Can you help? Sure can!

NEWS

If you think you’re going through hard times at the moment, spare a thought for our city’s homeless or troubled youth. Their plight is on the increase, if referrals to the Fortitude Valley-based Brisbane Youth Service are any indication.

“The number of people seeking access to our services has increased by 15 per cent over the last year,” says BYS fundraising and marketing manager Richard Langford. “It’s placing extra pressure on the resources of BYS so anything people can do to alleviate young people’s plights is greatly appreciated.” A
nd right now, there are two ways to help BYS in its work – one that gives immediate relief and one more long term but just as worthy. Each year, BYS as part of Anti-Poverty Week runs its Do the Can-Can project and there’s still time to donate much-needed foodstuffs and other household items before the handout to youth in need on Monday, 24 October.
p to that Monday the service will accept non-perishable tinned or packaged items, as well as baby goods and toiletries to the centre at 78 Berwick Street, Valley. And donations toward the service’s ongoing work can be made by ringing 3252 3750 or going online to www.brisyouth.org and follow the fundraising link.
Brisbane Youth Service (BYS) is a community-based organisation that works with homeless or at-risk young people aged 12-25 years. Now in its 34rd year, BYS has provided long-term assistance to help young people understand their situation and make more positive choices. Its comprehensive services range across several levels of immediacy and intensity from basic needs such as food and showers through to intensive personal support.
The BYS consists of volunteers, specialised youth workers, doctors, nurses and mental health workers among others who assist homeless and at-risk youth in any way, shape or form.


ABOVE: Carrying the can for compassion ... Brisbane Youth Service social media coodinator Angela Wijangco and fundraising and marketing manager Richard Langford.

Where am I?

Our last one proved too hard for many, so here’s an easy one. Tell us where this is for a chance to win a $60 food and drink voucher at the Brunswick Hotel, New Farm.

Email editor@theindependent.com.au to reach us no later than 5pm on Friday 28 October 2011. Or drop us the answer in the post by the same deadline to PO Box 476 Valley Q 4006. Please include a mailing address. All correct entries will go into the barrel for the chance to win the voucher to enjoy some tucker and a glass of something lovely at the Brunnie.

***

Winner of our recent Where am I? was Helen Cook of New Farm who cleverly looked up and spotted the graffiti high above the shoddy Walton’s building in Fortitude Valley.

A bad marketing idea all round

OUR SAY

The adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity will surely be put to the test over Burger Urge’s “taste addiction” promotion campaign. A photo and some pars in the mainstream media, a mention on ABC’s popular Gruen Planet – indeed, the coverage in this edition of The Independent – would on the surface seem like rolled-gold exposure that would take a lot of money to buy.

But the publicity has been far from favourable and time will tell whether the company’s two outlets get a sales boost from a promotion campaign involving what looks like a used drugs syringe and words clearly associated with drug addiction. The campaign against the promotion by the 139 Club was understandable and laudable – The Independent is not so sure about the outcome and the apparent backdown by the owners of Burger Urge.
The 139 Club is claiming a victory of sorts in that the 20,000 pens will not now be letterboxed. And for sure, far fewer impressionable children or recovering drug addicts will see the pens if they are now only handed out at the outlets to customers who ask for them.
But these pens do end up in homes and if just one child’s health is endangered – or one former addict lured back to their deadly habit – by this thoughtless piece of gimmickry then surely that will be one to many. These pens probably cost a lot of money to produce and maybe the Burger Urge people simply could not let go of the marketing concept behind them.
But The Independent believes there was only one suitable course of action if Burger Urge really wanted to show its bona fides as a community-minded company. Once it became aware of the very sensible arguments put forward by the 139 Club and others as to the dangers posed by this poorly considered promotion, it should have been axed entirely.

Enough talk already!

After many years of inaction, some “steely” discussions are not going to force recalcitrant property owners to clean up some of the Valley’s more notable eyesores. That’s the view this paper put to Lord Mayor Graham Quirk in a preamble to some follow-up questions to a media release from him on the issue.

