Thursday, June 11, 2015

Where to now for Walton’s eyesore?

 
NEWS

By Don Gordon-Brown
 
Does Lord Mayor Graham Quirk’s silence on this famous yet dilapidated building that’s a blight on the inner Valley indicate he’s given up on trying to force the owners to bring it up to standard?

That’s one possible explanation as to why he has apparently refused to answer questions from this newspaper about what steps council is taking to make the owners repair a litany of visible defects on all visible frontages.


Several years ago, this newspaper congratulated the Lord Mayor for forcing the owners to spend at least some time and money giving the building’s Brunswick Street frontage a lick of paint and tidying up some of more visible defects such as outdated signage.
By issuing a show-cause notice to the owners that listed some 65 defects, Cr Quirk got action where some other politicians had expended hot air and achieved nothing for a long time. We praised him at the time for that, and reinforced that message in a preamble to our questions. They were:
1. Do you share this paper’s view that Walton’s remains an eyesore and a blight on inner Fortitude Valley?
2. What is your latest estimate of how many of the visual defects of Walton’s still need to be remedied?
3.  Is any new action planned to force Walton’s owners to bring the building up to a suitable standard?
4.  Indeed, are there any plans for Walton’s redevelopment? Maybe through a forced sale of the building?
Online searches reveal that the 4000 sq/m site was listed on realcommercial.com.au back in January for sale or possible development as a joint venture, in an area zoned for projects up to 30 storeys.
The Independent understands one architectural firm has mooted development plans for the site that would include an underground council bus interchange under a high-rise commercial or residential project.

Editor’s note: The Independent is hoping the Lord Mayor’s silence on this issue, as well as our request for a CityCycle update, has nothing to do with our campaign against Team Quirk’s disgraceful use of the city council cleat for political use. But if it is, we’ll wear that rebuke as a badge of pride.


Wednesday, June 10, 2015

World exclusive: How the cleat cheating began!

 

The Independent has obtained an extract of a meeting of sitting LNP councillors at City Hall in late 2007, just months before the municipal poll of early 2008. It was chaired by then Lord Mayor Campbell Newman and attended by sitting LNP councillors. These shocking extracts reveal how the use of the copycat cleat came about!


Lord Mayor Newman: Before we move onto general business, I’d like to welcome to the meeting as an observer Vicki Howard, representative for Central Ward.

Voices of welcome.
Nicole Johnston (Tennyson): Isn’t David Hinchliffe the representative for Central Ward?

Newman: Oh, for goodness sake, Nicole. Of course Councillor Hinchliffe is one of the elected representatives for Central Ward. But Vicki here is also the elected representative ... the LNP elected her to be its representative just as I elected her to be my Lord Mayor’s representative for the ward. I don’t know why, Nicole, you’ve always got to throw a spanner in the works. Can’t you just be a team player like Graham and the rest of the brown-nosers here! Yes, Amanda?

Amanda Cooper (Bracken Ridge): Would you like me to get you a nice hot cuppa, Chair?

Newman: Sorry?

Cooper: Lord Mayor chair.

Newman: Sorry?

Cooper: Lord Mayor chair, Sir.

Newman: That’s better. But bloody hell, Amanda. I haven’t finished the one you made me after we confirmed the minutes. And I distinctly remember asking for two sugars. Now general business. Any general business?

Negative murmurs around the room.
Lord Mayor Newman: Well, I have one.

Graham Quirk (Rochedale): Good on you, sir!

Newman: Shut up, Graham. Now, I’ve been looking over our LNP campaign material for the upcoming council elections and I’ve come to the conclusion that it needs some jazzing up. The pamphlets and signs all look fine with our CanDo slogans but they just need something. Maybe a pattern of coloured shapes to mould them altogether under the CanDo Team banner.

Adrian Schrinner (Chandler): Something like the blue and white pattern that run across the top of official police documents?

Newman: Exactly, but of course we couldn’t use that.

Angela Owen-Taylor (Parkinson): I’ve always loved the green and purple colours associated with Wimbledon. Maybe some pattern using those?

Matthew Bourke: (Jamboree): Yes, good idea. Maybe green circles and purple rectangles running across the bottom. Something like that?

General murmurs of approval.
Lord Mayor Newman: Look, we’re on the right path here but the boys in head office came up with the idea of using gold and blue blocks of colour alternating down the left-hand side of our campaign material. Here are some examples the LNP’s graphics people came up with.

Lord Mayor shows meeting some placards.
Graham Quirk: Fantastic idea, Sir!

Newman: Shut up, Graham. Now what do we all think?

Margaret de Wit (Pullenvale): I think you’ve nailed it on the head, sir! It’s very pretty.

Jane Prentice (Walter Taylor): Brilliant leadership, sir!

Ian McLachlan (Hamilton): Like it. Like it a lot.

Geraldine Knapp (Pullenvale): I think it’s a can-do!

Short round of applause halted by the chairman’s gavel.
Nicole Johnston: Doesn’t someone already use that design? I’m sure I’ve seen it before...

Newman: There you go again, Nicole. Always on the outer. So help me, I can’t see a future for you in my CanDo administration with your carping criticisms. You really do need to change your ways or you’ll end up on the outer. Does anyone else here have any idea what this silly woman is talking about?

Soft chorus of "no idea" and "nope, nope, nope".
Newman: Well, that’s settled then. I formally move that this design be used on ....

Nicole Johnston: I know what it is. It’s the city council’s official cleat!

Newman: Oh, for Christ’s sake, Johnston. The council’s official cleat is totally different to this. You know full well that we can’t use the official cleat in political campaign material and do you think that I as your supreme CanDo leader or the LNP would even consider using this design if there was the slightest chance it could be confused with the official one? That would be completely unethical! It would be like playing underhand, sneaky tricks on the voters of Brisbane. A politician’s career would be very short indeed playing such games. Voters respect people who are all about being smart and making strong choices.

Shouts of "hear, hear" from around the room and a "Well done yet again, Sir" from Graham Quirk.
Vicki Howard: I know I’m only an observing representative here and I shouldn’t say anything but I think it’s lovely and I’d certainly like to use it in my upcoming 2008 campaign.

Newman: Thank you, Vicki. Now as I said, I’d like to formally move...

Amanda Cooper: "Would you like that cup of tea now, Sir. I mean, Lord chair mayor sir?

Newman: Oh, for God’s sake, Amanda. We’re almost through here. Oh, look, I’m sorry for that. And everyone else too. You’ll all have to forgive me. I’ve been a little short with people all day.

