exclusive: QANTAS drama over Breitbart News

Following on the heels of the drama over the US cereal manufacturers Kellogg pulling their advertisements from the Libertarian website Breitbart News where President Donald Trump is fond of getting his 'news', comes word that one of the world's biggest airlines the Aussie owned  QANTAS are pulling their ads from the site as well.
When a concerned shareholder contacted QANTAS via their Twitter account, the response was rapid which you can read below.

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And even more fun & games over the US election, the Inauguration of President Trump and the amazing marches around the world the following day when apparently 3 million women attended the protest in the capital.
 Daily Mail pundit & British TV host Piers Morgan was up in arms with the following tweet:

 It received a quick response from our favorite Woollahra based Hollywood star Sam Neill:

Alas for poor Piers there was a further humiliation to come from reality TV star and multi-millionaire Lord Alan Sugar of the UK's Apprentice fame:

 

 

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The  following message popped up on Facebook (and presumably elsewhere and posted by the high profile lawyer Chris Murphy:

Whispers has seen this couple about town so many times and they looked very happy as recently as 3 months ago as our photograph shows. Below: Kelly Landry & Anthony Bell

Tennis for a Good Cause

The ladies of these Eastern Suburb's charities sometimes get ignored by the press but they really do work wonders.
Unlike today's multi-million dollar charities that have a range of well paid executives and workers, these women beg, steal and borrow anything they can lay their hands on order to raise funds.
They receive nothing in return except that warm and fuzzy feeling they have done the right thing. And so the annual St Luke's Hospital (in Potts Point) charity tennis day again raised tens of thousands of dollars for a good cause. Held at Lady Burrell's magnificent pile Rosemount in Woollahra(once the family abode of the Lloyd-Jones family of David Jones department store fame), a beautiful sunny day and possibly one of Sydney's nicest private lawn tennis courts made for the ideal afternoon.

 

Softly Softly..

A new photographic exhibition has opened at the Dickerson Gallery in ritzy Queen Street , Woollahra. It's a potted history of 2 of the countries finest suppliers of beautiful gowns and jewelry : Anne Schofield and Robert Burton, pictured left. Both have shops in Queen Street.

Robert Burton is one of those quiet achievers who has been running up frocks now for over 30 years for some of Australia's best known social names and a few Hollywood types who pop into town.
 On show at the Gallery is a magnificent black gown he created for a customer who had the honour of Dancing With The Prince of Wales ( Charles) in the 80s. His outfits are sold in prestige outlets like Browns in London and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Anne Schofield has been collecting antique and Art Deco jewellery since the year dot (we know- the Shuttle was one of her suppliers in another lifetime). Her magnificent store is world famed and customers like Barbara Streisand and Cher have spent money there. The famed London store Butler & Wilson regularly raid Anne's collections for their Chelsea and Rodeo Drive boutiques.
Burton's boutique is directly opposite the gallery and worth popping into as he also sells a range of household decorating goods. And maybe to cop a look at one of Sydney's most magnificent manes of grey hair.

The exhibition is part of the Woollahra Village Weekend.

Dickerson Gallery, 34 Queen Street, Woollahra. Hours:Tue-Sat 11am-5pm Sun 1-5pm

Woollahra Village Weekend

The inaugural Woollahra Village Weekend- or WVW13  as it's billed, opens today with all manner of village type events or "3 days of Fashion, Food, Art, Literature, Music and Community Fun" as the official blurb says.

Go to the website to see a list and times of events.

Deborah's Big Win

Deborah with Malcolm Turnbull MP

No doubt the very glamorous former model Deborah Thomas was celebrating on Sunday with her husband Vitek Czernuszyn, purveyor of fine vodka.

Deborah commands a number of weighty titles : director of media, public affairs and brand development at ACP magazines but she now also ascends to Woollahra Council after a convincing win in the local elections on Saturday.

Thomas has edited and published the Australian Women's Weekly for a number of years ( still the countries top selling magazine and at times, one of the world's) and she'll now be sitting in on council meetings making decisions on all sorts of mind boggling matters like local roads, development applications and so on. 
 

Only just last week it was announced that the ACP magazine publishing empire has been snapped up by the German media giant Bauer for a tidy $500M, the largest privately owned publishing group in Europe. It brings the legendary magazine empire built by the Packer family back into private hands.
left : Vitek Czernuszyn (far right) with pals Mark & Victoria Coppleson

Keeping Up With The Joneses

Kerry Jones' circle of  friends is rapidly widening if the celebrations at her 57 room Darling Point mansion Swifts are anything to go by.

Shuttlers may recall we have written before about the parties, antique fairs, conferences, product launches and charity fundraisers that have been happening at the rate of two a week at the 3.5 hectare property in the suburb.

On Wednesday Fox International threw a roaring bash with former Beverley Hills 90210 star Jason Priestly as the guest of honour to celebrate the launch of his new series Call Me Fritz that airs on Fox's FX channel later this year. 150 guests rolled up to the house where they found roulette and backgammon tables, a supply of cigars from a humidifier, a whisky sampling bar and plenty of cocktails and champagne.

The Shuttle's spy disguised as a Darling Point senior citizen reports the noise was deafening especially when Priestly took to the microphone and appeared to scream for a full five minutes at the top of his lungs.
 Kerry Jones has denied the parties are commercial events and says they are functions held for 'friends' including two wedding receptions last month.

Even more disturbing was an odd event held last weekend and our spy dusted of her Box Brownie and supplied these snaps taken from her bedroom window on the 11th floor of a neighbouring block of apartments that overlooks Swifts gardens.

" I don't know what was going on " says our pensioner" but the guests appeared to be firing guns at each other and then police arrived to round them up and lay them handcuffed on the ground. I'm told it was some sort of game but the fake gunshots scared the hell out of my cat who disappeared into a  wardrobe for 2 hours and the racket went on all day"

Kerry Jones, the daughter of nursing home tsar Doug Moran (both left) who lives at Swifts with her extended family has called the claims that the house is operating as a defacto reception centre as "mischievous" but that has enraged the already seething residents of the genteel suburb who in a flurry of letters to the local Wentworth Courier newspaper demanded Jones retract the statement.

Another who wishes to remain anonymous but lives beside Swifts said " she must think we are stupid if she thinks we believe all these people attending parties are friends. I've counted over 2000 guests in the last 3 months".

And indeed Mrs Jones has claimed the party for Jason Priestley and Fox International was a “private party” for her friend, Fox International Channels managing director Karin Simoncini.

On Tuesday at the launch of the Australian Fashion Walk of Style in Oxford Street, the Shuttle button-holed a Woollahra councillor who refused to comment on the resident's claims but did say "it's all coming to a head".

Now it seems the Jason Priestly party was the last straw and on Friday Woollahra Council's planning office said they would take legal action in the Land & Environment Court unless Kerry Jones gave a written undertaking that she would hold no further events at Swifts without council planning permission. Mrs Jones has responded angrily and said she is thinking of cancelling an upcoming charity fundraiser in March for the Cornucopia Committee.