This is the story we've been waiting for.
Notorious corporate villain, diet pill popper and Maybach driver Solomon Lew has returned to the public company stage following his humiliating turfing from the board of Coles Myer, with an outrageously low ball bid for Just Group, which owns Just Jeans etc.
We'll have much more to say on this in coming weeks, as shareholders ponder the prospect of having Lew as Chairman of their company.
Game on.
Victorian Liberal President David Kemp has told David "Rodney" Rood of The Aged "there is an issue with the Liberal brand" and that is causing difficulty with membership levels.
He's wrong.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the Liberal brand. Or the Labor brand.
They attract millions of voters - even in elections where they have offended many with either bizarre elitism (Big Paul) or policies seen as some kind of betrayal (Little Johnny)- and there is no sign of anything bigger or better coming along.
People are just not joining traditionally functioning organisations like they used to. They don't have time and even if they do, what awaits them couldn't be any less welcoming, interesting or attractive.
The mind-blowing formality, utter obscurity and absolute pettiness of most of what is transacted at party branch meetings is enough to put off all but the most politically ambitious or fanatical maddie.
The stifling suspicion of and often racially charged hostility for newcomers - especially in the ALP but not restricted to it - disguised as concern for branch-stacking is probably one of the great scandals of modern politics.
A CASE STUDY OF DYSFUNCTION
There is no uglier example of this than the Higgins FEA of the Labor Party. With internal ALP elections on in earnest in Victoria, few contests are as tiny or as viciously contested as those fighting for the right to party in the meant to be safe Tory seat of Higgins.
Led by Diane Anderson, who perversely lives half a world away in the United States and even when in Melbourne lives outside the electorate therefore disqualifying her, the looney left in Higgins are howling especially loudly at the moon right now if their most recent missive is any guide.
In a document recently circulated purporting to be "Candidates (sic) Statements", Anderson has published only a select number of statements from the candidates.
BARRY POND: THE NON FACTIONAL FORMER FACTIONAL UNION HACK CONFERENCE DELEGATE
One Barry Pond seeks election to the office of Returning Officer and seems to have all the fervour and independence of election officials in the employ of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.
Pond insists in one para - in the McCarthyite phrasing - that he is not and has never been a member of a faction.
And yet admits in the next to being a member of a union once aligned to the Socialist Left and now part of Dean Mighell's CEPU supporting Union and Community Alliance faction.
He then proceeds to rip into his foes, including Labor Unity member Tim Lisle-Williams who he says has no relevant experience, although we understand that Mr Lisle has extensive practice counting ballots at the Melbourne University Student Union where he worked for Benjamin Cass' highly regarded election administration company GTS. He is very well qualified.
Not to be outdone is candidate Rolf Sorensen who admits to being a faction member (Socialist Left) and then praises the purportedly not factional "Left-Aligned" candidates.
Oscar Wilde once said "Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative" and they certainly have big imaginations in the Higgins Left.
A NEW SPACE CADET EMERGES FROM THE WILDERNESS
The fruitcake gets nuttier the deeper you cut too. Candidate Des Carroll proudly boasts of his number of arrests ostensibly in the aid of various dubious causes. He explains that he spends large amounts of time alone in the wilderness which does seem to rather explain a lot.
His pitch for support in an internal ALP election continues:
I am most unhappy in the Labor Party!
He is also particularly unhappy about genetically modified crops and is so concerned about it that he even gets the name of what he sees as the diabolical American company responsible "Monsato"(sic) wrong.
He's just warmed though declaring the ALP's most important decision making body "a sham and charade", attacking Premier Brumby and pledging to keep a close eye on them all.
TRADITIONAL FAVOURITE: YANKEE GO HOME
Diane Anderson is made to look sane by the lunatic Des Carroll but doesn't completely disappoint.
The ALP she says "is a party of the ideological right embracing Economic Rationalist (OC: note use of caps) based policy" that resorts to "undemocratic tactics that reward branch stackers" and suppresses "genuine debate".
Her party is at an "ethical low" for which she partly blames patriot State Secretaries Feeney and "Newman" (sic).
And it's not just those two, she reckons. Policy committees have "degenerated into farce" and somehow "vulnerable to corrupt practice" and "abuses...courtesy of the Labor Unity Faction."
It all makes a lot more sense if you stand up and read this out really quickly in an American accent:
The Labor Unity Faction dominated Head Office under the Newman (sic) regime has presided over the metamorphosis of the Victorian ALP into the Liberal Party in which the politicians dictate policy and use the organs of the party to rubber stamp their wishes...
