Oz mayor stole cash for Darth Vader voice distorter The lord mayor of Darwin remains defiant after being found guilty of stealing council funds to buy "a fridge, underwear and a Darth Vader voice distorter", The Sydney Morning Herald reports. Peter Adamson, 47, was convicted on four charges, including "stealing and making a false statement in declaration". The court heard he'd …
"(his lawyer asserted that) Adamson was "the victim of internal council backstabbing, likening him to a sacrificial lamb and his work environment to 'a pool of sharks with blood in the water'""
What a strange mental image. I wager that this lawyer has seen "Pink Floyd The Wall", and owns at least one Roger Waters solo album.
smaller, older fridge + cash
easy economics. Get an expensive fridge as a gift for a needy family... take fridge to thrift store... sell to store for cash... buy used, working fridge... pocket extra money for food and such.
sounds very plausible to me.
whether or not it happened that way, they'll need to find the "needy family" that got the fridge. if that family doesn't exist, then he's guilty... if they do and they admit to the equation... he's the scapegoat and much fallout will happen.
ah the excitement that is politics.
East Timor (which is not that far away from Darwin, unless this is all about East Timor Sunrise Inc) is *awash* with the fridges this guy stole, they use them to build a wall or something. Seriously, if a politician is caught stealing less then $3000 (Australian $, mind you), the lamb/sharkpool situation seems pretty likely.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but in Australia a Local Council that doesn't overspend it's budget each year has it's budget *reduced* by the amount it didn't spend. In the teeming urban metropolii like Sydney, this means a suburb-wide attack of 'traffic calming devices' (or f%$&ng speed humps - no wonder everyone wants a 4WD!) about a week before the EOFY.
I'm guessing the Darwin Mayor correctly surmised that the roads up there are so shit a speed hump won't make a difference, everyone has a 4WD and is perpeptually drunk at the wheel anyway. No-one would notice. A fridge with a Darth Vader voice? Actually, most people there would still be too drunk to notice.
On the other hand, he might just be bent. Blimey, that would be a surprise, a council officer on the take. Huzzah.
As a wise man once said:
"Australia is peopled entirely by criminals" - Vizzini
Yeah, isn't our lord Mayor great! A few years back when the voting happened though, he was the more trust worthy candidate... *sigh*
That fridge though is what started most of this off. After he bought it (with council funds) he (and his other half) used it in his luxury apartment in the city before someone discovered it was there instead of with a "needy family" or thrift shop. Mysteriously however, it was found a week or two later in the thrift shop (which is in Darwin btw, not East Timor).
It's amusing how he's basically wreaked his political carer (I know I'm not voting for him next time, if he even bothers running) by stealing less than AU$3,000, when he could have afforded all this stuff off his on back anyway!
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