King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV 1918-2006

One of 29 remaining monarchs in the world today, the King of Tonga died yesterday. An old Newingtonian and a Sydney Uni law graduate, Siaosi Tāufaʻāhau Tupoulahi had been King since 1965, succeeding his mother, Queen Salote, who been Queen since 1918.

Tupou weighed in at times at over 200 kilograms.

Crown Prince Sia’osi Taufa’ahau Manumata’ogo Tuku’aho Tupou, a 58 year-old confirmed bachelor, is now King Taufa’ahau Tupou V.

Obituaries from the New Zealand Herald, New York Times, the Associated Press. I await the parochial Inner Western Sydney angle - there can’t have been too many kings go through high school at Newington College.

Red card for Zizou.

Big day on Norton Street.

V for Italia.

The John Fairfax group of companies has entered the race for the world’s most horrific commercial website design, with today’s launch of the new home pages for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

The punters have had their say on this page. My comments are at 12.39pm.

Congratulations to the Brooklyn Dodgers of Aussie Rules, the South Melbourne Swans, on their first flag since 1933. They beat the Weagles in a four-point thriller today.

I’m a little surprised, but the official Swannies website hasn’t caught up with events, 25 minutes after the final siren. They’ll catch up.

Anyway, more important matters await tonight, the Tiges play the Dragons. And in the Premier League semi-final tomorrow the Jets play the Eels. And a special mention to the Sydney Bulls in the Jim Beam grand final tomorrow as well.

Typing error gives police a bad name - National - smh.com.au

What more fitting celebration could there be of the 50th birthday of that icon of American culture - McDonald’s - than with that other great icon of American culture - the drive-by shooting? No one was hurt when shots were fired outside Macca’s at Parramatta Road, Stanmore, in the early hours of Saturday. This, incidentally, is the same Mickey D’s where a pivotal scene in Melissa Marchetta’s acclaimed 1992 novel, “Looking for Alibrandi“, is set, ie, where the central character is almost gang-raped in the car park.

At about the same time that the Stanmore McDonald’s was dodging pot shots, McDonald’s were doing a live webcast of the opening of their official 50th birthday McDonald’s outlet in Chicago. Here is the broadband real video archive of that milestone in world culinary history. Here’s the Maccas 50th birthday corporate website.

McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD) shares fell 46c or about one and a half per cent on Wall Street on Friday to $30.30, but to be fair, the whole market belly-flopped on Friday. Stay tuned for the webcast of McDonald’s Q1 earnings report this Thursday.

The official McDonald’s 50th birthday press release can be read on their corporate website, but I’d like to reproduce just one heart-rending paragraph here:

Also recognized at the 50th Anniversary celebration was one of McDonald�s first-ever customers. Glen Volkman of Eau Claire, Wis., then a high school junior, was one of the first customers served at the original McDonald’s location in Des Plaines on April 15, 1955, ordering a cheeseburger, French fries and shake for about 80 cents that day. Proud of his unique McDonald’s experience, Volkman has followed the success of McDonald’s since and attributes McDonald�s global success to ‘’good food and good people.'’

A more pertinent celebration of fifty years of McDonald’s came on Friday when The McLibel Two (Helen Steel and Dave Morris) stomped on a 50th birthday cake outside McDonald’s Euroheadquarters in Finchley. And here is some viewer reaction to the BBC’s screening on Thursday night of the documentary, McLibel.

Footnote: Three days after the opening of the first McDonald’s at Des Plaines, Illinois on 15 April 1955, Albert Einstein died.

April 15, 1955, and the first McDonald’s “restaurant” opened in Des Plaines, Illinois, named by milk shaker-salesman Ray Kroc after the McDonald brothers, Dick and Mac, whose hamburger stand in San Bernadino, California became his inspiration. The rest… yeah well you know.

I’m going to commemorate half a century of Macca’s today in the most symbolic fashion I can think of: by eating a works hamburger from the corner shop. It will be more nutritious (though how nutritious will be open to debate), contain none of that chemical mixture they call “special sauce”, and I’ll be supporting local small business.

And tonight I might get out the “Super Size Me” DVD again.

I stopped going to Macca’s about three years ago (though I did have a dinner at the now-defunct McDonald’s subsidiary Boston Market next to the RPA the night after Adara was born). At my worst I was a twice-a-day Maccas person, when they had an outlet across the road from my place of work in Hunter Street, Newcastle. Then the 1989 earthquake shut the McDonald’s (and most business in Hunter Street) down rather abruptly. Perhaps the one and only reason to be thankful for the earthquake.

These days, the only fast-food franchises I visit are Australian-owned, in particular Oporto and Michel’s Patisserie.

Read the Corporate Responsibility section of the McDonald’s website. The McDonald’s Australia website has a PDF download of a piece of glowing propaganda called the MacPack (it’s 3.4 megs and they don’t tell you much about corporate responsibility or community involvement on their non-flash website).

And when are we going to get McDelivery like they have in Mumbai?

Perhaps a more useful resource is McSpotlight, the official website of the McLibel case. The updated documentary of McLibel was screened on BBC Four a few hours ago and had its world premiere in the cinemas last weekend.

And this Sydney Morning Herald article from 2003 documents the successful resistance to McDonald’s expansion in and around the city.

The Jets beat North Sydney 28-4 at Henson Park tonight in their Premier League trial match which doubled up as the first leg of the Frank Hyde Trophy.

Newtown scored seven tries to one, with kicks at goal not being taken in this game. Newtown are a feeder team for Cronulla this year, while Norths have become a feeder for the Melbourne Storm.

It wasn’t a bad crowd at Henson Park for a mid-February trial game, probably 500 or so.

