes.
Now you need an email account, a CV, a resume and a degree in Horde(Horse?)Management as well as some smart clothes. Nice tits and teeth help if you are a female.
Oh yes it was a brave new world back then, the free market and Capitalism had triumphed over despotism and despair.
It was to be only a matter of time before the socialist revolution took over and we would all be free.
So what have we got?
Despotism rules in most of the globe.
Imperialism runs rampant.
The bees are dying
The fish are dying
The wildlife is dying
The water is polluted
The air is polluted
The climate is on the cusp of thermal runaway.
Sorry Pandora, Ben, Meg and Nell, I will do my best to fix it before I go.
Huggy

All power to the cartoonists

2011-01-05T15:32:00.002+10:00

I've long thought that the newspaper article that has most influence on public opinion is the editorial cartoon. It is the one piece that everyone reads and absorbs - otherwise they wouldn't chuckle at the good ones.

Seeing this Ron Cobb 'toon from '73 reminded me again of the power of a good cartoon. As a young adult this, amongst others (eg Captain Goodvibes), had a hugerole in shaping my understanding of the world that lasts to this day.

As Dave Riley at Left Click notes, 38 years later Cobb's 'toon is "archetypal of what underpins contemporary Australia and the meaning is as potent and relevant today as it was when the image was first drawn.

Scary isn't it if you pause long enough to consider it?"

Men and Religion

2011-01-05T15:03:00.004+10:00

Ever wondered why all of the traditional religions and most of the new ones too (maybe with the exception of the Quakers) were invented by and are controlled by men? Power, dominance and wealth with as little work as possible is a boy thing in all species it seems!

Cartoon via Values Australia

On a Mission from who to do what??

2011-01-03T12:19:00.001+10:00

Today's Bulletin report of the further decline of the NQ Fury held no real surprises for me - they lost again and only managed to draw about 6,500 to their match in Melbourne, so what's new!

What did surprise me (only because I take so little interest in the team or the sport and so hadn't previously noted) was that the financially failing Fury are now (apparently) sponsored by religious charity, Mission Australian - in fact, they are The Fury's principal ~~sponsor~~ partner.

Exactly why a charity would sponsor a sports team is well beyond my logic (perhaps they were concerned that Lifeline and the Salvos are beginning to dominate the local market and they therefore needed more exposure??). However, and more to the point, I wonder how many people donating to Mission Australia are aware that some proportion of their donations are being used to prop-up a failing football team?

I certainly wouldn't donate to any charity who sponsors a professional sports team in an industry that so extensively promotes alcohol and misogyny.

Yet another Townsville Blog

2010-12-30T11:55:00.000+10:00

Following The Magpie's move to the blogosphere, Townsville now has another new blog on the scene.

Photoblogging $30 million at work in Townsville is an intermittent blog of pics taken of our dinosaur racing racing track built at taxpayers expense in Ried 'Park' on the other side of the Creek.

Posts will be completely adhoc and dependant on my going down Boundary St. and thinking to take a pic when I do.

Please feel free to submit your own pics - just email them to islander505@gmail.com

The Big Leak on Maggie or The Big Rip-off by the Townsville Bulletin?

2010-12-23T08:44:00.002+10:00

I see that The Bully has this morning finally reported about the buzz on Maggie Island about building some sort of statue in tribute to the Island's one-time son, Julian Assange.

We reported on it here at length yesterday and earlier (about 10 days ago) here. And we of course took our lead from Magnetic Times who first raised the idea in this story on 11 December and a week later developed it further in this story (including with the cartoon by George shown at right).

But true to style, in finally running the story, the Bully fails to give any recognition or reference to Magnetic Times (reflecting the old mainstream media paradigm of 'every other media outlet is a competitor and therefore shouldn't be given an inch'). In fact, when you read the Bully's piece, you could swear that their hard-working journo, Anon, wrote it based on their own detailed investigative journalism.

Rather, The Bully ignores the originators of the idea (and the story) and instead focuses on "local island character" Crusty Heron. Of course, in any small community such as the Island, "local character" is a euphemism for "local nut-job".

Don't get me wrong, Crusty is a nice guy, good to wave at from the other side of the road and does quite a reasonable wedding (although I brought one from him and it didn't work). It's just that you want to avoid getting into a conversation with him at all costs. If you're wondering why, just have a read of his diatribes in the comments to these Magnetic Times articles here and here!