She even declares herself the "conscience of the Victorian ALP", which does would if true make one worry about what kind of psycho-tropic drugs its mind had to be on to stop its bloated body from kitchen-knife wielding at branch pie-nights.
SOCIALIST LEFTISTS ARE THE SANE ONES: BE AFRAID
Then a couple of junior Leftards opine reasonably innocuously and mildly but with rhetoric that's a fair way distant from what Andrew Giles actually gets up to in the privacy of Gavin Jennings' ministerial suite.
Their pledge to "end branch-stacking and other corrupt practices" must be from a memo that hasn't yet got to Khalil Eideh and his loyal factotum of feast Bob Mammarella, to pick just of many Socialist Left stackers.
Also amusing is their commitment to protecting rank and vile members' say in preselections. The Left are in fact leading the charge in obliterating such rights, with the likes of Anthony Albanese in it up to his red neck.
CANDIDATE CONSCRIPTION
And finally the vicious old witch sidekick of Diane Anderson, Margot Carroll, wifey of the Des quoted extensively above, opines declaring that she too is faction free.
She is none too happy with "the continuing march of aspirational people towards their goal of Parliamentary representation."
The party Carroll seeks to mould wouldn't have any such burden of winning a lections.
Her ideal candidates? She wants unambitious folk who "would enter the political scene against their will." She's quite serious about this apparently.
If these parties weren't important to the future of the country, this'd be funny. Those involved are amusing perhaps but what they are engaged in is a first class disgrace. If the ALP had a clue they'd expel every last one of them.
Their contempt for their own party and its leadership, their attempts to exclude others from participating and their systemic rorting (like pretending Diane is entitled to vote there) ought be reason enough to give them the boot.
Little wonder the state's most disastrous Premier John Cain is favourably referred to twice in the appalling document. They all should do what Cain the Complain should, join the Greens party where their conspiracy theories and lunacy would find a happier home. At least until Greg Barber MLC purged them all in a Stalin style showdown. For all of Barber's faults, he wouldn't be stupid enough to tolerate such destructive people and nor should any modern political party.
If you're a sucker for punishment, you're either a Nazi freak running the Formula One or you can click here to read the Higgins news in its purest form.
Game on.
Disgraceful leftard Western Australian Attorney-General Jim McGinty looks set to answer in court for false statements he made about former Premier Brian Burke and his friend Julian Grill.
Those statements - clearly motivated by malice - were calculated to and largely succeeded in destroying the lobbying business then owned by Burke and Grill and that is now largely defunct. McGinty has refused to apologise and says lying about his factional rivals was just part of his job.
Could be quite an expensive year for the Attorney, as not even he would consider burdening taxpayers with the cost of running his own private litigation defending himself from an expensive defamation writ.
If unable to pay a substantial award, damages in defamation are now capped at $250,000, McGinty could be bankrupted by Burke and Grill and lose his seat in Parliament.
Game on.
Jim Mynard is the grumpy old goat of journalism in Melbourne's south-east. Described as a sinister, malevolent and sleazy hit-man by concerned locals on both sides of politics, he routinely takes aim at foes in his weekly column and is seen by colleagues as undermining the integrity of a reasonably good weekly newspaper chain.
The eminence grised palm of the Thomas family owned Star News Group, Mynard has recently been accused by Berwick locals of having a conflict of interests that has the effect of corrupting his reporting on local news in the notorious Casey Council, currently believed to be under investigation by the State Local Government Minister Richard Wynne.
CHEERING BRAVOS FOR COUNCIL BOSS
Mynard recently slopped up some sickeningly saccarine praise of the $8000 a week Chief Executive of Casey Council Mike Tyler.
His column - buried on page 22 of the Pakenham Berwick Gazette - was a tribute to Tyler of the kind one normally has to pay for:
Last week I heard nearly 100 highly successful and respected business and professional people universally applaud and acclaims the work of City of Casey chief executive Mike Tyler.
Mynard then went on to paraphrase the yawning remarks of the council CEO at a Rotary lunch, without any scrutiny or questioning while pouring a bucket on those who opposed his corrupt reign of error.
They may well need barf bags after Narre Warren Rotary functions, but there's no doubt readers need one after seeing a journalist - supposedly hired to speak truth to power in the traditions of our profession - get down on his knees to kneel before such a throbbing orb of self-aggrandisement in the form of Casey's chief cardigan.
Mynard claims that this "universal applause" for the highly paid and equally unaccountable bureaucrat contrasts with the "verbal abuse" from locals directed at this bureaucrat who prefers to operate beyond the inconvenience and tedium of having to explain what he does and why he does it.
