gold coast bulletin

Oct 8, 2010

a matter of consent and planning permission {3}

dear reader, i am not here to discuss the merits of a lifestyle choice that is described lovingly as swinging, i’ll let you choose ( if you’re a consenting adult of course ), although as per my manifesto posted here, i would suspect that consenting adults could pretty well much get up to anything they wanted, within some boundaries of course. not the boundaries set by the happy clappies and the other well dressed and exceedingly polite missionaries that routinely bash at my door on a saturday morning though !!
..

Coast swingers party over

Matthew Killoran   |  October 6th, 2010 – gold coast bulletin

THE party is over for the swingers club in the Burleigh Heads industrial area, but it could be heading to a residential area near you.

The Utopia Swingers Club had its application to continue to operate out of a light industrial site at Burleigh rejected at the Gold Coast City Council’s city planning committee yesterday after noise complaints from neighbouring residential streets.

But city planning boss Cr Ted Shepherd said swingers clubs could fall under the proposed party house solution of short term rentals in residential areas, with strict conditions put in place on outside noise, operating hours and parking.

He said proposed party house restrictions, still waiting approval from the State Government to be put in place, could apply to swingers clubs in the suburbs.

“It’s exactly the same as a party house but without the unruly behaviour. You could turn it into a party house,” he said.

“It could fall under those considerations.

“The regulations that immediately spring to mind … we would limit their hours of operations and noise coming from outside the building and car parking.

“If it was private people, not a club, they could operate out of any house anyway.”

But Burleigh Heads councillor Greg Betts disagreed that the club fit into the party house category.

“The whole issue with the party house drive for change was that we had people moving in on a short-term basis. This wouldn’t be short term, it would be full-time,” he said.

Utopia Swingers Club has been operating out of the light industrial site for more than a year.

The club owners applied to hold ‘events’ involving up to 30 people each Friday and Saturday night from 8pm to 3am, monthly theme parties for up to 80 and four major annual events for up to 200, including Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties.

The club includes a ‘dungeon’ and a ‘wild room’ as well as a dance stage and outdoor spa.

now this is all very sensational ain’t it, the local news goes nut-so over the salacious topic of swingers and they race each other, or race each other off, to outdo each other with saucy details. i can’t really say too much about the club or it’s failure to get approval, let’s hope it was based on sensible, standard operating procedure, non judgemental ( now that’s silly, the process is judgemental ) or even taste, morals, the lack of, or success rate, in the decision makers sex lives. it surely ( yes !! don’t call me shirley ) is based upon “sound” planning principles and not the nonsense normally proffered to applicants for sex shops, brothels or solo sex workers .. all legal and approved activities in queensland.

this brief post today has come about ( i’m at it already ) as the gold coast bulletin kindly, or in ignorance posted my reply to the story online, i like leaving my mark in the online bits, it leaves a smile on my dial and a pip in my step, unlike the swingers i can get my rocks off without sharing them with others. good luck in finding a premise and beware of the double entendre that will accompany the application and reporting of same. i’ll be keeping a close eye on you as you pursue your alternative lifestyle, it’s just that the council may pursue you even further away.

photo credit and club website

By tbaoo Category: life as i see it Tags: , , , ,

Aug 15, 2010

the end of newspapers {0}

this caught my eye and spurred me to provide a written response, it seems that even newspaper opinion writers or so called bloggers, can be caught in the ever decreasing traditional employment model that provides work for journalists.

Numbers tell a story for media

Cate Swannell   |  August 15th, 2010 – ( gold coast bulletin )

IF you’re reading this blog then there’s a fair chance that you’ve already taken a leap that many more Australians will be taking in the not too distant future — you come online for at least some of your news.

Thank god. I’d be out of a job if you didn’t. So thank you for that.

The fact is, being a journalist these days means being in an industry that’s in a state of flux.

And by flux, I mean complete turmoil.

New York University journalism academic and `new media’ expert Jay Rosen has been in Australia this week — you may have caught his interview with the lovely Leigh Sales on Lateline on the ABC on Thursday night.

Yesterday he caused a mild flutter on Twitter after saying this about a recent visit to the Sydney Morning Herald:

“I visited, met with its leaders, talked to observers. My impression: the Sydney Morning Herald is in peril. No one there knows where to go.”

Now, before you all point out that I work for Fairfax’s rival, News Limited, and therefore I’d be eager to talk them down, let me say this — the SMH is not alone. Every newspaper in the country is battling a two-decade-long trend.

Mumbrella, the website that analyses the Australia media and marketing scenes, this week published a set of figures put together by the Media Alliance ahead of the Walkley Media Conference.

In brief the numbers show that in 1991, 160 newspapers were sold per 1000 head of population. Today that number has dropped to 110 per 1000.

Bear in mind that Australia’s population has grown by about 25 per cent in that time.

In short, newspaper circulations are dropping across the board.

It’s debatable whether that slide can be stopped, or if, indeed, newspapers in their current form will survive.

So you can understand why newspaper publishers are sweating quietly in a corner.

Add to that the enormous dilemma of how to make online news websites pay the wages of the journalists who populate them, and you can see that the media industry has good cause to be running around like headless chooks.

Clay Shirky, another NYU academic who specialises in `the social and economic effects of Internet technologies’, has likened today’s media scene to the years following the development of the printing press.

It was a time when nobody could guess the impact of cheaply printed, mass-produced books and pamphlets upon the world. And as we know now, that was perhaps the single most monumental industrial development in human history.

Today nobody knows where journalism and the media will be in five or 10 or 15 years’ time.

Will newspapers still be around? Will iPads and their ilk be the way news is delivered? How will journalists be paid, and by who?

