COUNTING SHEEP: Helengrad has fallen

Labour’s Helen Clark has been defeated and has quit the leadership, the conservative National party has prevailed winning even some of Labour’s once strongest seats like Auckland Central, former merchant banker John Key will be Prime Minister, famed reformer Roger Douglas is back in Parliament and the incoming New Zealand government is not expected to change its website that insists that Australia has more sheep than people too.

YOU'RE FIRED: Stevie Lew sacks 20% of his staff and dumps wife and newborn too

Solomon Lew-owned toy and home goods distributor PlayCorp has told its St Kilda Road office that it will sack 20% of its 100 staff as sales crash.

Sources within the company tell VEXNEWS that despite the company’s terrible performance and 20% job cuts, Stevie Lew, the owner’s son (pictured below leaving the Federal Court), will be keeping his job as Managing Director, with a $200,000 company vehicle and a massive salary well above toy importer industry norms.

Although, if rumours within the Jewish community are correct, Stevie, who was once maliciously accused of wearing a hair-piece, has also decided not to retain the services of his wife Sarah and recently born child, who cannot be named for legal reasons. Unkind gossips say he left them both shortly after the birth saying he “had other priorities.”

PlayCorp is not part of Solomon Lew’s Premier Investments vehicle which purchased Just Group prior to the credit crunch at a price that turned out to be at least $200 million over the odds.

Lew who constantly tells people – including his personal fitness coach Bambi – about his good timing is said to be extremely disappointed by the turn of events, kicking himself for not waiting til this year’s anticipated Christmas debacle in Australian retail.

Previous Playcorp exploits have included paying Chinese workers 80c an hour to make Commonwealth Games merchandise.

The misery and exploitation was exposed in a Sunday Herald Sun investigation following court appearances by Stevie Lew where he attempted to explain Playcorp’s breaches of its contracts with the Commonwealth Games by using ruthlessly exploited labour.

OOPS: Journalist's drunken tirade lands him in hot water

In a move that would even strain even the lax ethical standards of local newspaper chain Star News Group chief of staff Elizabeth Hart and News Limited scribe Glenn Milne at the Walkley Awards, a British journalist has launched a drunken attack on his employer, confessed to plagiarism and revealed his blatant political bias on video after having a few too many while in Miami this week after Senator Obama’s famous victory.

Naturally, it made its way to the internet.

Choice quotes:

“I jumped on a plane on Friday to volunteer for the Barack Obama campaign. As an ill-advised promise, I’ve decided to say to my paper back home that I’d write about the American election.

“I wanted to be here because I’m here for history. The trouble is, the readers of the Birmingham Mail are going to get my version of history. And I’m just a little bit p—– … Thank god for the BBC, because I’m cutting and pasting, baby!”

“My name is Adam Smith, also known as Steve Zacharanda, who has just resigned from the Birmingham Mail, the Birmingham Post and the Birmingham Sunday Mercury, to set up my own magazine. F*ck you, I’m doing what I want.”

“The normal people in America would believe anything…”

“Europe is so old and cynical. America is naive and believes in optimism…”

Adam Smith, who also trades as Steve Zacharanda, is no longer certain whether he still has a job at the Birmingham Mail after his comments in which he claimed to have resigned. He left this comment on Youtube to his many fans:

Hello Everyone.
Thanks for the kind comments, it has meant a lot to get the backing of so many people I respect. I’m currently in hiding at the Gansevoort South hotel in Miami tryin to come to terms what’s happened whilst sipping rum and coke at the pool. I guess I’m going to have to face the music when I get back.
Adam Smith, aka Steve Zacharanda
Technically, still a Birmingham Mail reporter.
But definitely editor and founder of Goggle-eye magazine and Cheeky Media

In a follow-up video, he explains from an Obama campaign office while wearing a  “Brummies for Obama” T-shirt:

“I think I’ve lost my job… I’m a bit scared to speak to work. There’ve been words like ‘outrageous’, ‘bringing the company into disrepute…”

“I was off duty, I am on official holiday working at the South Beach Miami Barack Obama campaign where I had just done a 18-hour shift trying to make the world a better place.

“Please check every single piece of copy from the BBC and see if I have cut and pasted anything. I have not, it was a joke and should be taken in the spirit it was said.”

Turns out he was leaving anyway – with sixty or so others – due to job cuts at his employer. A cunning stunt of the publicity kind it seems.

The London Telegraph and countless other outlets have picked up the story though.

 

 

A GREAT COUNTRY: One man's story reveals the splendour of America

The election of Barack Obama has been massively and ridiculously over-hyped, with the President-Elect taking time to remind citizens that he isn’t actually President yet at his first press conference. Moreover, to paraphrase an orator he sometimes imitates, he ought be judged not by the colour of his skin but by the content of his policies. But there’s a former White House butler’s story well worth reading today, right through to the end. A story of service, hope and loss. God Bless America.

PATHETIC: Government in the style of Weekend at Bernie's

Kim Jong Il is either dead or alive. No one is sure what the hell is going on in that freaky and sinister government of the oppressed and starving people of North Korea. But one thing for sure is that they are in desperate need of Photoshop tutorials. But their tub-thumping political rhetoric remains world-class for those needing some Cold War nostalgia. Check out today’s latest rant from their official website: The GNP gentries are letting loose jargons about the “human rights issue in the north” in collusion with riff-raffs of other country though they are in such a pretty fix that they can hardly settle their own problem. Not subtle.