Nervous titters circulate around the room.

 
Team Quirk posters from the 2012 Brisbane City Council election. Having given the copycat council cleat a trial run in 2008, the LNP's Team Quirk candidates gave it an absolute workout in 2012 on everything from footpath signs, bill boards, newspaper advertisements, all sorts of political leaflets, pamphlets, business cards and stationery and even the back of a campaign car! 

They plan to cleat yet again!

OUR SAY
 
The City Hall bureaucrats charged with upholding Brisbane City Council policy that protects the public branding of council materials, services, and activities appear to have given their LNP political masters the green light to trick voters again.

And it means the widespread use by LNP candidates in BCC wards of a copycat council "cleat" at the 2012 poll looks like being repeated in the lead-up to the 2016 mayoral and council election. We believe it will be another attempt by the LNP to wrap all of its candidates, from Lord Mayor down, in the cloak and authority of incumbency.
The "cleat" is the distinctive blue and gold design adorning materials officially published or created by the BCC. It usually runs down the left-hand side of printed BCC materials or signs.
In 2012 LNP candidates widely used what we believe any reasonable person would say was an identical design on their party political material and signs.
Yet the top council bureaucrat, Brisbane City Council CEO Colin Jensen, has declared he can do nothing to stop political candidates using blocks of identical gold and blue colours down the left-hand side of election material – just as the city council’s cleat is used.
According to answers from Mr Jensen to questions posed by The Independent, if the dimensions of the LNP cleat "do not conform" with the "specified design dimensions" laid down for the council cleat then council has no authority to stop "other organisations" from mimicking official BCC-endorsed material.
In asking whether council bureaucrats had ever "demanded, requested or suggested" that the LNP and Team Quirk stop using the council’s intellectual property, the three-paragraph response was:
"Brisbane City Council’s corporate branding includes a cleat with specified design dimensions.
"The dimensions of other designs used in non-council political campaign materials during the 2012 election did not conform to the dimensions of council cleat.
"Council has no authority to prevent other organisations from using the same colours with a similar design."
Mr Jensen did not answer follow-up questions seeking the specified dimensions for the council cleat, how many pieces of Team Quirk electioneering material were inspected to come to the conclusion that they were of a different dimension, and what were the dimensions of Team Quirk material that came closest to being the same dimensions as the council cleat.
The Independent specifically directed the first batch of questions to the office of Mr Jensen as CEO. Unfortunately, they came back from one of the Lord Mayor’s media spin-doctors who requested that the answers be attributed to "a council spokesperson".
We would understand completely if Mr Jensen did not want to put his name to those answers. Indeed, maybe he had no input into those responses and they were taken over by his political masters who have plenty of reasons to obscure and deflect over what we believe is the cleat’s misuse.
This paper’s three-year-plus campaign to make Team Quirk candidates come clean on their disgraceful use of the copycat cleat has always been a political one anyway. We’ll leave it to intellectual property academics to argue whether the council bureaucrats have done everything they could or should to protect the council’s ubiquitous and well-known (plus ratepayer-funded) brand.
But what is indisputable is that the LNP’s Team Quirk cynically and underhandedly copied the council cleat to give them an unfair and undeserved advantage at the 2012 poll. Any political academic worth their salt could explain the advantage the LNP gained by creating the impression its candidates had some form of official council backing. Team Quirk became Council Team Quirk.
We’re perfectly in our rights to say they use the cleat because for three long years Lord Mayor Quirk has refused to tell us how their design differed sufficiently from the official council cleat so that any reasonable person could tell them apart.
Indeed, the BCC CEO may have unwittingly let the cat two-thirds out of the bag. His answer, sanitised by Lord Mayoral staffers as coming from "a spokesperson", concedes the colours on the blocks are the same, as we’ve always known. Where the blocks were placed are the same. Our eyes told us that too.
We’re then left only with x and y arguments. If the width-to-height ratio of the blocks of colour used by Team Quirk was deliberately altered by a millimetre to cater to some legal flimflam yet still trick voters’ eyes then, as we’ve constantly argued, that would be even more underhanded, more tricky, more sneaky, more devious, more politically dishonest than if they’d just copied the BCC cleat in the first place.
So take a long hard look at the two LNP politicians below. They expect Brisbane ratepayers to always do the right thing and abide by council bylaws and regulation for the common good. Yet along with other Team Quirk candidates, we believe they have flouted council policy that forbids the use of the BCC cleat for selfish gain.
If they’re not courageous enough and open enough to admit a mistake and promise not to repeat it and scrap all materials bearing the cleat, this newspaper believes they do not deserve to be re-elected.



Footpath signs used by Team Quirk at the 2012 council elections. Lord Mayor Quirk and Vicki Howard have for three long years refused to answer basic questions over their use of the copycat council cleat.

Homeless animals the clear winners in this clash between states

NEWS

 
Yes it’s on once again! In what RSPCA Qld staff and volunteers admit without the slightest hint of embarrassment is a blatant rip off of the State of Origin series, the State of Adoption challenge has once again gone out to RSPCA NSW. This year Queensland is hoping to win an historic seven in a row!

The goal is to re-home as many animals as possible from the start of the first State of Origin game to the end of the last.
The toughly fought contest bears another striking resemblance to the State of Origin series with most of the adoptees having a bit of "the mongrel" in them!
"Of course it’s a rip off on the whole concept but if we’re re-homing more animals then it’s all worthwhile," said RSPCA Qld spokesman Michael Beatty.
"We will start as the underdogs, (if you’ll pardon the pun), because Queensland has nine shelters, while NSW has twelve. But Queenslanders are used to that tag and it just stirs us on.
"Once they’ve seen the fantastic animals we have up for adoption, we know they’ll find their perfect match and for us the perfect match is Queensland winning by a cat’s whisker!"



 Nate Miles with Kenny and Nitro (reluctantly posing as a Blue)




Markets give inner Valley that extra vibe

NEWS

The inaugural providore markets held in early May as part of the celebrations to mark the opening of the Bakery Lane project in inner-Fortitude Valley have proved so popular they have been extended for their second outing next Saturday June 6.

Bakery Lane and Winn Lane across Ann Street hosted the first markets on May 2 and hundreds of people flocked to the lanes to snap up artisans warves, baked goods and local produce over several hours.
The June markets will run for five hours from 9am to 3pm.







Trader's faith in Valley pays off

 
NEWS

A three-decade veteran of the inner-Fortitude Valley retail scene has been rewarded for his faith in the precinct after a forced relocation.