Will you, the reader, make the transition to being willing to pay for online news, like you currently pay for your newspaper?

Now, obviously, as an employee of News Limited, I’m going to tell you that the powers that be in my organisation have a plan. They haven’t told me what it is yet, but I’m sure they will when I need to know.

By now, it’s common knowledge that Rupert Murdoch wants all his mastheads to be behind paywalls in the not-too-distant future.

What that means for readers of the Gold Coast Bulletin and goldcoast.com.au, we don’t yet know.

There are many models being discussed, many subscription packages being thought about, many options being mulled over.

When I know, you will know, gentle reader


surely ( don’t call me shirley ) i’m worth a heap more than a dime .. i’ll have to wait and see !!

By tbaoo Category: featured, media Tags: , ,

Aug 13, 2010

tbaoo gets unreasonable {1}

this frightening matter hit the local newspaper the gold coast bulletin on the 10th August 2010 and caused a huge backlash of comment, most of it concerning the sheer out of touch silliness of the magistrate’s decision, forget the stupidity of the perpetrator, the magistrate just seemed to be completely out of touch.

tbaoo’s comment to the newspaper – I hope that our society hasn’t changed to accept that definition of reasonable, is it reasonable to call this gentleman a slob, fat, old, irrelevant and dumb. maybe i’l just send him a fax.

Posted by: alan-tbaoo 9:45am Tuesday – Comment 59 of 65

article one

Race-hate words found not illegal

Leah Fineran | August 10th, 2010  ( gold coast bulletin )

A SOUTHPORT magistrate has found the terms ‘sandnigger’ and ‘nigger’ are not offensive to a reasonable person.

Magistrate Michael O’Driscoll made the ruling yesterday when he dismissed a case against a Gold Coast retiree charged with sending an offensive facsimile to a local politician.

A staff member working for Broadwater MP Peta-Kaye Croft complained to police after receiving the document from 62-year-old Denis Mulheron of Labrador on June 30 last year.

Christie Turner, 28, told Southport Magistrates Court she was deeply offended when she read the one-page fax which called on the Labor Party to tighten immigration laws against ‘niggers’ and ‘sandnigger terrorists’ and Muslim women with circumcised genitals.

The fax also made reference to indigenous Australians as ‘Abos’.

Mr Mulheron told the court he believed he was using ‘everyday English’ in the fax.

He said he had grown up with the slang terms for Arabs and black Africans and did not believe they were offensive.

“I’m not a member of the cafe, chardonnay and socialist set … to me that is everyday language,” he said.

He argued in court the slang terms were no different to calling a New Zealander a ‘Kiwi’ or an American a ‘Yank’.

Barrister Chris Rosser said his client had been raised in a different time when the words were not as frowned upon.

it seemd odd to me that this person “denis mulheron” had suddenly appeared on the scene providing his blatantly rude views onto the world and was now sprouting hate in written communication to an elected representative’s office. it might have been a good idea to research the history of such a buffoon. today’s gold coast bulletin 13th August 2010 seems to present the outcome of this research and presents some of the back story of this bitter citizen, see below.

i would think the newspaper may have been subject to restrictions prior to his recent southport case, but not after, surely ( don’t call me shirley ) his previous actions should have been made public. any-who the state premier anna bligh has had a say about the recent outcome, with promises that further measures to control such abuse be discussed.

article two

Race comment man in court before

Thomas Chamberlin   |  August 13th, 2010 ( gold coast bulletin )

DENIS Mulheron who walked free from a Gold Coast court this week for using the references ‘sandnigger’ and ‘nigger’ was ordered by the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal Queensland last year to pay $50,000 for racial discrimination against an Indian man.

Mr Mulheron, 62, and a company of which he was a director were ordered by the tribunal to jointly pay the $50,000 after he called Inderjit Pal Singh Jaiswal a ‘lying black (expletive)’ in December 2004.

This week, Mr Mulheron had another case against him dismissed in the Southport Magistrates Court after he was charged with sending an offensive fax to Broadwater MP Peta-Kaye Croft demanding Labor tighten immigration laws against ‘niggers’ and ‘sandnigger terrorists’.

In the tribunal case handed down last year — heard under the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 — it found there was ‘overwhelming’ evidence that Mr Mulheron ‘discriminated against the complainant on the basis of the attributes of race and religious belief or religious activity’.

It said the abuse was ‘crude, repugnant and vile’. The tribunal decision said Mr Jaiswal, a turban-wearing Sikh, was an Australian citizen who had lived in the country for 35 years and was a director of Aussie Irish Investments Pty Ltd, which ran a restaurant at Robina.

Mr Mulheron, a director Denraydon Holdings Pty Ltd, trading as United Sheet Metal, supplied and installed kitchen equipment in 2004 for Mr Jaiswal.

A dispute arose over final payment after claims of defects and Mr Mulheron claimed he was owed money.

Mr Mulheron drove to the restaurant on December 4 to ‘debt collect’ and became involved in an argument with Mr Jaiswal.

According to a transcript from Mr Mulheron, he called Mr Jaiswal ‘a lying, black (expletive)’ before he claimed Mr Jaiswal responded with ‘you’re a stupid, fat, white pig’.

now check this out – ( language warning !! )

the outcome of action within the anti – discrimination tribunal queensland

Jaiswal v Mulheron & Denraydon Holdings Pty Ltd [2009] QADT 19 (16 November 2009)

he has a view on life and other human beings that i hope is not considered to be ok by a reasonable person, and if that is reasonable i want to be very unreasonable.

photo credit

By tbaoo Category: featured, life as i see it Tags: , ,