Life Cycle: Strange tunes indeed

Strange to tune in to 2GB two Wednesday’s back to delight in Alan Jones interrogating our Lord Mayor Clover Moore – introduced by the comment cashier as “the architect of what I see as the virtual destruction of the city”.

Summary fails the broad hyperbolic sweep of the bombastic broadcaster’s verbal scimitar flailing at his current bogey, Clover’s cycling infrastructure network, “the greatest waste of money in local government and the biggest disgrace in traffic management that I have ever seen”.

Alan’s first question set the temperature for the debate – “Local government elections are not held until 2012. How much of the city will be destroyed by then?”

When Clover finally got a word in edgewise she was clutching at the straws of her own publicity bumpf “- the most comprehensive consultation that ever occurred in the city – Sustainable Sydney 2030 – it had ringing endorsement right across the city –“ and other unsustainable sound grabs bubbling under Jones’s remorseless bucketing of Moore’s meddling with metropolitan matters beyond her competence.

The problem with being a bully is you got no plan B. When Clover fronts someone she cannot talk over, silence or turn her back on she becomes strident and nonsensical beyond even Tony Headbutt’s imagining.

“I probably consult more than any other elected… uuuh… uh… elector!” she ululated triumphantly before Jones wrung her confession to eliminating a public parking space for her air-conditioned two car garage not one hundred metres from the Separated Bi-Directional Cycleway under construction in Bourke Street.

“This is not the last of it! This is the beginning of it!” trumpeted the veteran campaigner of many a media mauling. Make no mistake, this is a clearly signalled assault on Clover’s control of City Hall.

Perhaps he is plotting to get behind Nick Farr-Jones for 2012, or some other likely favourite or… one wonders if the radio-weary warhorse would foreswear wearing the Mayoral rig. But enough, no more of Lord Mayor Parrot greeting bemused dignitaries to Pirate City 2013…