Barry Toombs had operated Downes Shoe Repairs in the famous old Apothecaries Hall building in Ann Street for more than 30 years until its redevelopment as part of the Bakery Lane project had him looking for new premises.
He kept his faith in the Valley, relocating his business to 70 Wickham Street a little closer to the city as Downes Shoes and Repair.
"As it turned out, we had outgrown the other store anyway, so the move was a positive one in that regard," Barry told us.
"And after we’d been in the new shop for six months, the business was going so well we asked ourselves: Why didn’t we do this five years ago!"
The new location allows Barry and his funky staff, pictured left putting their best boots forward, to better display some of the Doc Marten range of footwear that the store’s reputation has been largely based on for many years.
When Barry moved out of Ann Street, it had been the oldest same-name businesses in the oldest shop in Queensland.
Barry was only the second owner of the business since the Downes family started it in the 1880s. And just as the second owner promised the family to keep the name and its old-fashioned level of customer service, Barry gladly did the same when he took over in the early 1980s.
He ran it purely as a shoe repair business for a while but after some years, begun to investigate retail footwear options. Further down the track came his interest in Doc Martens footwear. His store is now so well linked to that brand that Barry is happy to report that his loyal band of customers have eagerly found their way to his new location.
Although other stores stock Doc Martens, Barry’s boast is that Downes Shoes has the best range of rare and limited Docs around. The store also has a wide range of other brands, including Blundstones.
Trading hours are Monday to Friday from 9am to 5.30pm and Saturdays from 9am to 4pm. Their phone number is 3252 2521 and on-street parking is available near the store.

- Don Gordon-Brown
 


Sorry Rod, but your campaign lacks colour


LOCAL POLITICS

 
















The ALP's Lord Mayoral hopeful Rod Harding launched his campaign the other weekend for next year’s municipal elections and supporters spread out all over our fair city brandishing examples of his political electioneering material.

But can I be terribly frank after seeing footage of some of them? To me, they just lacked something ... that little bit of extra oomph that this bloke is going to need if he has any hope whatsoever of grabbing the keys to City Hall off the LNP’s charismatic Graham Quirk.
So I hope he doesn’t mind but I just experimented with different colours and shapes in an endeavour to link all his various campaign documents into a cohesive narrative that might just induce a positive feedback from our city’s voters.
And after a few hours of frustration, it just came to me in a flash really. A bolt out of the blue that proved to be rolled gold in value.
And that was the simple notions that blue and gold are such warm and lovely colours, and of all the shapes you can think of, blocks to my mind are the strongest. Circles, after all, really just go about in ... well, you know ... and triangles are nice but only have three points to make. No, blocks are chunky and blokey. And Rod’s clearly a bloke. Nice-looking one, too, if I could be permitted to say that.
Then having decided on blue and gold blocks, I had this brilliant brain explosion as to where to use them. There just seemed no other logical place to run them but down the left-hand side of Rod’s campaign material, as shown above. It’s just such a natural fit, wouldn’t you all agree?
So I’m urging the ALP and Rod’s campaign team to adopt this imagery as his special way of branding his campaign. He should use it in print-media advertising, all sorts of letterbox leaflets, business cards, roadside billboards, everywhere really. Gosh, if he had a campaign car, wouldn’t that blue and gold block pattern look nice down the back of the vehicle?
Anyway, that’s my advice and I really do hope he runs with it, I really do.
I think it’s a winner and I’m really rather chuffed that I thought of it!

Don Gordon-Brown
 

Armageddon out of here!

FILM ... with Don Gordon-Brown
 
Mad Max: Fury Road (MA)
Director: George Miller
Stars: Tom Hardy, Charize Thieron, that kid from About a Boy who grew up, some Aussies.
Rating: 3/5
Now blowing eardrums everywhere.
It’s absolutely vital that a film critic approaches a new release with an open mind. And as I sat waiting for the lights to fade and Mad Max: Fury Road to begin, my mind was open to the notion that it would most likely be shit.

I wasn’t disappointed. But please keep reading: just because this flick was not my cup of tea doesn’t mean it’s not high-class film-making that’s going to blow the gasket of action-junkie revheads everywhere. It is. And the grinding, sand-dune jumping war machine action sequences pump enough adrenalin to permanently alter one’s heartbeat and enough noise to damage their hearing. It just doesn’t do much for a two-and-a-half star, rom-com half full sort of guy.
After a 30 year absence, George Miller’s fourth installment once again settles on Mr Max Rockatansky’s lonely-guy heroics to save what’s left of a post-apocalyptic world.
While there’s a short narrative at the film’s start to explain all this, some idiots were still talking right behind me, acting as if there was no storyline worth bothering about and they were only there for the chase and battle scenes. While they were spot on, I had been keen to know why things were so darned, well, apocalyptic.
I’m not sure I got a complete handle on this but Mad Max Four is clearly set in Australia, where all semblance of societal cohesion has broken down, presumably after the totally unexpected re-election of the Abbott government. I knew it was set in Oz because I’d read all sorts of pre-release spiel about how quintessentially Australian this flick is, right down to the African setting – it was shot on Namibia after outback Oz got washed out – the overseas lead actors, the presence of Megan Gale and of course all the vehicles being left-hand drive.
Anyway, there’s three main warring groups - those who have bullets to sell, those who have gasoline to sell, and those who control the Aldi stores you never see but must be in the hollows of the countless sand dunes on show otherwise there’s no way these people could possibly survive otherwise.
Then there’s this sheila who looks fairly armless, Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron, who escapes from the Citadel or Paradise or Waterfall Park or some such thing, taking with her all these sexy girls wearing next to nothing over their chastity belts whom she’s released from the harem of one of these warlords.
Mad Max is strapped to the front of one of the chasing vehicles – his blood is being used to fuel the vehicle: I told you it doesn’t pay to dwell on what passes for a storyline for too long – wearing for much of the show the facial expression he no doubt had when first told by his agent that he had the gig because Gerald Butler had been unable to step in for Christopher Bale who caught a bad cold the first day into shooting after replacing Brendan Fraser, who decided at the last minute this wasn’t the vehicle to try to restart his career.
That’s just about it really.
You know how those old bikini beach movies where Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello used to shout "surf’s up!" as soon as the storyline began to lag?
 