But hey, he's a talking head who always answers his phone - making the 'investigation' by The Bully's increasingly familiar Anon all that much easier and providing the perfect out from giving due credit to The Magnetic Times.

Finally I really wonder whether the photo-shopped graphic with the Bully's story was really done by Crusty as implied in the article or was it actually mashed-up by Anon him/herself? You certainly won't find it on Crusty's website, facebook page or from any google search I could think of!

PS: - Magnetic Times got eight weblinks out of this story and The Bully only one - a good score I reckon and one that won't help The Bully's google rankings one bit!

The real meaning of xmas

2010-12-22T21:24:00.001+10:00

Via Planet Irf

Incredibly unimportant breaking news

2010-12-22T18:57:00.000+10:00

Of Malls and Convention Centres

2010-12-22T18:53:00.000+10:00

I finally had a wander down the 'finished' section of the Townsville Mall (or Flinders Street as it will soon be instantly recognised as around the globe).

Seeing no one is game to publicly bucket Council's latest little adventure in urban design (remember Flinders St East), let me be the first:

It's gonna be a bloody wet place to go shopping in the wet season
It's gonna be a bloody hot place to eat your lunch when it's not raining

On the plus side, some of Townsville's ugliest buildings are now fully exposed for the world's architecture tourists (and American boat people) to truly 'enjoy'.

More to the point, it seems that Council and the developer class about town have worked out that the renovation ain't going to work, ain't gonna make the Mall one bit more competitive as a shopping destination and ain't gonna be the $57 million incentive to potential investors in Lancini's Flinders Plaza development that it was designed to provide.

The building 'campaign' for Townsville's much mooted Convention Centre to be located within the CBD (read Lancini's Flinders Plaza ghetto) is a great study in how these guys play the game (with the help of The Bulletin of course):

You simply start by someone with profile raising the suggestion - as CBD Taskforce chairman Craig Stack no doubt did in a call to Tony Raggatt who pushes the idea into play. The same day the Bully's anonymous Editor does a support piece in his editorial - not too strident, gently, gently, place it second.
The next day you run a page-3 story (complete with front page header) in which, according to Raggatt, "the idea has been supported by Townsville Mayor Les Tyrell and CBD Taskforce chairman Craig Stack" (the previous day he had reported Stack and Tyrell as saying that the idea should be considered).
While we're about it, let's introduce Lancini into play - carefully though, you wouldn't like to look too eager at the prospect of a $140 million key-stone tenant to kick your stalled development along.
And let's add a bit a bit of weight to the proposition by quoting an economist - and none other than local developer Carey Ramm
And for good measure, why not give Raggatt a 'Business Desk' opinion piece on the same day when he can invoke the ghosts of his father to argue that Lancini should have the ~~subsidy~~ Convention Centre.

In one sense, of course, they are all right - the only thing that will make the Mall work is more people! However, no one is going to open a shop in the Mall on the promise of maybe lots of people attending a 2 or 3- day conference once a month for maybe nine months of the year.

And of course adding a few carparks (even at the expense of the hundreds that come to the precinct every day by bus - how dumb is that) is not going to make the CBD any more attractive or convenient or, therefore, competitive against Stocklands, The Willows etc

I'm afraid that population density in the CBD (both residential and office) is the only thing that will save The Mall and Council had their chance when they considered a proposal for the development of an Arts Centre (that could have also accommodated conventions) and office/residential complex on what is currently the carpark between Council and the Law Courts. Instead, they chose to use the available funds to build the tack-on to the Civic Theatre which (coincidentally, of course) gave Les and the big boys a perfectly oriented balcony from which they can gaze down on Pitt Straight during the annual Ried "Park" dinosaur race. Perhaps Raggatt should chase down that story.

A convention centre to save Flinders Street is a dumb idea - just like putting a road down the middle will prove to be. But now that they've started the play, I'm afraid that we're all gonna have to watch it unfold over the quite holiday period when no-one is paying any attention to politics. After all, it might just lead to an extra $140 million ~~subsidy~~ support to the failed Flinders Plaza ghetto -on top of what is fairly obviously the failed $57 million ~~subsidy~~ Mall 'upgrade'.

Oh, did I remember to mention that Lancini is a gold advertiser with the Bully and probably the occasional supplier of free drinks to Tony Raggatt?

