Shaggy Dog Comments...

Issue 733

The future of horizontal jogging in Ballina is at stake today when Ballina Council meets to discuss the DA for an existing brothel in the racy seaside town. The submission makes for interesting reading, and as a graduate of the Benny Hill School for Double Entendre (Hons), majoring in nudge nudge wink wink, we offer the following observations from the staff report to council: the race club concerned that increased vehicle traffic may scare the horses (tension mounts and rides away...); it may disturb navel cadets using canal behind premises (hello sailor...); the development would not cause undue noise or vibration (we're not touching that one); the area is clear of significant vegetation and there is no threatened fauna (except for virgins...); and the fit out will include energy efficient appliances (batteries not included).

We must congratulate Telstra on a recent scam which left Arthur Daley looking like a fumbling amateur. The giant telco has around 3.4 million users of its Messagebank™ service. Last week it sent them all an unsolicited ad flogging a new feature on the Messagebank, then charged all the customers 22¢ to retrieve the message. The move reaped them a cool $750,000 - which they're now being forced to pay back after being severely busted. A Telstra flunky denied it was an ad, preferring to call the message 'information'. But one thing is certain. The old saying 'Talk is cheap' no longer applies.

At the Great Herb Debate on Sunday (thank you to both people who laughed at Shaggy's jokes) Greg Champion warned of a new type of evangelist going door-to-door spreading the gospel of herbs. They're called Jojoba witnesses.

At last week's Lismore council meeting, Cr Reg Baxter was going into bat for a reduction in the S64 sewerage headworks charges for Crozier Oval. His main argument was that because there's now a crowd cap of 5000 on the simultaneous use of the adjacent ovals, the development reduced demand at Oakes Oval. "All we're doing it transferring bottoms from Oakes oval to Crozier oval," Cr Reg said. We don't want to make council the butt of any jokes, but it sounds like he's talking through his...