Potty Peer & The World's Richest Person

(funcrunch.com)

Our favourite nutty Scottish noble Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is heading for these shores again to stir up the debate about climate change scientists who he calls 'eco fascists'. Monckton says the climate change claims are a plot to install a World Government

Lord Monckton guardian.co.uk

A month ago in Los Angeles Monckton described Professor Ross Garnut who has just delivered the final Garnaut Climate Change Review commissioned by the Australian government, as having "a fascist point of view" and someone who expected people to "accept authority without question".

Prof Garnaut

"Heil Hitler, on we go," said Lord Monckton as a Garnaut quote was displayed beside a huge swastika on a screen.

Monckton, who has stood for political office in England several times,( twice receiving not a single vote) once unsuccessfully tried to get an injunction to stop a BBC program "Meet The Sceptics" which featured him and which he reckoned made him look like a 'potty peer'. He also sponsored an anti-gay campaign and said all AIDS sufferers should be quarantined for life.

He'll be a star attraction at the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies conference in Perth next week where he will join fellow climate sceptic and Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott along with the mining magnates Gina Rinehart and Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest who last year funded a million dollar campaign to de-rail former PM Kevin Rudd's proposed new mining tax which they said would destroy the industry.

As if to prove their point, both Reinhardt and Forrest added several billion dollars to their wealth in the year following their campaign.

And according to a 60 page research done by Citigroup Global Markets, a division of the big US banking group Citibank Gina Rinehart is on the way to becoming the world's richest person !

Here's our tribute to Lord Monckton : Springtime For Hitler!

Taxpayers To The Rescue

Mid 2010 and West Australia mine owner Gina Rinehart is clambering aboard a pick-up truck in a park in the ritzy Perth suburb Subiaco. Gina was there to protest the new mining tax being proposed by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Gina

"We'll all be rooned" was the basic theme as mining magnate after magnate mounted the tray of the pick-up to proclaim the evil tax on Australia's mineral wealth would be the end of life as we know it.

Fast forward a year and we are pleased to announce Gina Rinehart has weathered the socialist storm and today has been declared Australia's richest citizen with a fortune estimated at $10.3 billion.

In the BRW magazine Rich List released today Gina's pal who joined her that fateful day in Subiaco Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest is calculated to have a $6.18 billion bank account, a jump of $4.24 billion from the day Rudd unfairly proposed these upright citizens should contribute more to the general economy.

The rotund Clive Palmer who bankrolled a million dollar advertising campaign against the mining tax has seen his wealth jumped to $5.5 billion, trousering an extra $3.92 billion in just one year.

The Rudd government famously crashed and burned following the mining tax debacle (with just a little nudge from News Ltd) but just to show there were no hard feelings over the mining tax Palmer announced a bumper profit at the end of 2010 and treated 55 favoured employees to a brand new Mercedes saloon each for Christmas.

Who said Australia wasn't still  the Lucky Country ?

Marc & Elaine Rich (c) time.com

Romping in second on the Rich List is the reclusive financier Ivan Glasenberg with a lazy $8.8 Billion to his name.  Glasenberg runs the world's largest commodities trader Glencore.

For those with short memories Glencoe was the corporation run by Marc Rich who went on the lam with the FBI on his trail over some racketeering charges. The Shuttle once attended a party given by Rich's wife Elaine in a grand New York penthouse duplex apartment that covered the entire 2 top floors of a skyscraper overlooking Central park.

The bash was for Milton Berle's 90th birthday. The Shuttle chatted to another guest at the party, Joyce Wildenstein the woman famous for having so much plastic surgery. She was standing next to a man grinding an organ that had a monkey on a chain attached. The colours Joyce was wearing matched those of the monkey's outfit. It was a strange party.

If Elaine Rich was worried about her husband being a fugitive she didn't show it and was a gracious hostess. In 2001 and on his last day in office Bill Clinton gave Rich a presidential pardon.

In 2004 a CIA report stated that Glencoe had avoided UN sanctions and paid Saddam Hussein $US3.2 million in illegal kickbacks for oil from the Iraqi regime.

Nice work if you can get it.

Arise Gina Rinehart -Media Baroness

What is happening with Australia's richest woman Gina Rinehart ?. 

2 years ago she was content with quietly cruising the Mediterranean after a protracted legal  battle with her ex-mother-in-law Rose Hancock Porteus, the Filipino maid who married Gina's dad, the late West Australian mining magnate Lang Hancock when he was 70. Gina, who was left a $4.5 billion fortune by her father claimed there had been skulduggery over her father's death although it came to nought.

