6 January, 2017. 12:34
ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A study commissioned by the CSIRO has found that most editions of the Courier-Mail sold in the Brisbane metro area are used to clean windows and barbeques.
In addition to their use as a cleaning aid, the fledgeling newspaper is also more likely to be used to wrap up fish and chips at a takeaway than be read.
“It’s a startling statistic,” said lead research Anita Fellation. “The press is the fourth pillar of democracy, it’s a completely necessary part of a healthy society.”
“What we have here is that Queenslanders aren’t digesting enough news, they’re just using it to clean shit and wrap up deep-fried foods.”
However, The Advocate reached out to representatives from News Corp for comment, who then explained that they’re not-too-concerned about the study’s findings – explaining that as long as they’re selling newspapers, they’re happy.
As Fairfax doesn’t publish an in-print newspaper in the River City, the Courier-Mail stands alone as the apex physical media predator, all but safeguarding their operation from collapse.
“Even if Fairfax had a newspaper up here, more people would buy ours to clean their windows and BBQs,” said a News spokesman.
“Fairfax is completely cooked. They’ll disappear up their own arse within five years, mark my words. The Mail is published on a high-quality 100% recycled paper and the Herald and Age are propped up by Domain. If you tried to clean a window with the Herald, it’d fall to bits in seconds.”
“I’ll tell you what the Brisbane Times can do, they can take their pinko loony left anti-Bjelke-Petersen gutter journalism and shove it right up their arse.”
The Advocate contacted the Brisbane Times for comment, but have yet to receive a reply.
More to come.
Dear Sirs,
As a Western Australian who happened to be around during the era when Mr Gutenberg first introduced his wondrous inventions, I feel this is certainly a timely and important article to regale the public with. My heartiest congratulations.
It’s a little-known fact to many that whilst detained in Perth many years ago awaiting the opportunity to defend myself against scurrilous charges of both public nuisance and uttering nonsense with intent to confuse and annoy, I had the opportunity to take a job at Mr Shenton’s fine (although, sadly now defunct) broadsheet the Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal where I learnt much about this extremely useful means to spread lies and fight against truth – or perhaps it’s the other way around, I always do tend to get a tad confused at times about which is which.
Regardless, I recall very clearly Mr Shenton telling me at the time I signed on; “Young Muppet, it will be many years hence before we get the Internet, and the speeds are in all likelihood going to be rubbish because those eastern bastards will hog most of the capital earmarked for its implementation, so it is up to us to guide the unthinking public through perilous shoals and stormy seas in the interim. Pick up your quill and write my boy! Write hard, write fiercely, write often.” To be fair, he was in his cups at the time and lying with his head in a slops bucket, but it was jolly useful advice that I took on board and have carried with me ever since.
My own articles that I penned in those days to earn the guineas I needed to hire a lawyer to fight the charges I was facing were a rollicking investigative series exposing the scandalous misappropriation of customs and excise duties levied on behalf of Queen and Empire which were being collected at the bonded warehouse here in Perth and then redirected via the Colonial Office in London to less deserving colonies elsewhere on the Australian continent. My word, even if I say so myself there was much mayhem and uproar when the colony read my lucid and well-constructed arguments showing how we were getting as little as threepence in the shilling, with the balance going instead to those wastrels and sodomites ensconced at Sydney Cove – so much so that the Governor himself forcefully interceded and demanded the charges be dropped, a horse be supplied to me, and that I “…just go back out there and do whatever it is you do and please don’t come in to town again”. And so my brief time as an uncompromising newshound came to a rather abrupt close.
Anyway, I see I’ve once again drifted off course a bit like poor old Mr Bannister did – started off for King George’s Sound with good intentions and ended up instead wandering lost through impenetrable forests and waving a pistol around wanting to shoot Mr Smythe for getting him lost, because what I wanted to agree with was your excellently-made point that newspapers are jolly useful things.
Windows yes, but who can honestly say that at some point they haven’t got up after squatting over a bucket having a shit and found some interesting titbit on the sheet you were planning to spruce-up your arse with, and then lost yourself for what seemed like hours catching-up on news and gossip you never knew had occurred whilst you’d been out on the hoof to the extent that the poo fragments you’d planned on tackling dried naturally and you now didn’t need to worry about it. I know I have.
In fact, it’s not an overstatement to say that I only found out the American colonies were planning on rebelling against good King George courtesy of an attack of the runs I had at a rather unhygienic pub at Kondinin when I was out sandalwooding that way, and whose only saving grace was that it had a most marvellous library hanging on its outhouse walls. Wiping your tail with something that has a keyboard attached to it is not only painful and unbelievably inefficient, it also limits the possibilities for learning things at the same time – and that’s something young folk today need to know about before it is all too late.
Just while I’m at it there’s also housing too – many of the homesteads in white ant country I’ve visited over my lifetime only stayed upright because wonderfully inventive men and women spread newspapers around for the white ants to take instead of buggering-up their hard-won timber dwellings. Admittedly, for some newspapers like the Toodyay Herald or the Laverton Mercury you couldn’t get a white ant to go near them regardless of how hungry they were, but even that had its uses because if you didn’t mind the smell you could cobble-together a very adequate three-roomed shack from old copies of the W.A. Record or the Fremantle Herald and know it would stay perfectly upright at least until the next cyclone went through.
So, bravo to Mr Parker for his important article. It makes a jolly fine change from some of his other stuff that sadly makes no sense at all to anyone over the age of 140.
Regards
Ron Muppet
This article is typical Leftie, hyped rubbish. We don’t clean the BBQ’s in Brisbane. Also every bogan kid knows that Doritos are much more flammable and so better value, then the Courier Mail.
I’ve tried this paper as a window cleaner but it left a nasty brown smear on the left side of the window while giving a much better result on the right.