It’s time to stop talking and take action. Cr Quirk appears to fit into the category of pollies who believe that no council legislation currently exists that can force owners to clean up their buildings – both outside and inside. Others argue that existing legislation is poorly worded, with a misplaced comma or some such nonsense.
One pollie and one potential pollie – Grace Grace and Paul Crowther – believe there are laws on the books at present that can be used as a bloody big stick on these owners who clearly have little time for the Valley. We agree with them. Make these owners pay up.
As this paper has stated before, perhaps when faced with such outlays, some of these owners who are simply landbanking while awaiting the price they demand might just be made to settle for something less – and in which case we will all be well rid of them and the Valley can move forward.

Music and murder on the menu

THEATRE

A sure-fire hit featuring 30 sure-fire hits! – that’s the boast from Stage Door Dinner Theatre about its next production Rock n Roll Inferno that plays up at Bowen Hills from 22 October to 24 December.

Damien Lee and his merry band ramp up the jukebox full of classic rock ‘n’ roll that pays homage to the hits of the biggest names of the 50s, including Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Dianna Ross and the Supremes, Connie Francis and Chuck Berry, Through the performance of their songs, and multi-media presentation, the audience will be transported back to the 1950s where they will relive the music, the stars and the era. So pull on the bobby socks with a musical that will burn the floor and leave you wanting more the theatre blurb says. A fantastic idea for Christmas Party bookings and social clubs, it says – and who are we to disagree!

• Bookings to the theatre on 3216 1115.

***

Across town – across the river in fact – Centenary Theatre Group is asking the question: “In Casablanca, can anyone get away with murder?”

Red, White & Boogie is set in Tanajablanca, a mythical city somewhere between Tangiers and Casablanca, and the story takes place in the foyer of a seedy hotel where a group of shipwrecked survivors are holed up, and an international financier ends up shot, strangled and stabbed.
All of the occupants are horrified, but none of them want the police involved so they decide to sell the body in the Casbah. They wrap the body in bandages to disguise it and throw it out the window for Ali to collect – but the body disappears!
It’s directed by Steve Pearton and features Helene Holland, Andrew Wallace, Jan Lord, Samantha McLaughlin and Joshua Bevan The season runs at the Chelmer Community Centre on the corner of Queenscroft and Halsbury streets, Chelmer from 5 to 26 November – Friday & Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 6pm. There’s a licensed bar with plenty of free street parking

• Phone 0435 591 720 to book.

Ambos need crash course in manners

FROM MY CORNER .. with Ann Brunswick

Far be it from me to be critical of the fine men and women who serve in the Queensland Ambulance Service. But this column has from time to time had cause to get a tad grumpy with those who wear the .., er, ... whatever that funny bluish greeny colour of their uniforms is called.

Most particularly it has fallen to me to wag a finger at QAS staff who have been spied by your very own alltime favourite columnist sipping coffee while their vehicle is parked in a clearway just a few metres away.
Well, the other day an ambulance screamed to a halt with siren wailing and lights flashing outside the Queensland Rail building in Edward Street just before 5pm.
The peak-hour traffic parted to allow it free passage, and the ambulance driver thoughtfully puled off the street and onto the footpath where he parked the vehicle and kept its lights flashing.
That is thoughtful, was my initial thought, because otherwise if he had parked on the street the ambulance would have been blocking a bus lane. Not the done thing at peak hour, or other times really.
The vehicle was at that stage actually straddling the entrance and exit lanes of the car park under the QR building.
Well, surely the driver will back the vehicle up or run it a little way forward to unblock the driveway, I thought. But, no. All at once the three-person QAS team leapt from their vehicle, leaving it straddling the driveway.
Sure enough, a few minutes after they had disappeared into the railway station to tend their patient, one car and then another emerged from behind a roller door and under a boom gate from the QR car park only to be confronted with an ambulance blocking the driveway.
The first car was a four-wheel-drive and made a daring manoeuvre by mounting the concrete island in the driveway and squeezing around the back of the ambulance by using the car park’s entry lane.
From my vantage it seemed the driver of the car just squeezed through too. The second car gave up and reversed back into the car park.
Soon a building security man emerged and solved the problem by opening the boom gate and roller door of the car park’s entry driveway, enabling vehicles to exist.
No sooner had a few done so than one of the ambos returned to the vehicle and, with assistance from the security guard, backed it up just a few metres, thereby solving the problem.
Now no doubt tho three ambos had bigger things on their mind when attending an emergency call. But surely they would have known they were blocking a driveway.
If they didn’t then maybe eyesight tests are in order.
Not much harm was done in this instance, but if the emergency had been of another, more serious kind, and the car park was needed to be evacuated, then other problems would have arisen.
As stated at the start of this item, our boys and girls in bluey green put in some hard yards. But they don’t have to make life harder for others, surely.