Magnetic Island's monumental marketing opportunity

2010-12-22T15:14:00.003+10:00

As I've noted before, there is a bit of a buzz around about building a monument to Wikileaks founder and former island hippie Julian Assange. Magnetic Times editor, George Hirst has even offered a first design option although I must admit to being a bit taken by Rolf's suggestion of one of those "cutsie little boy peeing sculptures" (see comments).

Magnetic Times also has a poll at the bottom right of their front page asking Should Magnetic Island commission a sculpture to celebrate the achievements of Julian Assange? With 385 votes so far 98% responses have been positive.

And I see that The Magpie's Nest has seen some "ripper marketing opportunities" in Assange's association with Maggie island - including the tourism pitch: `Want a tan like Julian Assange's? Holiday on Magnetic Island - in the rainy season!' - an increasingly accurate xmas tag given the forecasts!

I reckon that both local scholars are on to something here. If you consider the potential value in niche tourism Maggie Island could be sitting on a marketing goldmine (Checkout for example the 12-day Lord of the Rings tour of NZ).

But when you think of the types of people who might come to visit the childhood home of Assange, I think that any monument would need to be able to be visited in all anonymity and would need to include a free and highly encrypted wifi connection and highly secure server. Sorry George and Rolf but I'm not sure that electricity and water are going to work!

PS: Don't forget to vote on the Magnetic Times poll. You can also join this Facebook group if you're into that sort of thing.

Kids doing dumb things

2010-12-22T15:14:00.000+10:00

This reminded me of a couple of stories from when I was a youth worker many years ago in the then outer southern suburbs of Adelaide.

The first was when a group of local kids got stoned one night and decided to break into the local supermarket to score some free fags. They successfully got in through the roof but gave themselves away when, stoned and giggling as they fell over each other in the dark, they turned the lights on. The supermarket was on a rise, in the middle of a car park and right on the main street into town and just up from the cop shop!!

The second was a car-full who went to the drive-in one night (remember them?) after dropping some Mandrax (remember them). They of course all proceeded to fall asleep, including the driver who pushed the car out of gear setting in rolling down into the car in front! They were all still asleep with in the coppers arrived!

Friday funny

2010-12-17T14:35:00.000+10:00

Have a great weekend

The Bulletin does good

2010-12-16T09:09:00.001+10:00

Credit where credit is due!

I thought the headline on the Bully's story this morning about the horrific and wretched deaths on the cliffs of Christmas Island yesterday was both sensitive and respectful.

Full recognition that these were/are people seeking freedom and security and none of the "illegal immigrants" "people smugglers" or "queue-jumpers" we normally hear so much of from the MSM. It also happens to be a beautiful construction.

Well done to the sub-editor who wrote it.

PS: Compare the Bully's effort with this little trash piece from (surprise, surprise) Dennis Shanahan in (surprise, surprise) The Oz: NO politicians wanted to be seen to be taking political advantage from the tragic sinking of the people-smuggling vessel.

Would you donate $5 to help build a statue of Julian Assange on Magnetic Island?

2010-12-13T10:19:00.000+10:00

It had to happen - following the Magnetic Times article and our post in response, there is now the facebook poll!:

Would you donate $5 to help build a statue of Julian Assange on Magnetic Island?

Could Wikileaks take us here? (or are we already there)

2010-12-13T09:14:00.004+10:00

Found this good post by Johan Lagerkvist at onlineopinion.com.au* discussing the implications of how the powerful might responds to Wikileaks, including this quote

It can be foreshadowed that governments will craft laws that target citizen-journalist activities. Citizens’ unauthorised storing of leaked material could be made illegal. Another potential outcome could be state eavesdropping, monitoring and storing information on a broader spectrum of the citizenry than hitherto possible.

Chilling - especially when you've just read this story from Stephen Martin at The Mirror:

Boy of 12 hauled out of class by police over David Cameron Facebook protest

Scary! Maybe the proponents of the Julian Assange Statue on Magnetic Island will need to re-think their personal security!

* Originally posted on YaleGlobal Online. Copyright © 2010, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Yale University

Of Magnetic Island, Julian Assange and a Statue

2010-12-12T15:57:00.001+10:00

Further to my earlier posts about Wikileaks, Magnetic Times has a great piece on Julian Assange's connection to the Island. The comments that follow are worth a read too.

I wonder what would happen if someone set-up a facebook donations page for a statue of Julian Assange to be erected on Maggie Island ...?