For those unaware, the Frank Hyde Trophy is awarded to the team that comes out on top in head-to-head meetings between Netwown and Norths each year, Frank having played for both clubs in his day. Matches taken into account are the preseason game plus both home and away matches in the Premier League. It was inaugurated in 2003 when the trophy was shared after the third match ended in a draw. Newtown were winners in 2004. Frank, who wasn’t at the game this evening, turned 89 on Monday.

In the early game, the North Sydney Jersey Flegg team easily beat the Newtown Jim Beam side… I didn’t catch the score unfortunately. This was the Bluebags’ last appearance at Henson Park before the competition season begins. They have another trial up at Parkes next weekend.

The playing surface at Henson Park is looking quite good at this time of year, there having been no soccer in the summer months (and no I’m not taking sides over that spat between the Jets and Canterbury-Marrickville FC). I must say that it does look funny, if not sacriligeous, to see aussie rules posts at each end of the ground.

Some classic home-town political commentary from former Sydney Morning Herald columnist and former independent Leichhardt councillor Padraic McGuinness in November’s Balmain/Rozelle edition of the Village Voice (no, not that Village Voice):

Greens ideology flexible on pole position.

The Australian Electoral Commission’s excellent Virtual Tally Room website has a breakdown of the voting figures for Saturday’s election, not just electorate by electorate, but polling booth by polling booth. I’m not going through them all - there’s several thousand across the country - but I’ve gone searching for some interesting demographics in my electorate of Grayndler and surrounds. A good benchmark to pursue is the level of the Greens’ vote. Grayndler and Sydney, covering the suburbs to the immediate south and south-west of the inner city, have historically been two of the left-wing heartlands of Australia.

In 2001 the Greens received 569,075 primary votes nationwide in the House of Representatives (4.96%). Bob Brown was hopeful of topping the million this year, but with postal and absentee votes still to be counted, they currently have 690,550 (6.94%) this time. Belford Parrot and other galahs have pounced on this as some sort of failure, but the Greens have, in fact, outpolled the National Party (580,990 - 5.84%), which is a milestone that I haven’t seen any commentators point out as yet.

Family First, incidentally, have 197,945 (1.99%) nationally, while the Democrats (116,651 - 1.17%) and One Nation (114,074 - 1.15%) are both sliding into irrelevance. However, as I’ve already pointed out, One Nation’s voters have shifted across to the Liberal Party column. All these figures are updated regularly on this page on the AEC website.

State by state, the Greens are currently have 7.98% of the lower house primary vote in NSW, 7.30% in Western Australia, 7.16% in Victoria, 5.24% in South Australia, 4.89% in Queensland and 9.34% in Tasmania; also 10.39% in the ACT and 6.07% in the Northern Territory. Of course, none of this has translated into winning a seat, but has for the most part helped Labor to hang on in some tight contests. Of course, in the past, these Greens voters would most likely have actually voted for the ALP. That’s a story in itself.

Fourteen of the fifty seats in New South Wales saw a Greens vote of ten per cent or more. Three cleared twenty per cent - Cunningham (Michael Organ, 20.23%), Grayndler (Philip Myers, 20.57%) and Sydney (Jenny Leong, 21.56%). In 2002 Organ had won Cunningham in a by-election with 23.83% of the primary vote to Labor’s 38.13% with the Liberals not fielding a candidate.

Zooming in on Grayndler, and to the booth where I voted, Stanmore Public School. Here, Anthony Albanese polled less than his electorate-wide average, getting 48.62% of the primary vote. Myers got 26.97%, and Stephanie Kokkolis of the Liberal Party 20.61%.

I won’t go through all 44 booths in Grayndler, but it appears that Kokkolis’ vote was strongest around Ashfield, on the western extremity of the electorate, and around Lilyfield, both areas where she has appeared to surpass 30% of the vote. At Ashfield North she made it past 33.

Albanese’s vote was strongest in and around Marrickville, where his electoral office is located. At both Marrickville Town Hall and Marrickville Public School he polled better than 61%. At the Marrickville Uniting Church his vote reached 66%.

For the Greens, things get interesting as we head for the north-east corner of Grayndler. Enmore, 31.95%. Camperdown South, 31.97%. But it’s at the Newtown North polling booth, at the Newtown Uniting Church on King Street, where we see what is probably the biggest Greens turnout in the country - 40.23%. Poor old Steph barely made it into double figures.

The Newtown North booth was also used for the Sydney electorate, being on the border between Sydney and Grayndler. Sydney voters for the Greens registered 36.71% of the vote at that booth.

It shouldn’t be a big surprise that the Greens are so strong around Newtown, especially as they rode heavily on the same-sex marriage issue. You’ve also got Sydney University just up the road. The performance I find really interesting in this election is that of the Socialist Alliance. For all their posters on telegraph poles and walls, not just at election time but throughout, they struggle to get 1 to 2 per cent in some of the leftiest parts of the country. They’re just not connecting, are they?

Latest on other election fronts: final senate outcomes still up in the air until absentee, postal and below-the-line votes are sorted out. Best case scenario is that the Libs and Nats finish with 38, and that Steve Fielding of Family First in Victoria either misses out, or turns out to be another Brian Harradine (yes it’s not much of a best case scenario, is it?). John Faulkner looks like stepping down as leader of the ALP in the senate, and that would be a shame as he is one of the party’s best performers in parliament.

And John Howard is still telling porkies: “I won’t ride roughshod over the senate”, “I will respect the wishes of the people”, and so on and on.

I’ll finish with a word or two from JWH’s mate:

Australia had an election, as well. And I was honored to call my friend, John Howard, the Prime Minister, and congratulate him on a great victory.

- GW Bush, “Victory 2004″ Rally, Chanhassen, Mo., 9.10.04

As an aside, neither Howard nor the White House are yet to acknowledge Wangari Maathai for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Sore loser, George?