In much the same way, George Miller resorts to an extended road rage/battle sequence whenever the narrative in Mad Max Let’s Hope Four Is it! gets bogged down, and that’s just after the curtains open. It’s why the show’s first such sequence, where Mr Rockatansky is captured in the first place for his bloodlines, comes before the minimalist opening credits.
To be fair to George, while the action sequences are totally unbelievable to the extent that our heroes could not possibly and repeatedly get out of the messes they’re in – and we all appreciate that’s just the way of action movies – they do look real, something Peter Jackson was unable to match in his Lord of the Rings flicks, where action and battle sequences looked and sounded about as real as Tony Abbott’s smile and laugh.
There are also moments of humour in Mad Max: Fury Road even if unintentionally. The mushy dialogue between the leads used to separate the action sequences should raise a smile, while Furiosa putting her back to a wheel to help unbog a 30-tonne war rig is worth a full guffaw.
And children, it might be okay for Max to wander off into the darkness armed only with a can of gas – sorry, petrol seeing this is an Aussie film – to take on a heavily armed mobile enemy, but you should not try this at home. Max may be mad but you will be killed.
A final word of warning to all you ladies out there who might accompany their menfolk to this testosterone-ladden epic.
It is, as stated earlier, very, very loud and sleep during the feature will be fitful at most.





 



 

Where’s the hope when the dope says nope


 

Nope, nope, nope – the most negative and illiterate of all Tony Abbott’s three-word slogans.
His rejection of even the merest consideration of the complex, harrowing and indeed tragic plight of the Rohingya asylum seekers is more than an adolescent dismissal; it is frankly contemptuous, not only of his Australian constituency but of the wider world. It is, he says, a regional problem: presumably he regards the region as any part of earth which does not include Australia.
Many of the Europeans, already grappling with their own urgent and local issues with the boat people crisis, have expressed sympathy and a desire to help. Thailand has convened a regional conference, to which Australia will send a diplomat but not, at this stage, a minister – another calculated snub.
The nearby Muslim nations of Malaysia and Indonesia, having initially abandoned their neighbours, are now preparing to provide at least temporary rescue and shelter. Even the United States has offered to accept some of the far-flung victims. The source country Myanmar, which absurdly pretends that their third and fourth generations inhabitants should still be regarded as Bangladeshi immigrants unworthy of citizenship or rights, has finally taken some responsibility and undertaken a rescue mission of its own.
But Abbott’s only response is flat denial. We mustn’t, under any circumstances, encourage people smugglers. International law and convention, the reaction of our neighbours, sheer humanity are all to be subordinated to this imperative. Indonesia rather acidly pointed out that if you are going to sign international agreements you should honour them, but Abbott is unmoved.
His only concession to compassion, if it is indeed governed by that, has been a grant of $6 million in humanitarian aid. Given that it follows a $29.5 million cut in the budget of aid to Myanmar, it can hardly be called generous; moreover, it is not clear when or even how it can be delivered, given that the government of Myanmar steadfastly refuses to allow any amelioration of the poverty and degradation of the unhappy inhabitants.
Abbott has, of course, been applauded by his hard-core supporters, notably by an approving editorial in The Australian; but then, The Australian would probably cheer him on if he announced plans to pull out the fingernails of asylum seekers with red hot pincers if it would enhance what he calls border security. For more reasonable people, nope, nope, nope is simply not a sufficient answer.
And the real worry is that it is a very Abbott answer: mindless aggression in the face of a difficult problem. No defence, just attack. This is the old Abbott, the man who brought you the 2013 election and the 2014 budget. He has, it appears, reverted to type; the near- death experience of last February has been forgotten in the temporary euphoria of a couple of mildly favourable polls following the well-targeted handouts from a mere week ago. He has, in short, got gone back to his old self and resumed the habits of a lifetime – a lifetime that has always been risky and frequently reckless.
Given Abbott’s kneejerk and unqualified policy towards the Rohingyas’ desperation, it looks perilously like another captain’s pick – certainly the continued emphasis on the need to deter people smugglers is established government policy, but the peculiar circumstances of the current crisis in the Andaman Sea surely should require a more considered and consultative process. Even some of his own cabinet colleagues are reported to be a little concerned. But they should not have been; the pattern has, after all, been a consistent one.
A more immediate worry has been the fiasco over the idea of holding an inquiry over the conduct of the iron ore producers in the wake of the suspicion that at least some of them had pushed up their output in a move to drive down prices and put some of their competitors – Forrest himself, but more importantly the Chinese, out of business, an idea which has caused confusion and consternation from everyone involved, and many others who have not been.
This was unashamedly a captain’s call – although perhaps unashamedly is the wrong word, given that our amnesiac Prime Minister now claims it came from Twiggy Forrest, Nick Xenophon – even, preposterously, Bill Shorten – anyone but himself. But the record is clear. When Forrest mooted it, and Xenophon spoke to Abbott directly about it, Abbott thought it was pretty good idea, and said so publicly at least twice.
His colleagues were nonplussed and the big iron ore producers – BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto – frankly appalled. This was a clear interference in the sacred free market, they spluttered. And some made the more salient point that it was fraught with unintended consequences: what if the inquiry found that there indeed been some kind of interference or even collusion? Would the government take action? Would it impose fines or even jail sentences on the directors of the guilty companies? Would it consider the ultimate sanction – regulation?
The mere idea was unthinkable, and that being the case, why proceed with an inquiry in the first place. In practice, the mere resistance of the miners was sufficient to kill it off; we all knew what they could do to governments who annoyed them. And Abbott, of course, should have been perfectly aware of the futility of his thought bubbles before shooting off his mouth. But, once again, it apparently seemed like a good idea at the time – or at least a popular one, which these days for him is the same thing.
And the same can be said of his unilateral rejection of any changes to the tax lurks enjoyed by the super wealthy superannuants: not now, not ever. This is in the same category of his raft of 2013 pre-election commitments: a promise which is destined to be broken as it turns out to be simply too expensive, too damaging to fulfil.
It may be a handy club to bash the Labor Party, which has already endorsed some modest reforms to its policy, and it will certainly please some of the greedier of his own backers and bankers, but is just not sustainable, either economically nor politically.
Perhaps, of course, it won’t have to; the election will take care of it, and of him. In which case many will see remember his years with the brief phrase: nope, nope, nope.




