And in the Fisher By-Election (following the death of long-time Member conservative Independent Bob Such) it looks like the Liberals may yet drag their allegedly safe Conservative seat outta' the fire by a handful of votes...it looked all but gone to Labor, but recent counting has the Libs 17 whole votes ahead, but counting continues and will do so for days to come...keep ya' posted...much has been made at a state level of the damage caused to the Liberal cause by the comments re 'canoes' from Federal Defense Minister David Johnston, with very little acknowledgement of the truths there-in, namely, that there are clearly some major problems at the Australian Submarine Corp...
It's a poison chalice for local politicians who want to speak out about the aforementioned problems re ship-building in South Australia, eg, the cost and delivery date blow-outs of the 3 Air Warfare Destroyer Boat thingys that are now set to be finished 2-3 years after the original due date, and at an as yet un-calculated cost increase...(yeah, it's not a great foundation upon which to build faith in a future of building-Ed)...well put...
One Degree Of Separation: because way, way back in the day, I went out with a young woman who as a child survived Cyclone Tracy, a relatively unexpected and severe tropical storm that slammed into Darwin (Northern Territory) early on Christmas Day in 1974...she has featured previous as my first real relationship whom I met at the ZZ Top concert, Memorial Drive, Adelaide, March 6th 1987...she, her brother, and adoptive parents, rode out the storm in their bathtub under a collapsed ceiling...(wow-Ed)...indeed...and pssst, I still love her...(you are pathetic, you really are-Ed)...so sue me...
Hear Me, Here Me, Lend Me Your Years: apparently Mt Gambier is 60 years today a city...and Mayor Andrew Lee was on the ABC bangin' on about how 'we're making history' by having an Asian Mayor (the City's first), and the first Aboriginal Councillor Mark Lovett, etc...(yeah, yeah, hooray for Mt Gambier-Ed)...yeah, it's something I really struggle with too, ya' know?...(I know-ed)...it's hard for me to to take 'civic pride' in what is to my experience such a corrupt and broken town...there are some very real problems with Mt Gambier, problems that most people seem either ignorant of or happy to ignore, particularly the local media...which is a lovely segue into the realisation of that corruption and dysfunction via these attached articles and their ilk...
But first, and itself a bit seguish, I cannot understand the apparently contradictory reportage in The Border Watch, where-in one day it's stories about the apparent/alleged murder of a local man re an alleged $50,000-$80,000 drug debt re Ice/Crack/whatevs, and stories about local addicts and their suffering, etc, then literally the next day it's SAPol (police) in TBW and it's all 'hey, nuthin to see here, everything's fine, relax mister'...(and then next day it's back to the scourge of Ice, etc-Ed)...exactly, you've noticed that too?...(yeah, not necessarily as an exact sequence, but certainly the very conflicting storyline that yes there are problems but it's ok because there aren't-Ed)...now that's some Old School Confusin' right there...
Not A Word Of A Lie: but I went to have dinner, came back to here to finish the post and the Ice issue is on Channel 7's Today Tonight and there's footage of Mt Gambier High School, and there's TBW Editor Jason Wallace and they're covering the abduction and alleged murder as above...and now it's footage of driving around Mt Gambier streets at night and interviews with a disguised recovering addict couple...unfortunately I missed the opening bit but it was clearly saying that there's a major problem with Ice in Mt Gambier (and other Regional centres?)...hopefully this will be on their website within days...but I digress...
Park And Stride:...(sweet baby cheeses, I nearly parked something in my strides I was laughing so hard when I saw this sorry excuse for a Social Initiative dredged-up and spewed back into Ratepayer's laps-Ed)...Ratepayers? what's it got to do with Ratepayers? why are you always on about the poor bloody Ratepayers?...(oh don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming Ratepayers, what I'm sayin' is that everything Council does has everything to do with Ratepayers because every single cent that Council spends is a Ratepayers cent-Ed)...fair enough...and every cent spent on this nonsense, on the t-shirts and the flyers, every minute of Council employee time, all of the associated bollockry, every dime is Ratepayer's...every single one...
I'll Say It Again: Any Grant to the City, any Rates collected, any Dividend received, any Asset realised and/or rationalised and/or divested, each and every dirty dollar skulkingly diverted to the multiple legal issues that Council engages in but are so very rarely aired, every stupid sod turned, every minute every Council employee has work, everything that happens, everything the li'l town owns, it all belongs to Ratepayers, and it's all payed for by Ratepayers, and Council is supposed to serve the Ratepayers as our employees...but in each and every way this reality is distorted by a small raft of vested interests who clearly believe that they don't live to serve, but deserve to rule...
