Saturday 18 August 2007

Lost in translation.. more like

Now this is Progress, of a sort.

Douglas Shire ex, I mean current mayor, Mike Berwick has said Cairns' own Yasser Arafat Mayor Byrne, has a "bombastic attitude." Well, Mike, we knew this some time ago, but I for one am delighted you've articulated this to Ross Irby at The Cairns Post.

Ross says that both mayors are at loggerheads as to who should chair the new regional transition committee as the merger of Cairns and Douglas Shires encroaches.

Bryne says the job should be his. Full stop. "I would like to be chairman, and I suspect I will be," said KB.

However, Berwick said he didn't want Douglas Shire to "be at the mercy of Mayor Kevin Byrne". Hear, hear! Actually.. a lot of Cairns locals don't want his "bombastic attitude".

A whopping 48.53% didn't what a bar of Kevin Byrne and his 'Unity' team in the last local body elections, as I blogged last month.

So, just what is bombastic? According to any dictionary, it's....
pompous, grandiloquent, turgid, florid, grandiose. Bombastic, flowery, pretentious, verbose all describe a use or a user of language more elaborate than is justified by or appropriate to the content being expressed. Bombastic suggests language with a theatricality or staginess of style far too powerful or declamatory for the meaning or sentiment being expressed. . Pretentious refers specifically to language that is purposely inflated in an effort to impress. Verbose characterizes utterances or speakers that use more words than necessary to express an idea: a verbose speech, speaker..ostentatiously lofty in style; "a man given to large talk"; "tumid political prose".

Arrh.. just the qualities to run and lead our community, interact with the people and allow them to be heard. Not.

Berwick has been admirable in this discussion and said that neither of them should direct the transition committee, and that it should be a neutral independent chairman (actually Mike, it's chairperson, to be correct these days). However, I have to agree, this is not a role for either.. and I doubt, unfortunately, that they could co-chair such a committee anyway.

How about the following suggestions for this vital role... Amanda Vanstone; Pauline Hanson, Russell Crowe, Paris Hilton, or even Tony Blair. They all have time on their hands these days, and would probably die for a break in the tropics of Queensland.

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