OC ZAPPED BY ZIMMER FRAME
The surly septuagenarian asserts that:
"Another campaign against Mr Tyler has involved an unfounded and slanderous smear appearing on a web site where there are no checks and restraints."
Whoever could he be talking about?
When we wrote about Tyler, we stated that he pays himself a huge salary (a fact in the public domain), has prevented councillors from even talking with possible alternative candidates for his position for well over a decade (a fact acknowledged on the City of Casey website) and of misusing his position to give ratepayers' money to his St Kilda Football Club (reported in local newspapers).
We can reveal for the first time today that Tyler approached then Club President Rod Butters for a position on the board of directors around the same time as he worked on swinging them a multi-million dollar benefit. Perhaps journalist Jim Mynard could interrupt his praise of Tyler to make his own inquiries into that scandal.
In our love of free speech, the OC is of course happy to defamed by a dirtbag like Mynard but we'd prefer it if he could identify us while doing so. That way local Berwick-Pakenham readers unfamiliar with out delightful offering of news with patriotic fervour could judge for themselves about the extent to which we have checks and balances as we work hard to avoid reporting ugly rumours about Mynard that include a checkered employment past with in the energy industry and allegations of profoundly unpleasant conduct against wife Rosemary, with whom he had a most acrimonious divorce.
We are far too overwhelmed by our internal checks, restraints and caution for all that.
JUNKETS FOR JOURNALISTS
The focus of our inquiry into Mynard has been on his conduct as a journalist, for he is notorious in the Casey municipality for defaming those opposed to council bosstard Tyler, in one case making serious allegations of criminal conduct against a patriot who was later completely vindicated in court.
So what motivates a crusty old bastard like Mynard?
Our investigations have revealed that Tyler has duchessed Mynard with a series of favours and sweetheart arrangements of a kind that border on corruption.
The Casey Council enjoys a sister-city relationship with a city in Greece. It is not uncommon for hard-swilling council snouts to seek an overseas trip to the trough to encourage diplomatic exchanges in the style of Sir Les Patterson.
It is extremely rare - practically unheard of - for councils to invite journalists to accompany them on these trips for the very good reason that very little actually happens on them other than occasionally embarrassing behaviour from council officers and councillors.
And yet on at least one occasion the OC Investigations Unit has uncovered, Mynard was invited by Mike Tyler to accompany the council delegation on the trip.
When we asked Mynard in our normally friendly way whether it was fair to consider this arrangement a bribe, he responded through his editor Garry Howe:
The company, Star News Group covered all Jim's expenses for the trip to Greece. I have not come across a reporter more insistent on paying his
way.
And that'd very comforting if it was true and the whole story. It's not.
TRIPS FOR TRIBUTES
A Casey council officer has confirmed to the OC - on condition of anonymity - that Mynard didn't pay - and nor did his employer - for practically any of his meals or entertainment which he enjoyed on his Greek holiday. Lavish banquets, Hellenic feasts and shimmering dance troupes were laid on for the delegation, with Mynard treated like a visiting dignatory in his blue blazer rather than the vicious old smear spreader from an outer suburban rag (we're getting a bit carried away now, it's actually not so bad, certainly better than the mediocre Fairfax locals).
Was cutting Mynard in on these exotic Greek delights a favour extended by the CEO Tyler to the journalist?
You bet it was. It didn't cost Tyler or Casey anything to pretend Mynard was entitled to be on a Council delegation, but it's still a favour just as if he'd slipped him a fistful of fifties under the dunny door in the Council building.
And proving just how old school Mynard is, once bought he stayed bought.
AN INSULT TO THE TRADITIONS OF JOURNALISM
What Mynard does is not journalism. It's an insult to the fine traditions of holding up public officials to scrutiny and questioning. Does that mean you should never praise anyone in public life while reporting on them? Of course not, but what Mynard passes off as reporting is little more than keeping sweet with his mates so they slap him on the back at Rotary functions and include him on the invitation list for everything from cocktail parties to lavish overseas trips.
Jim Mynard's column is called "My View" and it probably does contain his good faith prejudices about the world he sees from Pioneer Bay. But you have to wonder whether his views have been influenced by people in power buying him off with favours big and small here and there. And while he'll think it's terrible and cruel for me to question his decision to accept a hospitality handout from Casey Council's CEO MIke Tyler, he has only himself to blame.
Game on.
UPDATE:
The magnificent Winston Churchill is reputed to have had the following dialogue with a woman at a society function
Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course...
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.
With that in mind, we'd happily spring for a souvlaki if he mentions the OC adversely in his next column. You want garlic sauce with that?