I'd probably contribute - after all, he's the only man who I can think of who has taken on the prevailing power-structures on a truly global scale - and won, I suspect!

Also worth a look - Planet Irf's regularly updated WikiLeaks hysteria ... post.

A good news story worth recognition

2010-12-12T14:26:00.000+10:00

News last week of the Federal Court's granting of native title to their Country for the Waanyi people is a real good news story.

I know a little of both the Waanyi's fight for their Country and Century Zinc's approach to recognising the claims of, working with, and providing opportunities for the Traditional Owners of 'their' mine site. I'm sure it wasn't smooth sailing for either party but the outcome really does seem to be a real win-win outcome that should be celebrated as an example of the resilience, determination and power of the surviving first nations and a mining operations intelligent (and as it happens, just) response to the traditional owners of country they want to exploit.

All I could find with a quick google were variations on this story by Darren Cartwright at AAP: Win-win for Waanyi people and miners. If anyone can recommend a link with more on the history of the Waanyi people's struggle, please post it in a Comment.

Congratulations to the Waanyi people and particularly to Jane Ah Kit, Edith Medwin, and Glenys Saltmere – threeWaanyi women I had the pleasure of working with a while back. I bet there were some good parties at Lawn Hill and in the Isa and on Mornington and across the North-West last week!!

I can see the smoke from The Bully already

2010-12-11T15:10:00.001+10:00

I reckon I can see the smoke coming from Bully Headquaters as they read the latest post over at The Maggie's Nest. You see, the old Maggie has published the latest circulation catastorpie at the Bully under editor Gleeson's watch - a 4.2% fall in the last quaterly audit - on top of the previous 10% fall I posted about here.

I wonder whether, as a result, the old 'pie will get an editorial dressing down similar to the one I recieved? Or perhaps 'Typo' Gleeson* will be too busy looking over his sholder for Murdoch's crack accountants death squad.

* The term "Typo" Gleeson is completely the invention of The Magpie and less demafitory than anything I could think of. It is used with permission (I hope)

O Really?

2010-12-10T18:06:00.001+10:00

What the?

Is Wikileaks making an ememy in Murdoch?

2010-12-10T09:01:00.001+10:00

Isn't it interesting that the Fairfax Press seem to be doing all the running on the Wikileaks story - all of the Australia related leaks (Arbib the Cabinet rat, howAfghanistan scares the hell out of Rudd etc) have been reported first on the front page of The Age.

Perhaps Wikileaks are doing here what they are doing globally - that is, not providing a feed to any Murdoch owned press. Globally, they provide advances of what they will publish online to The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El Pais - not one Murdoch rag among them.

Smart man that Maggie Island kid, Assange. Makes me wonder whether News Corp will be one of the global mega-businesses that Assange has warned Wikileaks has files on and plan to release soon.

Now that would be fun!

Is Mark Arbib just the tip of an iceburg?

2010-12-09T17:26:00.001+10:00

I got a good chuckle out of this mornings news of the outing of Mark Arbib as a US sycophant - it could well be the end of his political career which probably wouldn't be a bad thing for either the country or the ALP.

However, there is a sub-plot in this story which needs a bit more exposure and that is about the role of the Australian-American Dialogue organisation in the Abib Affair and more broadly in Australian Politics over recent decades.

I first became aware of the Australian-American Dialogue during the Hawke years when a Cabinet insider explained their pervasive reach thought the labor party and union movement, the conservative parties and big business. Their modus operandi was explained as targeting political up-and-comers early in their career, offering free junkets to the States and other general ego stroking in order to build their loyalty to the alliance (read, the US) and to build relationships which are able to be called on over the careers that follow.

Hopefully the Arbib-saga will shine a bit of light on this extremely well funded lobby group. I'd suggest as a starting point, a bit of a trawl through the MP register of pecuniary interests.

In case you haven't seen it

2010-12-07T16:12:00.001+10:00

Doing the rounds in the blogosphere and no doubt soon to be seen in the email in-tray (The TSA is the US Transportation Security Administration - think full body searches at US airports)

Which reminds me - anyone want to take a bet on who the rich and powerful capture first - Osama Bin Laden (apparent cause of at least two wars) or Julian Assange (very apparent cause of much nakedness amongst the ruling class)? Funny that - not!

The Townsville Bulletin's lead articles for January 2011 will be....