***

Those who controls our state and local roads are a special breed. For some time now it has been my belief that any mayor, minister or premier who is presented with a plan by their traffic engineers is likely to be on safe ground if they do exactly the opposite of what the planners recommend.
It is often very simple things that tend to annoy me and raise questions of why they were allowed to happen in the first place.

Take for instance speed limit signs. For some time now a 40kph limit has been signposted in the stretch of Gregory Terrace that runs between the two halves of the RNA Show grounds.
At the weekend extra signs were posted to take account of the temporary taxi ranks installed for the Octoberfest celebrations at the grounds and another large expo of some description.
But the odd thing was that in parts one side of the street was signed as a maximum 60kph and the other side of the very same stretch had a 40kph limit.
Our local police would surely not be too happy with that situation, given it would make it near impossible to enforce either speed limit.

***
The “dirt files” saga that engulfed the LNP in recent times has certainly spawned a lot of media coverage, not least in The Courier-Mail, the august paper of record that saw fit to publish them exclusively and in great detail.

It did seem a bit odd to me that the same newspaper which in the past has been known to thunder about the need for higher standards in our political classes, and to bemoan muckraking, chose to devote huge chunks of its print edition to retailing what had been lambasted in its own editorial column as “mud most foul”.
Surely our city’s major Murdoch media organisation would not be motivated by a desire to boost the flagging circulation of its hard-copy version by publishing the files and limiting that publication to its print edition that punters actually need to pay for? Surely not. That would be just a hypocritical and cynical approach to take, wouldn’t it?
That would be the type of tactic used by disreputable Murdoch rags such as the now defunct News of the World. Wouldn't it?
By late last week the story had swung to suggestions that the LNP had dirt files on its own MPs and ex-MPs.
When reading one of the online stories on that aspect I began to see some sense in the LNP having them.
This line on www.news.com.au reflecting a comment by state treasurer Andrew Fraser seemed to suggest a possible motive for the LNP compiling the files: He suggested the files were used to “bring to heel” rouge MPs including Michael Johnson and Aidan McLindon.
Can’t have anyone with that type of predilection in a butch outfit like the LNP, can we?

Passing a law’s one thing: now for the taxing bit

POLITICS ... with Mungo MacCallum

So, amid cheers and jeers and tears and sneers the Clean Energy Australia legislation is finally through the House of Representatives, on its way to a rubber stamp from the Senate. It is a genuine achievement – almost a deliverance. But it’s also the easy bit.