Scent Of A Ratepayer:...the ways Council has found to waste that money absolutely stinks, and in a context where it's the stink, the stench of every mis-spent cent sent down the gurgler by bent gents on venues and events of self-service and ridiculous nodes that remove carparks from the Main St and then tell everyone to Park and Stride...(Get and Stuffed-Ed)....precisely...who the hell is Council, and Graham Greenwood for that matter, to tell me that I have to park aways over there and walk wherevs and whatevs...get stuffed...here's a crazy idea, how's about provide the maximum parks possible to improve access to the central shopping district and that'll improve commerce, etc...(oh that's just crazy talk-Ed)...and don't shreck-up half the street with ludicrous nodes that serve no purpose...(you've gone coco-loco, insane in the membrane-Ed)...
That's Not How You Spell Millstone:...(oh, are we getting a rollercoaster? what about a Monorail?-Ed)...Monorail!...(Monorail!-Ratepayers)...this hilarious reference to The Simpsons cartoon is of course referring in reality to the attached article below...had planned to just move on from these but there's a ton of stuff going on here-in...just for the record, I don't know this writer and he may well genuinely have no idea of what's really going on re what he's commenting on, and/or there's the massive Editorial pressure to run the Vested Interests playbook, etc, etc, but the facts are undeniable, namely;
1) Mark McShane was dual CEO for the first 2 years, with his predecessor Greg Muller employed
full-time by Council under Manager Projects 1.0;
2) this article is a litany of disasters almost entirely of Council's/McShane's own creation, over which Mr
McShenanigans has largely presided, much of it based on the Rail Lands Retail Agenda, as covered
in many previous posts, eg, Council's rank refusal to centralise the Lady Nelson Bus Shelter, a refusal
motivated by the desire to keep the Rail Lands site clear for Retail Development;
3) Mr McShane was fully involved in the ludicrously irresponsible 2013/14 Council Budget that
self-approved doubling Council's debt capacity and massively raising Rates, and the
break-neck/break-bank rate at which they spent that money on the Rail Lands, the Old Hospital
Demolition, and the Caroline Landfill...all $6million borrowed all gone inside 12 months...(well, it's
only money-Ed)...
And I remind availees of then Mayor Steve Perryman's Conflict of Interest where the demolition contractor McMahons were all gunna' go an' stay with Stevo mate...(maaate-Ed)...out there at Rancho Relaxo or whatevs he calls his little motel thingy...(sorry, missed that, I thought I could hear someone screaming "rank Insider Trading and Corruption", but it was only me, ahaha-Ed)...nice...and reminder also that Council purchased and then demolished what was a sound building whilst there's a Court case pending re the valuation and/or Rezoning of the site...it's just something else this new Council has inherited...
These things are all covered many times in previous posts and regular availees will have no trouble spotting the gaping holes and glaring errors in these 2 articles...I cannot for the life of me understand the comment that 'this isn't about changing people's habits, it's about changing their behaviour'...(they're the same thing aren't they? habits/behaviours?...just ridiculous-Ed)...the whole thing is ridiculous mate, from it's inception to it's conception to it's initial demise and current costly resurrection, the whole thing is bollocks...hows about investing in some better Public Transport instead of wasting $1,000s on this nonsense?...
To close I'd make the observation entirely sans humour that police in the USofA have learned to avoid the thorny issue of Black deaths in custody, still such a problem with law enforcement in Australia, avoid this by engaging in a strategy of shooting or otherwise killing African-Americans before they're even under arrest...the recent separate shooting and choking deaths of 2 unarmed Black men and subsequent Grand Jury exoneration of the officers involved, seem to indicate that this is the officially sanctioned strategy for dealing with this strata of society...
And in a further rather spooky coincidence, there's a report just now on the ABC about 3 'police casualty' shooting deaths in 3 weeks in Queensland as part of an increasing trend of police shootings...and the constant inference that this is a choice made before other options were tried, eg, pepper spray and/or tazers, and usually involve people with Mental Health issues...apparently our rate of police shooting deaths is approx 4x that of the United Kingdom...and as you look back at it over the years, it's clear that this is not a new problem in Oz though...
Tomorrow: Release The Frackin'
As promised...the unavoidable reality of seismic disturbance and/or subsidence due to frickin' Fracking...
I am Nick Fletcher and this is my blog...cheers and laters...
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