Everything going to plan
for Jacky Jurmann
Found on Facebook:
17 hrs ·
Exciting times!
Today we handed over the keys to this awesome Commodore SS Storm edition to Jacky. What a great car!
We know you will enjoy every moment driving your new car.
Look forward to seeing you for your first free service!
Thank you for supporting your local Holden dealer.
Today we handed over the keys to this awesome Commodore SS Storm edition to Jacky. What a great car!
We know you will enjoy every moment driving your new car.
Look forward to seeing you for your first free service!
Thank you for supporting your local Holden dealer.
Remember Jacky Jurmann?
She used to work as the Shire of York’s
planning officer or ‘manager of planning’. She made a cameo appearance in the Fitz Gerald Report,
refusing to answer embarrassing questions about her conduct while a Shire
employee.
According to Mr. Fitz Gerald, her grounds
for refusing were that, not being a qualified planner himself, he had no
business questioning her and that by doing so he was insulting her
professionalism.
This puts me in mind of a saying of Samuel
Johnson’s, recorded in Boswell’s Life of
Johnson for 1763: ‘You may
scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a
table. It is not your trade to
make tables’.
In this case, for ‘make tables’, read ‘give
advice on planning applications’.
(I threw in this ‘erudite’ allusion so that
Mr. Richard Bliss would have something upon which to exercise his priceless
gift for satire—see my previous post Bliss
Balls 5 August 2015).
My point is that even the loftiest expert
is not immune from questioning and criticism. And sometimes, when there are, so to speak, catcalls from
the gallery, the gallery is right and the expert way off track. This is especially likely when
criticism is based on ethical rather than practical considerations.
You can read Mr. Fitz Gerald’s report at http://shireofyork6302fitzgerald.blogspot.com.au/. Jacky crops up several times in the
report, but most memorably and revealingly in the sequence 7.21 to 7.60
inclusive.
I had in mind to re-publish that sequence
with this column, but I’m not sure Jacky would appreciate the publicity. Still, if you want to read it, I’ve
given you the link.
No,
she wasn’t sacked, sorry
Some readers may recall that not long ago
Jacky, along with her husband Tim, the Shire’s former building inspector, was
mentioned in a council agenda paper as having been sacked. This caused the Acting CEO to publish a grovelling apology
in the 5th August edition of our local newspaper York and District
Community Matters.
(I wonder—did Council authorise the apology? When he apologised, Jacky was no longer
an employee, so if he took it upon himself to act without authorisation I think
he may have usurped Council’s authority.)
No, Jacky wasn’t sacked. She resigned. Allegedly, she resigned because the Shire knocked back or
ignored her demand that it delete all references to her from the Fitz Gerald
Report.
It’s easy to see why she might have wanted
the Shire to do that. The report
doesn’t treat her very kindly.
On resigning, Jacky received a generous payout from the
Shire and permission to remain in subsidised Shire accommodation and continue
driving a Shire vehicle for three months after leaving her job. Nice one.
Resignation notwithstanding, her involvement with
the Shire did not cease. For a good
while after resigning, she—in the guise of Glenwarra Development Services—was
contracted as a consultant to assist with the Shire’s opposition to SITA’s
landfill application.
She certainly seems to have made a big
impression on Commissioner Best. In my presence, and that of Acting CEO
Simpson, Commissioner Best told a York couple that engaging the services of
Jacky’s consultancy would smooth the path of any application they decided to
make for changing the use of their premises.
I believe he gave similar advice to a local
business proprietor, who took it but is probably now wondering why she bothered
considering the unfair restrictions the Shire has imposed in approving her
application.
I’m not sure the commissioner should have
done that. Nasty suspicious people
(I regret to say there are a few of us in York) might regard what he did as
touting for business on Jacky’s behalf.
The Shire of York has a new planning
officer, or manager of planning, and Jacky, I’m told, no longer works for it in
any capacity.
Never mind, seeing that photo of her with
her lovely new car infuses me with a warm inner glow. I’m sure other ratepayers looking at that photo, especially
those whose names are associated with Jacky’s in the Fitz Gerald Report, will
feel very proud of the small part we've played in making the purchase of that vehicle possible.
*******
Bliss Balls revisited
Some readers - very few, I imagine - might be interested in
knowing the origins of the word ‘coitus’ in the expression ‘coitus interruptus’, as employed independently by both Mr Bliss and me in our respective learned disquisitions on the aberration for which the Bible says God slew Onan.
It’s from the Latin word coire meaning ‘coming together’. (Hence perhaps its association with the word
‘bliss').
It first appeared in Middle English in the
form ‘coite’ in a translation of a French textbook on surgery.
Its contemporary use, as a medical and
polite term for sexual intercourse, which as we all know is itself a polite
term or euphemism for ‘shagging’ or 'bonking', which are themselves slightly less offensive terms than the ubiquitous f-word, used to alarming effect by Mrs Bliss in her stand-up comedy routine, dates from the middle of the 19th Century.
The cognate synonym ‘coition’ was first
used with reference to sexual intercourse in 1615. It was subsequently made famous in a limerick that scholars believe was composed by a former Bishop of Bath and Wells:
‘As Titian was mixing rose-madder,
His model posed nude on a ladder:
Her position, to Titian,
Suggested coition,
So he climbed up the ladder and ‘ad ‘er.’