The scenes at Parliament House last week were rather reminiscent of the climax of the 1998 Constitutional Convention, when John Howard announced that the proposal to make Australia a republic would be put to a referendum – a clear case of premature elation. Malcolm Turnbull and his acolytes celebrated what they imagined was a great victory, before waking up to realise that they had been stuck with an unsaleable proposition in what proved to be an unwinnable fight.
And so it may yet prove for Julia Gillard and Labor. Their belief, which in fact is no more than a hope, is that everything will go smoothly; in July next year the arrangements will slide into place and that it will be full steam ahead from there – or full wind power, or full solar power, but at least it will be ahead.
Tony Abbott’s apocalyptic prophecies of doom and gloom will be revealed as baseless, and the compensation packages will bring the voters flooding back to the ALP weeping with gratitude. Well, it could happen; but the political climate will have to undergo truly radical change if it is to be so. For starters, the disenchantment among the voters is not driven entirely by fear and loathing of the carbon tax, although that has been a powerful catalyst, ruthlessly exploited by Abbott.
A significant portion of the electorate has clearly turned off the Gillard government altogether; nothing it now says or does will bring all of those lost voters back. Whether there are enough of them to put the next election beyond Labor’s reach is another question, they constitute a formidable handicap before the race has even started. Second, the prospect of the new tax being implemented without problems, glitches, hiccups, stuff ups and outright disasters seems remote.
Not only does Labor’s record in carrying out its programs inspire little confidence, but the new tax and its infrastructure involve complexities and vulnerabilities that make it uncommonly difficult. There will, of course, be unforseen consequences. But some of the more foreseeable ones include the boundaries: just who pays and how much? And who gets compensated and how much?
There are, inevitably, margins and cut-off points, and those who miss out on what they imagine is their due can be guaranteed to wail like banshees. Then there is the general atmosphere.
The world economy is, to put it mildly, volatile, and some of the volatility is bound to filter through to Australia. And Abbott and his media pack can be relied on to blame the carbon tax for everything – absolutely everything. Every job lost, every reduced profit, every movement of the CPI or of interest rates, indeed every set back of every kind will be the fault of Gillard and her capitulation to the civilisation-wrecking Greens.
And this points up another hurdle: Gillard is yet to persuade the public that she is really, truly committed to the policy. She had to contend with the memory, not only of her pre-election promise that it wouldn’t happen, but of her part in persuading Kevin Rudd to shelve his own plans for action on climate change in 2010. Circumstances, she says, have changed; sure, but the change the punters see is that she was forced to adopt the tax by Bob Brown’s mob as the price of forming government. She must now claim it as her own. Wayne Swan insists that it is Labor to the bootstraps (whatever they are – come on, Wayne, that was Bob Menzies’s line half a century ago) but with Brown triumphantly claiming the credit, his audience will be hard to convince.
And Gillard’s problems are compounded by the terrible shemozzle over asylum seekers. Once again the government has been forced to adopt a policy it publicly disparaged: onshore processing. Never mind the fact that this is the most sensible and humane policy, in place throughout the developed world, sanctioned by international law and practice and, according to the polls, favoured by a majority of Australians, Gillard and her government determinedly rejected it and fought to a dishonourable defeat against the very idea of it.
Now she must implement it and, presumably, defend it. Not only will it be a ghastly distraction and a permanent reminder of the government’s administrative and political incompetence, it will detract further from Gillard’s already suspect credibility.
This is not a promising base from which to launch a campaign to sell a carbon tax, a policy already unpopular with a majority of the population and opposed by some very powerful and not always scrupulous interests. The attempt would be risky even under normal conditions; with minority government facing uncertain economic conditions and a host of other controversial to deal with it looks positively foolhardy.
If Gillard were playing chess the move would be marked as bold but unsound. But she isn’t; she’s playing the great game of politics, where the stakes are high – in the case of climate change quite literally world changing. The carbon tax is not the ideal policy, but it unquestionably a big step in the right direction.
Gillard deserves credit for her guts and perseverance in the face of some of the most vicious and dishonest opposition and abuse any Prime Minister has had to contend with.
If fortune truly favours the brave, she will eventually reap the rewards. But this was the easy bit: she only had to convince three independent members of parliament to back her. Now she needs to convince the best part of 13 million voters. Good luck.

Smith refinds his touch

FILM ... with Tim Milfull

Red State (MA15+)
Director: Kevin Smith
Stars: Michael Parks, John Goodman
Rating: 4.5/5
110-minutes, screening from 13 October

New Jersey-based writer-director Kevin Smith has a very solid reputation for slacker comedies like Clerks, Mallrats, and Chasing Amy, and the clever and iconoclastic excoriation of Catholicism in Dogma.

