The lefty blogosphere – for once united with VEXNEWS in our denunciation of arguably corrupt former state MP Evan Thornley – has done some fine work in taking the big stick to the big fat rich slob.
Andrew Crook – whose email we note is acrook@crikey.com.au which probably should have been reserved for ASIC investigated owner Eric Beecher – has been excelling himself on this issue and we commend his effort today exposing the gaping holes in Thornley’s story. He is indeed a lying liar who lies. We’ll cut and paste the article below for those keen to see the take-down.
Little known left-wing blog “Grods” has also been tearing strips off Thornley although they took issue with our assertion that his wife – a Tracey Ellery – sets a drunken and violent example for her offspring. Of course they claim our website is not visited by anyone or contributed to by anyone other than me, which tens of thousands of our patriot visitors and dozens of contributors would probably take issue with.
But Landeryou, in Landeryou’s inimitable style, takes the criticism a couple of hundred steps too far and lays into Thornley’s wife, accusing “mama Tracey†of “setting a drunken and violent example†to her kids.
I tells ya, if I was Evan Thornley and I was about to earn $700,000 per year, I’d happily throw away a lazy hundred grand on a useless defamation action against Landeryou just for shits and giggles.
They presumed this was Ellery trash talk invective rather than an eyewitness account.
A long, long time ago, it was our displeasure to be in business with Evan Thornley. We had a web development business which we deployed to assist him to the fullest extent possible. We’ve told that story before on the OC. In a way that Mr Thornley certainly cannot claim, we keep in contact with many of our former business associates and staff from back then. A number of them also saw examples of Ms Ellery completely losing her cool in Looksmart’s then offices in the mid 1990s, almost always after staggering back from a Hardware Lane bar tanked on red wine and politically red whines.
Nothing wrong with getting sloshed occasionally, but it is no exaggeration to say that Ellery was then almost certainly an alcoholic. And a violent one at that. A number of people saw her physically attack her husband, including throwing a heavy picture frame at him in the midst of their many fiery and terrifying arguments. Their behaviour was the stuff of much-repeated war stories in our company as we slowly recovered from the horror of working with Ellery and Thornley.
VEXNEWS (Archive) 
If Thornley or anyone else were to sue, the publication has the right to troll through their life looking for examples to confirm the claims – does Thornley really want that???
4 . The Evan Thornley timeline: this doesn’t add up
Andrew Crook writes:
Victorian Ministerial quitter Evan Thornley will no doubt be lying low for the next few weeks, hoping that Tuesday’s round of media briefings will kill off the conflict-of-interest firestorm surrounding his appointment as local CEO of battery swapping firm Better Place. But the timeline thrashed out between Thornley and his union spin doctors at EMC deserves serious scrutiny.
Thornley was apparently bewildered at the explosion of fourth estate outrage after he walked away from a plumb post in the Victorian Ministry at the eleventh hour. After quitting on 28 December, he immediately fled to the south of France, leaving journalists to take pot shots and Premier John Brumby to clean up the mess. Thornley’s head-in-the-sand approach to PR will no doubt go down in spinner folk law as an example of what not to do when pulling the plug on a political career.
Finally returning to Melbourne this week, Thornley was careful to craft a timeline designed to distance his own Better Place dealings with the firm’s parallel negotiations with the Victorian Government. But if the confused narrative relayed to the press over the last few days is any indication, Thornley and EMC might need to go back to the drawing board.
First, Thornley says he only became aware of Better Place in May after an “associate” at Vantage Point, a venture capital firm that backed Better Place to the tune of $US100 billion, told him about it in May. But in late April, Thornley travelled to Israel on a junket organised by the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce’s Guy Pross, who would later join Better Place himself.
The delegation, headed by Thornley, and including wife Tracey Ellery, sat through a series of Power Point presentations as you can see here — if their content is accurate Thornley would have been first aware of Better Place not through Vantage Point, but via this presentation on Israeli innovation delivered by venture capitalist, and Better Place investor, Astorre Modena. Check out the happy snaps of an attentive Thornley taking in the presentation here.
After few months of quiet contemplation, Thornley’s interest in Better Place and its enigmatic CEO Shai Agassi piqued again. In his interview with The Age, Thornley said his first meeting with Better Place was in mid-August when another “associate” at the AICC (probably Pross) suggested “he might be able to give Better Place some advice about doing business in Australia”.
But this appears to chafe badly with what he told The Australian on the same afternoon:
He [Thornley] said he rang Better Place founder Shai Agassi, whom he had met during a family holiday last September.
Now, unless Thornley and Agassi randomly bumped into each other in the Whitsundays, it would appear that the Silicon Valley duo were holidaying together and talking business at the same time Thornley’s then boss, Premier John Brumby, was stitching up a deal with Agassi to locate the Australian arm of Better Place in Melbourne. The Victorian upper house only sat for one week in September, leaving Thornley plenty of time to shoot the breeze with his soon-to-be boss.
Then, on October 22, Brumby and Innovation Minister Gavin Jennings held a press conference in Melbourne, attended by Agassi, to give the government’s official backing to the $1 billion deal thrashed out between Better Place, AGL and Macquarie Bank to build the ambitious electric car network. Thornley says he played no part in the government’s negotiations, but Agassi would have been brimming with confidence, knowing he had a man on the ALP’s inside track. His decision to court Brumby and Federal Innovation Minister Kim Carr must have been an easy one.
Agassi’s desire to tap government cash was explicit: “Australia’s government has a green car innovation fund of nearly $US340 million [sic], which makes a “compelling case” for carmakers to build electric cars there,” Agassi said.
It is unclear whether salary negotiations between Agassi and Thornley continued in November and December but the Israeli spruiker’s burning ambition to tap Thornley to head-up his Australian operation was now undeniable.
When Theo Theophanous was charged with rape on Christmas Eve, Thornley was presented with a choice between embracing Agassi’s electric dreams and staying faithful to the voters of Southern Metropolitan. His Silicon Valley stopover with Agassi on the way back to Melbourne sealed the deal.
Christ! That is one very ugly woman.
Is she Craig Langdon’s sister?
They have very similar visual beauty.
The way the cardigan is draped perfectly accentuates a fine rack.
Well done. Points lost for lack of make up and not brushing one’s hair.
Overall 7/10
Geez – if you were Evan, you’d have to wonder what would be better – to be rich and miserable with that hag, or poor but estatic with a stunner half his age….
Don’t tell me you are seriously listening to the feeble mutterings of Sear and his feculent brood?
A couple destined for a long and happy married fueled with cash to burn.
Their chart could not be in more of a better place with the alignment of Venus and Mars.
Has anyone ever noticed if Evan has got any bite marks on his arm?
You would chew off your own arm as not to wake her up.
Rabies?
But ALP Stylist they look like they would droop down below her waist.
Perhaps Mr Thornley’s partner is not model. But she is a lovely woman and they are very happy together. Evan seems like a very clever young man.
She is certainly no model, how any self respecting bloke could Mount that is mind blowing.
Maybe she mounts!
And Evan is an oil painting? Again it’s the woman who cops it for not being a stunner and no mention is made that Evan is a chubby lad who you wouldn’t expect to see on the cover of men’s health. And if a woman is blessed with good looks you lot write her off as a slag. I’m over this sad blog