Now she has embarked on media buying frenzy and looks set to join her Perth friend the billionaire Kerry Stokes who moved east and swept up the Seven TV Network along with Pacific Magazines which he purchased from Rupert Murdoch's nephew Matt Handbury.

Today Gina bought just under 5% of Fairfax Media, publishers of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne along with several chains of suburban newspapers. Fairfax are the only serious rivals to the News Ltd empire. 

2 months ago, as the young tycoons Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer banded together to purchase 17% of the Ten TV Network, 4 weeks later Reinhardt  stumped down a few million for a 10% stake in Ten.

Just 6 months ago the normally reclusive Gina clambered aboard a pick-up truck in a Perth park opposite the Hyatt Hotel  to protest then PM Kevin Rudd's proposed 40 % mining tax. Reinhardt was joined by fellow miner and billionaire Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest. She helpfully handed out printed placards to the arriving protesters-all mining workers. 

Has this new public profile sparked of a deisre to become a player and power broker in the media world ?

Mrs Lachlan Murdoch Sacks The Firm !

It was gaffe that was seen by a relatively small audience by Foxtel's cable TV standards- around 180,000 viewers on the night.

Sarah Murdoch, the gorgeous supermodel wife of Lachlan Murdoch  (son of Rupert Murdoch) announced the wrong winner of the Australia's Next Top Model contest. Youngster Amanda Ware won the title-Mrs Murdoch announced the winner as Kelsey Martinovich who was actually the runner-up.

Kelsey received a $25,000 consolation prize while the clip of Sarah's mistake went viral around the world.

When the Shuttle revealed the story on the 29th October we speculated that "at least the boss can't fire her". Particularly as husband Lachlan Murdoch and dad-in-law Rupert own a controlling swag of shares in the Foxtel network.

Sarah did one better. She sacked the production company Granada Media Australia who produced Australia's Next Top Model and hired a new firm Shine TV which happens to be owned by Sarah's sister-in-law Elisabeth Murdoch. Keeping it in the family, as one does.

Meanwhile Sarah's husband Lachlan and his partner James Packer who have purchased 17% of the Ten Network have hit a stumbling block with a new player in the game.



Bob Brown



Australia's richest woman , the billionaire Gina Rinehart has snapped up 10% of Ten which may put the mockers on Lachlan & Jame's ambitions to control the network.

And Bob Brown, leader of The Australian Greens has announced a whole raft of policies to diversify Australia's media and  says he will introduce legislation into Parliament to keep all sports broadcast on free-to-air television.

Rupert Murdoch, currently attempting to wrestle control of the UK network BSkyB also wants more sports broadcasts for the Foxtel Network and is currently lobbying the Labor Government to make that happen.

The Greens  hold 9 seats in the Senate- the balance of power-and Labor will have to do some  heavy horse trading if they want to get any of their own policies past them in the Upper House.



Elisabeth Murdoch & Matthew Freud

 Rupert described the party as "those bloody Greens" in a speech in October and his newspaper The Australian in a bizarre editorial threatened to "destroy the Greens".

Perhaps it's time to call on the assistance of his son-in-law Matthew Freud, (currently in Oz with wife Elisabeth) who has been described as 'Britain's most powerful public relations expert".

A Rose By Any Other Name...

As the dust settled in Perth's Langley Park earlier this week and the billionaire's protesting over  a new mining tax were safely ensconced in their limos, our thoughts wandered to the whereabouts of the wondrous Rose Hancock Porteous , Perth socialite who thrilled and delighted a nation when as a humble maid for the late mining magnate Lang Hancock, she married  the ailing tycoon when he was 74 and she 38.

Rose, in a city that was not easy to shock with the antics of an Alan Bond who first snared a nation by winning the prestige America's Cup in 1983 outraging the conservative New York Yacht Club that had held the trophy since 1851, and then snared tens of thousands of investors in dud schemes, or a Laurie Connell who launched a merchant bank with a few hundred million dollars borrowed from the state government which all disappeared in a puff of smoke, Rose Hancock was breath of fresh air edging out Bond's wife "Big Red" Eileen as the western city's major society queen.

Rose & Lang

Rose and Lang built a love nest for themselves-Prix L'Amour, a 50 room gala palace overlooking the Swan River and in the upper class Perth suburb of Peppermint Grove where champagne and caviar parties  abounded and swells from all over the country, bussed in on Rose's private jet, danced the  night away-whilst Lang languished upstairs in an oxygen tent.