A taste for brownies lasts a lifetime

 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

You’ve always liked brownies, haven’t you, Ann?" my editor asked me out of the blue the other day when I was making a rare visit to the Indie newsroom.
"Well, yes, sir, I’ve always had a soft spot for brownies," I replied cautiously, not sure where this was going and fearing it might have been some sort of trick question. It is true that there was a time in my life where I simply couldn’t get enough of brownies, day or night.
My editor gave me that look he sometimes does and continued: "I’d like you to drop into a shop in that new-fangled Battery Lane around the corner and try one of their brownies for me."
"Bakery Lane. It’s called Bakery Lane."
"Yeah, whatever. It’s just a way of making amends. You see, I made one of my very rare mistakes in a lifelong career in journalism and got the name of one of the new outlets in Battery ... Bakery Lane wrong in a piece I wrote for last issue."
Luckily I kept my lips pursed, avoiding saying something hurtful along the lines that mistakes come as naturally to my boss as fibs to a Prime Minister’s lips.
"It’s called I Heart Brownies and I might have called it I Heart Cookies or muffins or some such thing."
My tight-arsed editor then slapped a $10 note on my desk to cover the assignment, adding with a flourish: "Enjoy a nice breakfast afterwards!"
All of this is why, a few minutes later, I found myself chatting to a sweet young thing called Tianah in I Heart Brownies, and accepting her suggestion that I try one of their Turkish delight brownies.
I tucked into it with gusto, being one of those people who’ve never been blighted with a weight problem as I approach very early middle age.
I must confess, being like my boss just a little bit of a penny-pincher, that I thought that at $4 the cute heart-shaped brownie on my plate was a little steep but it turns out there’s a helluva lot of brownie crammed into each and everyone one of these delights. You take some time to get through them and they are indeed delicious.
"How on earth am I going to get brekkie for $6?" I pondered briefly as I made my way out to Ann Street and up to the Valley mall. But the answer came to me as I remembered the editor waddling away from my desk earlier in the morning. Of course, Fat Boys!
Even though the brownie was quite filling, I patted down the front of my pretty little frock and reasoned one of my close personal friends, Les Pullos’ famous $5 brekkies wouldn’t go astray.
I know you’re supposed to have a drink purchase to get that special brekkie offer but I explained my cash-flow problem to one of the absolutely adorable staff members there – Daniel – who accepted my promise that I’d pop back mid-morning and top up cash wise for the flat white.
My gosh, he’s a hunk. I wonder if he’s seeing anyone right now?
As is that Les Pullos. At $5 a pop, Les could fill me up every morning of every week and I’d be a very contented woman
.





Wednesday, June 3, 2015

It’s time to come clean

OUR CLEAT-CHEAT CAMPAIGN


It is now almost three years since The Independent first called Lord Mayor Graham Quirk’s bluff over his blunt denial that he and his other Team Quirk candidates had wrongly used the council’s official cleat in the 2012 municipal poll.

The cleat – blocks of gold and blue down the left-hand side of official council material – cannot be used for political or campaign purposes. It’s simply against the rules. We asked Cr Quirk to explain back then how what he and his candidates used differed from the official cleat so that any reasonable person could have known the difference.

Similar questions to Central Ward councillor Vicki Howard followed soon after, seeing Ms Howard while just a humble candidate letting people think she’d already been elected used the gold and blue blocks on just about piece of campaign material for many months leading up to election day. She even had the copycat council cleat put on the back of her campaign vehicle. They have never had the courage of their convictions to respond openly and honestly to you, our readers. They stand condemned by their silence.

We have persisted with this campaign because we don’t believe our elected officials deserve their jobs unless they’re prepared to obey council rules and bylaws just as we mere mortals are required to do. What if we break the rules? Maybe risk some free car parking time but cop a fine? In times of water restrictions, have a greener garden by doing the wrong thing?


Our charge is that Lord Mayor Quirk, Councillor Howard and other Team Quirk candidates broke council rules for the simple reason that a pretence of somehow being linked to the council gave them a leg-up to very highly paid jobs. For that they should be ashamed of themselves.

On behalf of our readers, we simply declare that Lord Mayor Quirk and Councillor Howard need to suck it up, show some decency and say that what they did was underhand and sneaky and vow never to do it again. We’ll all then move on.


Footpath signs from the 2012 City Council elections. Not the city council cleat, Lord Mayor?

Cowardly and telling silence continues

OUR CLEAT CHEAT CAMPAIGN ....

The basic reason for our long-running campaign against the LNP's use of the Brisbane City Council cleat in defiance of council policy is simple: how can our elected politicians expect the rest of us to follow the rules and do the right thing if they aren’t prepared to do that themselves.

And why would any Brisbane City Council candidate use gold and blue blocks down the left hand side of campaign literature if not to seek an advantage by suggesting he or she has some form of city council approval. In this case, Team Quirk becomes Council Team Quirk, and any worthwhile academic in political studies would attest to the advantage accruing to candidates who used that ploy. The long silence from Lord Mayor Quirk and Councillor Howard also tells a simple tale: there is no other logical explanation for what they did. It was cynical, underhand, far-to-clever-by-half sneaky politics that Australians in recent times are showing a real aversion to. Below are the questions we resubmitted to Cr Quirk (and similar ones to Cr Howard) this week. We weren’t expecting a reply. Sooner or later, we hope they’ll see the sense of coming clean on this sad and sordid saga and say sorry for being copycat cleat cheats. Below are the questions as resubmitted to Lord Mayor Quirk early this week. Similar questions were also once again sent to Councillor Vicki Howard. Neither replied.

PREFACE: Bearing in mind The Independent has examples of what is clearly Team Quirk campaign material and official City Council material where the blocks of blue and gold used down the left hand side of such material are indistinguishable in colour and shape, we once again request answers to the following:

1. Please explain how the pattern of blue and gold blocks used down the left-hand margin of Team Quirk election material in 2012 so differed from the City Council’s official cleat that your average voter would have known the difference?

2. For those who believe that the use of such material - the copycat cleat as The Independent has consistently called it - was done for no other reason than to link Team Quirk with City Council and to convey to voters that Team Quirk had some form of official council backing, please explain why they are wrong.

3. Do you accept that even if just one voter in Brisbane mistakenly came to the view that your LNP candidates in 2012 were in some ways City Council Team Quirk candidates with some form of official council blessing or support, then that would be one person too many?

4. Assuming you’ll be standing again as Lord Mayor in 2016, do you undertake that you and your LNP candidates will never again use in political campaign material any imagery that could be even remotely mistaken for the City Council’s official cleat as it is now or may be at the time?

STOP PRESS

Just as this edition went to press, we received the following email from Robert Lamberth, office manager for Vicki Howard: “Cr Howard said her priority was listening to local residents and focussing on getting things done for the local community.”

Disappointment comes on a daily basis

With DAVID BRAY

News is not what it used to be. After 47 years as a salaried newspaperman and another 10 or so as a contributor I am these days usually disappointed by the contents of one of the two dailies I see regularly, by the stuff put to air by television channels and by ABC radio news.