As Michael Caine would say, not many people
know that. Quite probably, not
many people would want to.
Good things happen to bad people and vice-versa
ReplyDeleteSo it has nothing to do with Coyotes!! (Just joking, too)
ReplyDeleteGood giggle in there, and even former Bishops have their uses in the humour stakes. What is it with senior clerics and limericks? (Yes, I've known one or two who loved limericks; probably a way of keeping sane in their so so serious world of having to appear perfect. They might not get away with it these days, though.)
Your point about the close connection of members of the clergy with the tradition of the limerick is well made.
DeleteLimericks are usually said to have originated late in the 19th century, but this is a matter of some contention among scholars of the genre. In my opinion, the greatest limerick ever penned was produced much earlier, in 1760, by the Rev. Augustus Toplady (1740-1778) whom those of you who are regular churchgoers will recognise as author of that splendid hymn, 'Rock of Ages'.
Here it is:
'A vice both obscene and unsavoury
Holds the Lord Mayor of London in slavery:
With bloodcurdling howls
He deflowers young owls
That he breeds in an underground aviary.'
Unfortunately for the good pastor, his manuscript fell into the hands of an unscrupulous scribbler, Jeremiah Moonstock, who published it under his own name. This backfired: at the bidding of the Lord Mayor, the Bow Street runners arrested Moonstock who dobbed in Toplady as the true author. Toplady was then arrested on his way home to his parish of Blagdon not far from Salisbury Plain. He spent several uncomfortable weeks in Newgate Gaol, where he is said to have contracted the tuberculosis (then called consumption) which later cut him down in the prime of life.
He is reputed to have written many other limericks, some of a spiritual nature but most of them somewhat risque. None has survived. Legend has it they were destroyed in a fire that broke out in the vestry of Blagdon Church a few days after his death. The fire is said to have been started accidentally by an errant choirboy illicitly smoking his father's pipe while on a mission to copy the vicar's literary productions for circulation among his fellow pupils at the local grammar school.
It is to that lad we owe our knowledge of the limerick cited above. It's the only one he managed to copy down before the fire broke out.
Now, I'm sure there are doubters among you who will dismiss what I've just written as a complete fabrication...
How nice Jacky gained a top of the range car out of her consultancy work with the Shire of York for the SAT (SITA) hearings - at Ratepayers expense.
ReplyDeleteIs Jacky having a mid life crisis or something - bit old for a SS model isn't she?
I went to the concert where Mrs. Bliss was a stand up comedian - it was awful!
ReplyDeleteIf I see her listed again, I won't be going.
Payments to J Jurmann/Glenwarra Development continue to appear in the Shire books (see June, July etc financials) for work done in relation to SITA.
ReplyDeleteWhat's a dwarf then?
ReplyDeleteEh? What's that got to with the topic under discussion?
ReplyDeletedwarf??? I wondered the same thing James. I thought I must have missed something.
ReplyDeleteI suppose it might refer to my notorious lack of height. In that case, the idiots must be on the march again.
Deletegive it a rest your morons
ReplyDeleteThank you for your thoughtful and well argued comment.
DeleteI think the designation 'moron' is more appropriately applied to a person who despite having had at least the statutory ten years of schooling doesn't know the difference between 'your' and 'you're'.
Is a dwarf a moron then?
ReplyDeleteSome dwarves may be morons; some morons may be dwarves; but not all morons are dwarves, and not all dwarves are morons.
DeleteDwarfism is a physical affliction associated with such medical conditions as achondroplasia (as probably in the case of Chnoum-Hoteb, chief supervisor of perfumes in 5th Dynasty Egypt) or spondyloepiphyseal displasia, as in the case of the contemporary actor Warwick Davis. In these politically correct days, it is customary to use the term 'little people' to refer to so-called 'dwarves'.
Something tells me you're not a dwarf, merely a moron. 'Go, winged thought, widen his brow' (William Blake).
[This correspondence is now closed. Editor]
I did get a giggle out of this moronic discussion, though.
DeleteThe 4th Instalment date on the York Shire Rates Notice is wrong!
ReplyDeleteOn the Notice is is listed as 23.05.2016 and should read 23.02.2016.
Perhaps the Shire means to give us more time to pay in these straitened times.
Delete(Is that the sound of pigs flying over the frozen wastes of hell?)
Maybe pigs flying over the Allawuna landfill might be more appropriate.
DeleteWhat have you got against dwarfs, you understand that the word 'dwarf' is no longer politically correct and that the correct terminology is 'little people/person'?
ReplyDeleteI've got absolutely nothing against little people. I hope your remark was directed at the moron who started this exchange.
DeleteI've got nothing against morons either.
You dopes! :-)
DeletePerhaps we could call the old Convent building "Dickies house of bliss" because I am sure Mr and Mrs Bliss are feeling like their name at the moment - very blissful - and certainly celebrating their "hard won" money that the ratepayers - in the end - will be paying for. In this world it seems to be who you know, not what you know!!
ReplyDelete