2010-12-07T13:47:00.003+10:00

Did you see the Bulletin's "tell the editor" readers survey in last Saturday's Bulletin or here online? We've seen this ploy from the Bully around this time every year for a while now - run a survey and then use the data collected to con advertisers about local consumer sentiment and to generate an endless stream of "Townsville residents think ..." and "Townsville residents outraged at ..." articles during the silly season when the Bully would rather have staff on leave.

In January you should expect articles on:

How everyone loves the "new look Townsville Bulletin"
An announcement on a change from Saturday to Friday for the publication of the Bully's Property Section
How times are tough and people are cutting back on discretionary spending
Voters demand the return of Council Divisions
(more) Anger at Council over water rates / "sack the lot of them readers say"
A report card (with ratings) on all the local pollies
CBD Upgrade has little impact on shoppers intentions / Shoppers prefer Myers at Stocklands over a road through the Mall
Something about a shortage of GPs (interestingly, there are very few questions about the Townsville Hospital)
Public live in fear of rampant hooliganism, hooning, cabbie bashing, rude drivers and bad neighbours
Everybody loves sport and The Fury must be saved
Most Townsvillians don't visit Maggie Island
The Government isn't doing enough about homelessness and Townsville demands a mandatory detoxification program be introduced although no one seems to know whether it should be for Flinders Street nightclubbers or parkies

And, believe it or not, you should also expect those old chestnuts:

Voters demand a separate NQ state, and
Maggie Is to become a tourism mecca if the bridge is built

Finally, I have no idea what sort of story they will beat-up out of responses to the question "Should council or business owners be responsible for the upkeep of heritage listed buildings?" but I'm sure a few developers around town (perhaps with interests in the Mall/Drive-through) will have written the article for have them.

Of course, all of this dribble that we will read over the holidays will all be meaningless, just as the survey is meaningless. It will reflect the views of those people who buy the Bulletin or visit their website and choose to fill in a survey - nothing more and certainly NOT IN ANYWAY any kind of representative sampling of the local population (or even of the Bulletin's readership for that matter, advertisers take note).

I wonder what would happen if .....

2010-12-07T11:37:00.000+10:00

I wonder if I announced here that I was going to bid for the townsville.com.au domain name before the auction closes at 4:pm today, whether the Townsville Bulletin will put in a pre emptive bid in an effort to stop me???

The most wanted man in the world

2010-12-03T09:33:00.002+10:00

This is not funny!

2010-11-30T12:27:00.000+10:00

I can think of a dozen funny lines I could have written about this headline but read the story. Psychometric testing is standard practice for any business of size and should be mandatory for all aspiring politicians.

Myers-Briggs and the like are hardly "new-age" (well perhaps so in Murdoch's empire where head-kicking 101 seems to be the only criteria for promotion). And while they would do a good job of weeding out at least the worst of the megalomaniacs, wankers, evolution-deniers, thieves and idiots, I'm not sure how such instruments could be calibrated to (safely) take account of ego - that essential ingredient in political success which is usually the last thing you look for in a good CEO or leader.

Ewen Jones speaks - again

2010-11-26T08:43:00.001+10:00

Further to yesterday's post, This is what we got for the $460 in wages (times about 5 for on-costs) that The Big Ewe cost the taxpayers of Herbert on Wednesday of this week:

via OpenAustralia.org

Ewen Jones - Big dick or class clown?

2010-11-25T08:53:00.001+10:00

Rather than a serial pest (and here), could it be that The Big Ewe is nothing more than a naughty private school boy who is no good at the "my dick is bigger than yours" game (The Mad Monk's forte) so seeks attention and approval by being the class clown?

"Mr Jones said he had now won the trifecta he was the first of the 2010 MP intake to be mentioned, to be warned, and to be ejected" Martin Rasini

And just like all class clowns, he seems to be proud of his achievements!!

The Bulletin seems equally impressed by The Ewe - giving him a whole page today to sell his wares and try and convince us that his achievements have been meaningfull!!! I can't find The Ewe's piece on-line - perhaps that is the sort of content that Murdoch's Bulletin will make us pay-to-view or perhaps Rupe just claims the $5,000 value of the free PR as a tax deduction)

For the sake of balance: The Big Ewe has made 13 'contributions' to debates in parliament since elected two months ago - at just over $14k per month in salary and allowances (ie not including staff, offices, car, etc, etc), that's about $2,160 per utterance!

I wish I could get those sort of rates!

PS: All I ever got as class clown was bashed up