Reports from police rounds and courts tend to dominate the bulletins of the last two, more often than not, on TV delivered by young, dreadfully skinny females. If a policeman is shown or heard he almost invariably refers to male (or female) persons who are deceased. The man is dead, for goodness sake. How about cutting the false formality and talking sense. And as for the neighbours, witnesses of a house fire or living near a crime scene: “This is a quiet place. Nothing like it has happened here before. Lovely people. Quiet, mind heir own business, always ready to help.” There must be a library of such useless, time-wasting clips. Spare us this garbage, please, news editors all, And ease up a bit on the main newsreader prompting the young reporter or weather informer on the spot: “Some warm weather coming up, Mary?” Old, boring routine. And how about the way TV controls the timing of our major sporting events?

Sure there is huge money involved but in time the audience will, I hope, become tired of this tiresome routine. It would be good to have something worth watching between 6 and 8pm. In fairness, I am happy to say that I believe The Australian to be a good, professionally made paper, though I would prefer to receive a later edition than the one that lobs over my fence, just about three kilometres from the CBD. For example, any football match ending after about 8pm is unlikely to be reported upon in the copy I see.

***

While we’re on the subject of effective communication, let me say that right now I do not much care for Facebook.

People unknown to me, total strangers, advise that they want me to declare myself their friend. Commit my friendship virtually to the wide electronic world. Some people who are known to me, unfavourably (I do not hate fellow human beings) have a similar ambition. I ignore them. Hope they desist and go away.

It seems to me, perhaps unfairly in view of the above sentiments, that Facebook thrives (if indeed it is increasingly popular) for three reasons – to gratify personal vanity, to help people pushing ideas and products and to help people avoid becoming isolated. The third makes it worthwhile. It was only recently that I ventured into what I now know to be social media. I was delighted to flush out a brace of friends with whom I had lost touch. But I do not maintain frequent conversations with them. Email would do the job.

Mall casts a pall over inner-Valley

Many day traders in inner Fortitude Valley are owed a huge, unconditional apology from Lord Mayor Graham Quirk.

He should go down on bended knee when he delivers his grovelling and hopefully heartfelt mea culpa for telling those traders that the revamped Valley mall was going to be an enormous fillip to their business fortunes. His media statements before and during last year’s expensive make-over promised the area’s day economy would benefit greatly from the project. And it was all being fast-tracked so those traders could all benefit from the countless numbers of G20 attendees that would be rushing to the mall to marvel at its makeover and fill the cash registers of day traders as they sipped their lattes, enjoyed a meal and bought something from the shops in McWhirters, Valley Metro and others in the vicinity.

Well, this newspaper repeatedly warned that those traders – many already hard-hit by the prolonged closure of the Walton’s walkway – were being sold a pup. And what a dog of a remake the mall has turned out to be. It’s a shocker. It’s more or less what this newspaper repeatedly warned it would be: a bandaid half measure that has caused more harm than good. We said to council: save the money until you can do it properly. We heard from traders who were totally opposed to the disruption the makeover would cause, no matter how fast it was done. We did hear from one trader who was looking forward to the job being done: more in hope that expectation, I fear. So if this newspaper and many traders got it right, why didn’t the Lord Mayor? The reason Quirk’s apology has to be unconditional is because I am absolutely convinced there would have been no modelling done to backup his claims of a day-time revival for the precinct.

The reality is more likely that the Lord Mayor’s team of spin doctors simply conjured up the notion of much better times out of their heads. It’s what they do best: words and sentences plucked out of nowhere because they sounded good and might make a few pars in a paper or a soundgrab on a quiet day on the TV news. And our civic leader willingly and shamelessly put his name to them. Even when the mall was first reopened in stages, the paving already looked dirty and tired. The two awning structures look like vast plates of sheet metal with the most interesting parts cut out. Sitting on four drunken pylons, they look cheap and tacky. They also let the rain through. Of course, before the makeover, council artwork showed a number of two-storey retail hubs in the mall proper. Stairwells led up to open areas where patrons could enjoy a drink and take in the view. What have we got instead? One fast-food outlet that looks very much like a shipping container tarted up a bit. We pointed out before the makeover that even the council listed as its first point the fact that the new mall would be easier to clean.

So there we have it: a mall with a smooth surface that’s easier to wash off the vomit, the piss and the blood after the big entertainment nights, and a pretty desolate-looking space where in daylight people scurry through on their way to somewhere else, just like before Quirk threw ratepayer millions at the place.

So when you’re ready Lord Mayor, please drop down to the Valley and tell the day traders there that you were full of hot air and you knew your grand claims would come to nought. You are, after all, just a politician. The traders would appreciate such honesty.

Laneways give a much-needed lift to inner-Valley

NEWS

Bakery Lane, the latest project in a grand vision by Valley stalwarts Charlie and Arthur Apostolos to revive inner Fortitude Valley’s under-utilised laneways, is now open for business.

And to celebrate the project’s completion, providore markets offering artisans’ wares, baked goods and local produce will kick off on Saturday May 2. Winn Lane across Ann Street, the first laneway developed by the long-time Valley property owners, will co-host the markets from 11am to 1pm.

Charlie Apostolos said Bakery Lane was the biggest of three laneways to be developed. The next one on the go, California Lane that runs off McLachlan Street, will be their most emotional as their father’s famous cafe, the California, ran on the Carrol’s Corner on Brunswick Street from 1951 for more than five decades. When completed, patrons will be able to enter California Lane from McLauchlan Street, head west behind the buildings fronting Brunswick, walk down Lucky’s Lane (formerly Energex Lane) and exit on Ann Street close to the other two laneways. Charlie said work on that project was expected to start by the end of the year.

But it is the quick uptake of tenancies in Bakery Lane that has the Apostolos brothers confident the inner-Valley had a bright commercial future as well as being a burgeoning residential hotspot. “All our 10 incubator suites are now full with people from the creative industries who will have their offices there or live there,” Charlie, a former president of the Valley Chamber of Commerce said.

“On the laneway level, independent operators will run a mixture of retail, hospitality with food and drink bars.” Venues already open include Stock and Supply, The Tree House and I love Muffins. Coming in May are The Kiosk, The Botanist, Bow and Arrow and Skull It. A little later will come the Apo Bar which will breathe life into the historic Apothecaries Hall that flanks the opening to Bakery Lane along with the old Bragg’s bakery building.