Last year, however, he almost ruined everything with a film whose title says it all: Cop Out. With his new film Red State, the director in some ways returns to his form of almost a decade ago, and in many, many other ways moves into new and very exciting territory.
Treading similar ground as Dogma, Red State takes us into the world of extreme fundamentalist Christianity, where the believers relish the thought of the End Times, and have no problem proselytising a message so toxic that even Neo-Nazis regard them as too Far Right.
These fanatics – and Smith doesn’t shy away from the similarity between his froot-loops and those in the reality of the Westboro Baptist Church – regularly picket the funerals of gay people and soldiers who have been killed in action, the latter because they served a government that “permits” homosexuality.
Through a nightmarish turn of events, three overly horny teenagers become tangled up in the affairs of the Five Point Church and its obviously insane pastor, Abin Cooper (Michael Parks).
Within hours, Cooper and his congregation are the focus of a showdown that threatens to outrank the tragedy wrought by David Koresh in Waco, Texas. On the other side of the compound wall outside the church, reluctant ATF agent Joseph Keenan (John Goodman) struggles to control a situation he knows will end in bloodshed.
Smith skilfully manipulates our sympathies in Red State, shifting the focus of the story from one protagonist to the next, and constantly keeping us on the back foot, unnerved and horrified at what is unfolding. If this is the direction he’s heading in from here on in, I’ll be one very satisfied fan.



It’s an Oz feast at this year’s BIFF

BIFF 2011
Screening from 1 to 13 November
Various venues

At the time of writing this, my deadline looms, and the official launch of the Brisbane Film Festival is only hours away. Even though I’m on the programming panel for the festival, I haven’t been allowed to see the actual programme yet; but I think it’s a good idea to let you know that by the time you’re reading this, the festival’s schedule will be online in all its glory.

There’s a lot happening this year across several venues – from screenings at the State Library, Palace Barracks and Centro, and for the last time, at Tribal Theatres, which will finally close its doors for good not long after the festival winds up. There will be 50 Australian premieres at BIFF this year, including David Cronenberg’s controversial film about psychotherapy, A Dangerous Method, starring Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, and Viggo Mortensen.
Fans of the band, Kings of Leon will be excited to hear that a documentary – Talihina Sky: The Story of Kings of Leon – will be screening at the festival, and I’m sure there’ll be some sort of tie-in with their actual performance in Brisbane during November.
And there’s been a lot of talk about Pedro Almodovar’s new film, The Skin I Live In (pictured above), starring one of his long-term collaborators, Antonio Banderas. Some critics have described this as his best film yet, and this will be a perfect closing-night film for the festival.
I’ll have much more to say about the festival in the next issue of The Indie. In the meantime, check out the detailed festival program online (and start buying tickets!) at www.biff.com.au



THE BINGE
Alfred Hitchcock: A Retrospective screening at GoMA from 7 October to 27 November
Oceans (G) available from 20 October through Hopscotch
The Dead (M) available from 20 October through Hopscotch
Zombie Transfusion (MA15+) now available through Pinnacle Films

There’s a lot happening over the next six or seven weeks in terms of cinema in Brisbane, with BIFF just around the corner, the Japan Film Festival visiting town in early November, the Hola Mexican Film Festival starting in the first week of December, and, courtesy of the Australian Cinematheque at GoMA, almost two months of glorious suspense with their programme, Alfred Hitchcock: A Retrospective.

Screening every existing film he ever made, and featuring all of the episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that he actually directed, this is a comprehensive collection of work by one of history’s most prolific directors, and offers cinephiles and fans alike a rare chance to see Hitchcock’s amazing talent on the big screen.
For more details about the retrospective—and some very tempting live events featuring cocktails, nibblies, and live entertainment, visit http://qag.qld.gov.au/cinematheque/current/alfred_hitchcock
Regular readers will be familiar with my penchant for the undead – not vampires, for gawd’s sakes: zombies – so I keep a keen eye out for new productions about the lurchers and ragers. The Dead, directed by Howard and Jonathan Ford takes a new look at the reanimated, setting their story in darkest Africa only hours after a plague has marooned a US flight engineer thousands of miles from home. It's is worth a look.
Not so impressive is Zombie Transfusion by Steven C. Miller, which pitches some witless teenagers against the slavering hordes. Finally, those looking for something calming amidst the undead storms should watch the French documentary, Oceans, which features some simply staggering imagery.

Feeling swamped by savvy?

WINE ... with David Bray

If you think we are being overwhelmed by sauvignon blanc you are surely on the right track. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing. The books will tell you that it is a green-skinned grape variety which originates from the Bordeaux region of France. The name probably comes from sauvage (“wild”") and blanc (“white”) and it is possibly a descendant of savagnin.