Lang's daughter Gina Rinehart from a previous marriage never saw eye to eye with Rose and bitter legal fights followed Hancock's death and stories of dodgy wills abounded and there were tales of Lang being poisoned and so on.

Prix L'Amour

But Rose got Prix L'Amour and a tidy sum  and married a real estate agent William Porteous 3 months after Lang's death and together they razed Prix L'Amour to the ground, sold off blocks of the land for tens of millions and built themselves their own smaller love nest in it's place. Drug charges followed and court battles over legal fees but our Rose survived it all.

Now news comes that Rose has had a stroke and is recovering at home. Her facebook page has remained strangely silent with the last post being on the Dec 9th 2009 saying "So many lovely fans!". The previous one on May 17th she says "oh I still love my Willie!", presumably referring to husband William who is caring for Rose at home.

The Shuttle encountered Rose a few times when she travelled to Sydney. The first was at the premier of the FoxTel cable TV show "Beauty and The Beast" where she was a panelist along with others like Ita Buttrose and  the One Nation politician Pauline Hanson. Hanson made a derogatory comment about Asians at which point Rose stood up and swore at Hanson in Filipino and stormed out, clambered into a Roller and tore off in a cloud of dust!

Now we've uncovered a wonderful video of Rose on youtube as she castigates her staff while getting ready for one her legendary lunch parties. Enjoy-

Join the Billionaire's Club!

Dress to Oppress ! Twiggy Forrest

It was a sight to warm the hearts of Capitalists everywhere-Australia's richest woman Gina Rinehart demonstrating against the proposed mining tax that will be increased to 40% on future profits.

 Never have the well heeled  battlers come out in force and together for such a common cause. Billionaire's and the nation's 3 richest people-Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest, the corpulent Clive Palmer and our Gina, daughter of the late billionaire Lang Hancock who married his Filipino nurse Rose-in twin set and pearls shouting herself hoarse on the back of a flat bed truck on the well manicured lawns of Perth's Langley Park, screeching about PM Kevin Rudd's proposed tax that will kick in 2012 and replace a royalty system currently paid.

No Tax Gina Rinehart

Gina's ex-step mum Rose

 'Twiggy' Forrest is one our favourites-hovering between the richest and second richest man in the country depending on share price and always pictured at these events in a worker's orange flouro jacket and miner's helmet-sparkling clean-before clambering into his chauffeured Beemer and speeding off to the boardroom.

The idea of this tax is the more the mining corporations make-most with their headquarters based in Geneva or the Cayman Islands, the more the government will make on minerals dug out of the ground  and the more the government will raise in taxes on a finite resource that will run out one day. 

Whilst China booms so do we and with building programs there that will see Aussie mineral deposits that have kept the country afloat for 2 decades , sought after for years to come , the government reckons the common people should be getting a bigger share of what basically belongs to the nation. The billionaires aren't having any of that nonsense and reckon the Mandarin speaking Rudd is on the way to become a full blown Communist (while China is well on the way to becoming a capitalist giant). 

Clive Palmer

Of course mining actually does little to improve the country. No infrastructure is built-just bloody great holes in the ground from which the precious minerals are extracted and then these mining giants  just move on

Someone has badly planned this PR cock-up. The miner's union wouldn't have a bar of it so it was left to the bosses to pitch in a few hundred million dollars for a TV advert campaign. But having a handful of mining corporation bosses-with US , British and European accents weeping over lost billions in profits was always going to end in tears and having one corporation which wasn't stock market listed (hence it's share price wouldn't be affected) announce it was upping stakes and moving out only to discover it was actually expanding it's drilling operations soon backfired.

Not only will these corporations  be able to deduct all investment in their mineral searches , they will only pay tax on super profits at 40% which is reckoned by the Treasury to raise an extra $9Billion a year.

As a flushed Gina led a chorus of mine managers (on about $250K a year) in a rousing chant of-

"Axe the tax..axe the tax"..she paused for a minute and shouted "what do want for Australia again?"...one impertinent sod shouted "the Wallabies  to win on Saturday !".( the rugby team  are playing the English team at Subiaco oval in Perth).

The Shuttle has forwarded Gina, Clive and Twiggy's and names to be entered in the Roll of Honour at the prestige USA organisation Billionaire's For Wealthcare who regularly turn up in limos at anti-Barack Obama parades against socialised health care.

Motto : Appearances Are Everything-Dress to Impress and Oppress !