Labour still has its villains

NEWS

Spare a thought, please, for all the unions planning to march through the streets of inner-Brisbane on Sunday week, May 3.

Think of all those placards and props they’ve diligently created over the last three years, decrying that awful Campbell Newman and his merry band of ministerial misfits. And the fact that they are already out of date and have had to be discarded, courtesy of the viciousness of Queensland voters! It doesn’t seem fair, really. With a whopping parliamentary majority, their nemesis Can-Do surely would have been the target of their wrath for at least two terms. Three or four even, if you really thought about the predicament the Queensland Labor’s parliamentary wing was in with little more than a six-pack of MLAs. Still, one suspects the state’s trade unionists won’t be been too unhappy with the amazing turn of events on the last day of January, as they bin anti-Newman slogans and cartoons of the great man. So we’ll have to make up some new material. Shit happens, they would have been thinking as they sorted though their parade propaganda, and it’s just so happened that the little shit was thrown out by the people of Queensland.

But all is not lost for Sunday week and the union movement’s day of celebration for battles fought and won over workers’ pay and conditions. The other main target of their ire, the Mad Monk, is still in charge in Canberra – at least for the time being – so expect a renewed focus on him and his new government run by “adults”. The fear of a return to Work Choices should no doubt get a thorough working over as the march swings down through the Valley and up to the Ekka showgrounds, and the public sector, health and education unions will go hard as usual with dire warnings of the big risk Abbott and Co represent to general pay and working conditions in those industries and services.

But let’s not forget that Labour Day is also a celebration of past victories by organised labour, and a huge part of the day is for the family of workers to get together for a family day out. The 2015 Labour Day march and family fun day on Sunday May 3 commences on the corner of Wharf and Turbot streets in Spring Hill at 10am. The marchers will wind their way down to the RNA showgrounds for a family fun day with drinks, food, music events and rides courtesy of local unions. There will no doubt also be the customary couple of speeches by dignitaries. Don Gordon-Brown

Some people can't help being low rent

DAVID BRAY

Tenants. There are many of them and most are no doubt caring, careful god-fearing citizens. But there are also more than a few who are malicious, destructive, thoughtless characters who apparently deliberately trash the properties in which they spend a few days or weeks.

Holiday renters are the problem. Two of our family own beach houses, one recently built just outside Hervey Bay, the other near Byron Bay. Good houses on beautiful sites. The places are no longer offered for rent through agents and the owners have lost some belief in human nature. Damage, burnt-out roller door motor, stovetop ruined, lavatory seats repeatedly destroyed, television untuned, furniture taken out for shallow water party time….. Real estate agents have been useless, collecting the rent but taking no interest in the care of the properties. There are vandals out there, despoilers, destroyers, wasters, pillagers, plunderers and ransackers. Could that be why I have never been a landlord?

***
When is a lady not? There was a bit in a Sunday ”social” page recently where a woman’s photograph identified her as Lady Gertrude Bysea.

I won’t reveal her real name because it may not be her fault that she was so identified. She is the widow of a well-liked and, if you believe in such an honour, a man who was entitled to be Sir. The imperial system under which he was knighted holds that she cannot be Lady unless she “holds a peerage courtesy title in her own right” – born to it, in other words. Another moderately prominent Brisbane woman apparently finds this hard to accept, insisting she always be referred to as Lady Matilda Jones, thus annoying many men and women who have to deal with her. NZ now has its own honours system, as opposed to imperial. So do we.

         ***
 So we turn to television. A generous son pays for Foxtel. I enjoy cricket, the five-day game, rugby – even when the Reds are in a temporary slump  tennis and golf when they are played in this country.

  It is good to see the new arts channel (132) on Foxtel. It’s ambitious, alone on the small screen though there was something like it years ago, with the same presenter, the ubiquitous urbanely expert Leo Scofield. It has so far shown a mix of good, indifferent and, once in a while, excellent material. Some are kept, building into a replacement for all the vinyl discs and DVDs tossed out over recent years.

  Some examples in the early weeks, typically top of the classical pops and of some age: Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto, 20 plus years old with Bernstein having the time of his life and Krystian Zimmerman combining with the Vienna Philharmonic. A Don Giovanni with no subtitles. A Nabucco from Parma and an excellent Vivaldi Four Seasons with Gidon Kremer and the English Chamber Orchestra. But very ordinary in others. Who the fornicating flamingo is this Jools joker who turns up in what threatens to be perennial filler?

A fine states of upheaval

Federal politics - with Mungo MacCallum

So much for co-operative federalism. Paul Keating’s famous dictum that you should never stand between a state premier and a bucket of money, and his other advice that you should always back self interest because you at least you knew it was always trying, has seldom been more dramatically confirmed.

The barney over last week’s COAG, culminating what appears to have been an immovable standoff, has made it abundantly clear that the only consensus in which the premiers are interested is that they all want the biggest share of the loot as possible. When Treasurer Joe Hockey suggested that they might be prepared to freeze the previous year’s grants in order to unlock the perceived reduction proposed for Western Australia, the idea lasted about a nano-second. Not only were the other premiers outraged at the notion that they might lose out for themselves but Tony Abbott promptly intervened. Our Prime Minister might not be very good at figures, but he could see, counting on his fingers if necessary, that five premiers add up to rather more than one. His suggestion that they could all sort it out for themselves in a mature and sensible discussion was about as likely as his desire to pass the last budget.

Everyone ganged up on the Western Australian premier Colin Barnett, especially when he unwisely mentioned that his state had contributed to the relief of floods and bushfires in the east, so that they might like to reciprocate. It was an idea uncomfortably reminiscent of Abbott’s own suggestion that because Australia had sent money to Indonesia after the tsunami, Joko Widodo might like to consider mercy for the convicted drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myurun Sukumaran. Like the Indonesians, Barnett’s COAG colleagues (or rather antagonists) regarded it as deeply insulting: now not only was the Western Australian a reckless fiscal spendthrift and an arrogant and bumptious upstart to boot, he was now behaving like a moral blackmailer. And so Barnett sunk slowly into the west, complaining all the while. And let’s face it, the Western Australians have always been a grumpy lot. It probably has something to do with distance – after all Perth is a lot further from Sydney than Urumqi is to Beijing. That makes it one of the most isolated cities on the planet.
And it shows – even the nicknames given to the various states are a giveaway. Queenslanders are Banana Benders, New South Welsh are Corn Stalks, Victorians are Cabbage Patchers, Taswegians are Apple Polishers, cheerfully agricultural sobriquets. Moving further, South Australians are Crow Eaters – more than a touch feral. But in the far west, they are Sand Gropers, a bit like a more primitive life form. No wonder they sometimes feel paranoid. Western Australia was always reluctant to commit to the federation; in fact it did not sign up until the Commonwealth offered to fund the Kalgoorlie to Port Augusts railway link – a worthwhile piece of infrastructure, but a bribe nonetheless. And it was only the first of many. But it wasn’t enough, and in 1933 the state government put forward a referendum for Western Australia to secede and form a separate entity, although it was never entirely clear that it would become. The referendum was passed by a convincing 68 per cent, but the British government, which administers the act governing the Australian constitution, kyboshed it: the Sand Gropers had to stay put. And not entirely coincidentally, also in 1933 the independent Commonwealth Grants Commission was set up to allocate monies from Canberra to various states and territories.