Sauvignon blanc is planted in many of the world’s wine regions (e.g. France, Chile, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil, Moldova and California) and yields a crisp, dry, and refreshing white varietal wine. It is also a component of the well-known dessert wines from Sauternes and Barsac.
In its homeland, particularly in the great Loire regions of Sancerre and Pouilly Fume, the winemakers place great emphasis on complexity, setting their wines apart from the highly fruited new- world styles.
The best sauvignon blanc wines as we know them from our country and across the Tasman are fresh and vibrant wines with none of the heaviness of chardonnay nor the floral tones of riesling. Their flavours go well with semillon and these varieties are often blended together. Sauvignon blanc tops the Australian best-selling white wine list. It knocked chardonnay off its shelf several years ago, and the majority of it comes from New Zealand, notably Marlborough.
Here are some of the examples seen in recent weeks:
Mud House 2011 Marlborough sauvignon blanc has the passionfruit and tropical flavours expected of grapes in this region, full-flavoured and nicely balanced, crisp but not overpowering. $22.
Oyster Bay, leader of the NZ invaders, has had its moments in the market and here it is, another Marlborough, in the 2011 edition going along nicely…. zesty, aromatic … look for passionfruit and tropical flavours. $19.99.
Swinging Bridge 2011 sauvignon blanc shows the fine natural acidity of Orange region grapes. Some of the wine was matured in big, older oak to build texture while not sacrificing the aromatics. $18.95. Angullong 2011 sauvignon blanc (pictured) comes out of the southern fringe of the Orange region, with a little bit from higher up the mountain, which is said to “add some further depth and structure to the finished wine”. $17.
The two Orange producers also sent along pinot gris, which I happen to like very much, even more so as growers and makers are working out the best places and techniques – and Orange is looking great.
Angullong Fossil Hill 2011 pinot gris, like its sibling mentioned just back there, came out of what its makers describe as “a challenging vintage”. Let Angullong owner Ben Crossing has a say, as follows: “ ...the Orange region is beginning to see the results of judicious vineyard management with the release of the 2011 whites. “The winemaking and viticultural experience and knowledge is continuing to grow and with it the quality of the wines increases. If we’d had a vintage like the 2011 five years ago it would have been a different results.” Whatever, this pinot gris is a delicious example of one of the most flavoursome whites. $22.
Swinging Bridge 2011 pinot gris comes up nicely, too. Owner Tom Ward: “We spent a great deal of time ensuring that the vines were in the best possible condition. Lower yields were called for, as was judicious canopy management, allowing good sunlight an air flow through the vines. “We managed to escape disease and achieve good aromatics in both wines, with a lovely natural acidity that the high elevation of the Orange region produces so well.” Good stuff at $18.95.
Now that summer seems to have decided to settle in, it could well be time to have a good look at out mid-priced whites, such as the above. Go for it.

A wee piece of nonsense

OUR SAY

By Don Gordon-Brown

We mere mortals would see them only as CityCycle advertising signs and nothing else. But insightful people – the true visionaries among us – see them doubling as urinals. A classic case of lavateral thinking, if you will.

