The closure/axing of WIN TV News is a tragedy for the employees and remaining viewers, and whilst ratings might have suffered when the combining of Riverland and Mt Gambier services left many viewers at either end feeling like their local news was being overlooked, the manner in which WIN TV suddenly ended the service is inexcusable and shows the WIN TV 'executive' to be beneath contempt. *
Personally, I already despised the WIN TV 'executive' for their behaviour in March 2006 when they put MP Rory McEwen on air to attack us parents over the St Martins Lutheran School Child Abuse Cover-up, including statements that he had reported us to the Police Commissioner. *
It was bad enough that they did this without making any attempt to contact any of the parents before running that story, but when I and another parent took a written statement to the station, we were briefly interviewed off camera but WIN TV flatly refused to run anything; nor have they ever, despite my requests.
Please read my previous blogs* re the bias of the Mt Gambier media; there is no denying that there are certain issues that just will not get coverage, or if they do there is a very specific and definable bias; you don't own a media outlet and then let it criticise you, or compromise your business interests, mates, etc.
No-one is more surprised than me at some of the letters that I have had printed in The Border Watch, but that doesn't excuse printing texts on 3 occasions by semi-anonymous 'Jenni' ( who self-identified as a councillors' wife) that were just abusive and derogatory of me personally; and the paper acknowledged they printed the texts without checking where they actually originated.
It doesn't excuse repeatedly doing stories about me without contacting me, and then grossly distorting and even outright lying in those stories, eg, the March 2010 Editorial that blamed me when Sandra Morello was caught printing dodgy fake articles during the State Election campaign. *
Even more surprising are some of the comments that Graham Greenwood (usually an un-wavering supporter of Mt Gambier City Council and in that context a regular sufferer of 'Passionately Subjective Non-realisation' or PSN) has recently made criticising Council over the Main Corner in his regular column in The Border Watch; in one piece I think he used the magic word - Audit - four times?
PSN- The inability to see the reality of anything that contradicts ones personal belief.
Mr Greenwood caught the bookies napping though, with a stunning recent return to form in his (pardon me but I literally don't know how else to describe it) bizarre column on Friday Feb 22 2013 - Bus companies must share cost and blame over shelter; I refer you to my post re the Bus Shelter.
No-one is to blame for the Bus Shelter fiasco, other than the 20 years of self-focused City Council incompetents.
Rather than re-print virtually his whole article in quotes I will just address the broader tone; that it is a farcical piece of propaganda on behalf of Council, and if Mr Greenwood truly believes anything in that article then he needs to take a powder and have a good lie down....there you go old fella.
Straight off he mentions only some of the long list of cock-ups that define the gross incompetence and/or self-involved corruption of proper process that defines successive Councils; the Bunnings/Penola Rd fiasco; what about the pool issue; losing the tennis tournament; the Rail Lands wasteland; the old Hospital; repeatedly promising to renovate the Main; etc.
He completely misrepresents the 'consultation process', because there was no genuine consultation on the Bus Shelter location, and there were also many submissions to Council for their fake Rail Lands Concept Plan* (November 2011) that did request a centralised bus terminal.
The bus terminal issue was also raised with Council when it was first gifted the land in 2005, again at the meetings February 2006 as reported in The Border Watch, eg, Where is bus terminal?: Residents ask at forum (The Border Watch, Feb 2006); my and many other peoples subsequent submissions; and repeatedly ever since; there have been multiple consultations and at every one of them people said 'we want a bus terminal on the Rail lands.'
Moreover, Council has known since the bus service was moved in the 90's to the Shell service station from The Lady Nelson because it wasn't suitable, and then because the Shell didn't work out, it was back to The LN Carpark.
I refer Mr Greenwood to the many articles recently in his own paper that had the Chamber of Commerce, Bus Operators, some Councillors, bus users and many non-users, and my own letters in TBW all calling for a centralised bus service, when he states there was "little community opposition".
It is absolutely not true to say that "...a final decision...ultimately passed with a majority vote."
I was present when 5 Councillors tried to stop the LNC option, the other 5 voted for it, and Mayor Steve Perryman used his deciding vote to push it through.
Mr Greenwood would know that if he was actually at that meeting.
Mr Greenwood conveniently forgets when he denigrates local tenders for being "vastly more expensive" than the Queensland company Council chose, that the original project cost $500,000 ( repeatedly in TBW) and included the now contentious rear wall, and that the price suddenly halved to $250,000.
Council have been deliberately, repeatedly deceitful about cost and design, and now seek to force through the other $250,000 (and I confidently predict that it will go higher) for the 'must have wall' they took off the original plan to halve the price; it is outrageous for Mr Greenwood to blame local businesses who have clearly been screwed over by a deceitful City Council that appears to have run one tender for locals and a different one for the Queensland company.
Is this actually legal? There must be an investigation of exactly what tenders Council provided to whom.
Clearly the project that the Queensland business won the tender for did not include the wall as appears in all of Council's concept drawings, because otherwise Council would be on their case about it to complete the project to spec...including Le Wall.
You should immediately withdraw those comments Mr Greenwood, and place a written apology at the head of your next vacuous diatribe of pro-Council propaganda (ahhh, that feels better).
Why should the bus companies (some of them owner/drivers) pay for what Council should provide for all residents? Namely, a city, local, and interstate terminal at a fully renovated Old Rail Station that can easily be accessed via Railway Tce/Eleanor St, and offers immediate access to services in the shopping centre, eg, food, drink, money, air conditioning, etc, all of which is not now nor will ever be available at the LNC.
Rather than re-hash old news, please refer to my other blogs re Council's Old Rail Land Retail Agenda and why Council makes decisions like putting the bus terminal at the LNC, and how that has crippled development in Mt Gambier.
Mr Greenwood's article 22nd Feb 2013 is a clumsy attempt to misrepresent the facts on behalf of Council, and nobody who is even vaguely familiar with the subject matter will be fooled by any of it.
The facts remain that yet again Council has done what it wants with Councillor's own personal goals being their sole motivation, and to argue that it is anybody elses fault is not just unsustainable, but in the context of derogatory remarks about local contractors, absolutely un-acceptable.
Read Graeme Greenwoods article in its entirety, and say to yourself, "I'll have what he's having."
Mr Greenwood, you need to pull your head in champ rather than go mouthing of about local businesses, particularly whilst trying to defend Council over the in-defenceable, and most particularly when you try and blame Council's malfeasance on those locals.
* see previous blogs
Tomorrow: I Have A Plan (cue War of the Worlds music) for Mt Gambier
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