The west was given what was rather demeaningly called mendicant status, which meant that it, along with all the smaller states and territories, got a bigger per capita handout than any the two powerhouses, New South Wales and Victoria. And it clung remained a mendicant for many years to come. But eventually the mining boom changed all that – undreamt of wealth flowed into the Perth Treasury, and, after a time, its federal grant was reduced as a result. Now there was more talk of secession, but this time in triumphalist terms: why should the golden West have to fund the rest of those bludgers in the East? Let’s go it alone. Perhaps fortunately the movement never really took off, and then, of course, the crash came. But there has always been a lag time around Grants Commission allocations, and that has what caught up with Colin Barnett and Mike Nahan. And perhaps unsurprisingly, there has been little or no sympathy from the other premiers and treasurers, already beleaguered by the cuts imposed by Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey. What goes around, comes around. Once the premiers were safely out of Canberra, Nahan revealed that Abbott had slipped him a $660 million backhander when the others weren’t looking, apparently as a pre-payment for infrastructure development; but even when that is confirmed, it remains the most temporary of fixes.

So what, if anything, is to be done? Abbott has flagged the possibility that the earlier cuts to commonwealth hospital funding might be reconsidered, which would give relief not only to Barnett, but to the premiers all around; that would likely produce some kind of temporary agreement, and in July there is to be some sort of retreat – although not, presumably, the sort Abbott habitually manages on policies like Medicare co-payments and paid parental leave. But a cosy gathering in the bush somewhere just might give some substance to Abbott’s rather optimistic claim that COAG has been a success. It did, admittedly, give rise to some sort of consensus in that everyone deplored both domestic violence and what Abbott somewhat hyperbolically called the ice epidemic.

So all was not lost. Sometimes the premiers can agree – as long as their own shares of Canberra’s money is not an issue. But the basic problem remains: the states want more money for the services they are expected to deliver, and the commonwealth is reluctant to give it to them. And unless and until that stalemate can be broken, we can still expect a perennial plaintive plea of penury from petulant premiers proclaiming from the periphery in perpetuity. Some things will never change.

Wanted: one real newspaper for Brisbane

MEDIA ... with Don Gordon-Brown

The rantings of a really old and creepy American have dramatically shown the need for some real daily print-media competition in the Brisbane marketplace.

Not that we probably needed extra proof of that, but Rupert Murdoch has reportedly called on his “journalists” in the United Kingdom to do whatever it takes to prevent Labor winning the May election there. Okay, so we’ve known for a long time that the Dirty Digger is not interested in quality journalism any more – hasn’t been for a long time – but his ramblings explain pretty well what is totally wrong with his Brisbane mastheads, The Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail. The Courier-Mail in particular has been a disgracefully shameful rag during and since the Queensland state election on January 31.

All pretence of fairness went out the door as the paper used normal news space to editorialise on what a policy-free zone Opposition Leader Anna Palaszczuk was. One splash called her stupid for having the temerity not to back assets sales which the paper perceived as the only track any responsible government would ever want to wander down if it wanted to claim any serious economic management credentials. Such a spend requires all sorts of advertisements and promotions, presumably, and this is where News Queensland would have reaped the dividends for their blind support for the return of the existing LNP government.

Of course the paper’s editor and a certain right-wing columnist are furious that the good folk of Queensland ignored their wise advice and threw out the one-term Newman government. They got two things badly wrong: they underestimated how disliked the little former army engineer cum political pugilist had become, and they completely overestimated how effective they are in framing public opinion. Ouch!

 Now there is nothing wrong with a newspaper management forming an opinion as to who’s best to serve the public’s – and even their own – interests. And it’s fine to put those things in a clearly defined editorial. But just once or twice in an election campaign period would also be nice. Of course, Rupe’s rags go much further than that. They use the front page for photoshopped attacks on the politicians they dislike. News stories are slanted the way management wants them to be. It’s a common practice in the UK media industry but at least over there some diversity in ownership means there’s at least some hope of balance. There is none of that in Brisbane.

Rupe’s rags in Sydney and Melbourne were also red-hot for the Tories during their recent respective campaigns, but at least it can be argued that they do have some fair competition from Fairfax mastheads, even though the Daily Telegraph and Sun Herald have quite larger circulations. But the problem remains one of monopoly here in Brisbane and the Courier’s unprofessional bias can only get worse as the powers that be up at Bowen Hills try their best to overturn that really silly and stupid decision by the voters back in January. The troubles of Billy Gordon have given them a glimmer of hope and fairness and objectivity have been tossed aside as they pursue that issue with their usual lopsided zeal. So what’s to be done about the Courier and its Sunday sister? They are not going to give Palaszczuk a fair run, especially if her government does the sensible thing and heavily curtails or indeed bans government advertising with the rags. What could they do in retaliation? It’s hard to believe they could go any harder than they are now, so if I was advising the government, I’d tell it to tell the two papers to go fuck themselves with rubber hoses. In diplomatic terms, of course.

The basic problem remains the monopoly in Brisbane, and who would be game or stupid enough to step into the market? Fairfax has the staff in Brisbane for their online Brisbane Times and indeed has good press capacity close by. The trouble with Fairfax is that it gives every indication that it considers its future online, if the ever-shortening deadlines for the likes of the SMH and The Age are any indication. Someone else, then? APN? Probably not, now that Rupe has his dirty, sticky fingers in that pie, having recently expanded his share to the maximum allowable under current media ownership rules. Perhaps this fine brace of mastheads could step into the breech? Anna, promise us some government advertising and all sorts of tax incentives, free rent for a while and other breaks and we’ll take Rupe on. We’re that stupid. And I know a bloody helluva lot of scribes who’d be willing to help put dear Rupe in his place. He’s that close to their hearts, bless them.