Besides, not too many people are using the CityCycle stations around town much for hiring bikes anyway, so it’s really a stroke of genius to turn a fair part of said infrastructure – those ubiquitous advertising signs – into toilets. That at least was the suggestion in a riveting article in The Courier-Mail on 16 September, about the problem of public urinating in Australia’s first designated entertainment precinct, Fortitude Valley.
It seems that when the tens of thousands of young people flood into the Valley on any night, but especially the big nights of the week – Friday through to Sunday – there’s a flood of a different kind in the wee hours as revellers relieve themselves in public either because they can’t find a toilet in time or they are reluctant for whatever reason to use the ones they do know about – the unisex toilets next to the Valley police beat are said to be avoided in mass by women and others with outstanding arrest warrants and the like who have an understandable aversion to the thin blue line right next door.
The Page 3 article said “stakeholders” in the Valley were looking at ways of resolving the problem, the most startling of which was to use the bases of City Cycle advertising signs as public urinals. They’d be disinfected each night, we’re happy to report.
But we thought just urinals was a little bit sexist because ladies go to the loo, too, so above is our interpretation of how the scheme might pan out, so to speak. We’re not sure exactly where the growing waste material of such heavy patronage would eventually flow to, mind, but we feel rather silly even thinking of that rather messy problem when it obviously was of no concern whatsoever to the brilliant “stakeholders” who came up with the idea.
We assume they were serious; that the idea was not just some flash in the pan or worse still, that someone was playing a cruel joke on some gullible Courier reporters. Taking the piss, in other words. Another brilliant idea cooked up by these nameless stakeholders and faithfully reported in the article was to build “deterrent” urinals in the sorts of shady lanes and other places where desperate people relieve themselves – but with a catch! The V-shaped shelves would funnel the urine back down and splash the naughty offenders’ shoes! Gotcha!
This supposes that people who are pretty drunk and feel the need to relieve themselves in an alleyway are going to notice that they really are going to be the drips afterwards as a result of their unsavoury and antisocial behaviour.
So, what does firm JCDecaux who holds the advertising rights under their CityCycle agreement with Council think? We’re awaiting answers to a couple of questions we pointed in their direction, but presumably it will be all for it: their clients’ messages are simply bound to be seen more if people are constantly gawking at those going potties at the base of said signs, like the one pictured on our front cover at the bottom of the Valley Mall.
And think of the opportunity for specifically targeted marketing to suit the situation: ads for toilet paper and air fresheners come immediately to mind. There must surely be others. Given the fast- food rubbish these kids quaff nowadays, haemorrhoidal creams?
No, it’s a deadset winner. And we thank The Courier-Mail for giving the idea space to breathe, even if it might stink just a teensy, weesy bit.



Above: The Courier-Mail article that made such a splash.

Plight of homeless continues to grow

NEWS

By Susannah Thomsett

The plight of the homeless keeps growing in Brisbane, according to 139 Club general manager Rod Kelly. He says more than 200 people visit his Fortitude Valley premises daily seeking help, and it’s why the 139 Club is seeking government funding to expand its “Safe Sleeping Strategy” pilot program.

Each Wednesday the 139 Club provides eleven beds to women referred by Homeless Persons Information Queensland. Participants must be aged eighteen or over and homeless, or at risk of becoming homeless.
Mr Kelly says the club lacks the resources, financial or human, to run the Safe Sleeping Strategy or more than one night a week.
“At this point, we’re hoping the program will run indefinitely … [we’re] currently looking for federal funding, but will also look at the availability of local and state funding,” Mr Kelly said.
“We did a bit of a survey and found the most vulnerable group among the homeless or at-risk of homelessness people were women.” After staying the night at the 139 Club, participants are assessed and referred to Under One Roof, a consortium of charities specialising in homelessness and its associated problems.
“Whatever the problem, there’s someone in the consortium who can help,” Mr Kelly said. One Wednesday night a woman arrived at the 139 Club in her pyjamas after being kicked out of her home by her husband.
“She was in tears because he wouldn’t let her take her cat with her … she’d had that cat for nine years, and she had to leave it with her violent husband,” Mr Kelly said. “In the morning she could have a shower, we gave her some clothing, she had breakfast, and we gave her a referral to another member of the consortium.”
The 139 Club’s main activities are supplying at-risk or homeless people with free or low cost meals, clothing parcels, hot showers, laundry facilities, toiletries, day beds, lockers, mail and message collection services. Members of the public can help the 139 Club by making a donation of money, clothing, non-perishable food, or hygiene products.
“100 per cent of all donations go to the people who access the 139 Club,” Mr Kelly said. The 139 Club also welcomes volunteers for their kitchen or donation room, or you can hire the 139 Club’s catering enterprise for a private party, function or event.
All profits are used to employ homeless people in a twelve month paid kitchen traineeship.
To contact the 139 Club, visit http://www.139club.com.au, or call 3254 1144, or drop in to the day centre at 505 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley. To contact Homeless Persons Information Queensland, call 1800 47 47 53 (toll free number) or 1800 010 222 (toll free, TTY).