Chapter 9: Council Political Wisdom

One of the Council Manager's tasks was to make reality, whatever imaginative fiction councillor's vote up, and to make sure that the council organisation operates efficiently, even if those two tasks were mutually exclusive. A certain someone, politically right of centre who sat in 'D' Ward, believed that all council staff should be able to do every other staff members jobs, and used his best car sales techniques to make a majority of other councillors agree with him. And ... no one answers the main switchboard because the switch girl was having the time of her life driving a sheep's foot roller without being given instruction and the roller driver couldn't make the computer go because he hadn't plugged it in.

So, that councillor had to leave his job as head salesman in a Mercedes Benz outlet in Taren Point, and couldn't get into the Council head office, because a certain piece of council road equipment had gone berserk at a road site between his shop and Sutherland council offices, creating a massive traffic jam, because the only person who could instruct the learner operator was in the council offices trying to turn the switchboard on, and the coffee machine continually started instead. He still hasn't found the plug for the computer, and it was that councillor's idea that, the one man who could do all those things, their general manager, had been sent to the local coffee shop to bring morning tea for the staff. Because it had been his idea, and council voted on it, he lost the sales of two high end luxury cars.

David, who knew it was all going to happen, let it.

That Council mindset leads to...

Firstly, council members lost their ability of selecting staff members or any direct management or decision making within council personnel itself. No matter how well intentioned. That decision was won by the voices 14-1, and it shouldn't surprise anyone who voted against the motion. The decision stemmed from Bob Collins being placed by the previous Lord Mayor, and the complaints placed by the previous and present General Managers, and the vote led by a car salesman over an inexperienced council and the ensuing chaos. David let it happen and got the decision he wanted.

The second was the first salvo of which no one except David Newman realised was the beginning of a far reaching battle. Which no one knew, except him, that this was the beginnings of a war to be won. It was subtle positioning by David Newman to eventually control council in its entirety, politically and managerially. It all stemmed from the fact that this country's third tier of government was not made up of elected government members and public servants as are the Federal and State levels but are elected decision makers and independent professional managerial experts.

When David officially turned fifty and was really forty three, he foresaw a problem as the council had a mandatory retirement age of sixty five for its employees. He had never enforced the rule with his employees; however his political enemies, who are in abundance, would expect him to take it and would cause trouble if he didn't.

He gave his Assistant Managers, Maureen and Sherri in their management chain of command, a project to study the Council regulation's, including State Government's overriding legislations, to see if there was anything that says a council employee, could not be a council member, seeing that all councillors are privately employed with a stipend and paid expenses for being elected. They ordered the computer staff to do a substantial search, and hand searched every wherefore and thereby and any other also, finding that it isn't normal practice but not actually disallowed as the council is just another employer, a company as such, and not a group of public servants with a governmentally placed head public servant.

The girls were amused at what they thought he had in mind, which is when he placed them into a, minds, sharp left, and about face. "Sherri, you are beautiful, you're politically astute, in fact you are probably the most intelligent, politically astute person I know. You are known to be politically independent and for the years you were married to Ray, you were his secret source of power, and political acumen. How would you like to be Mayor?"

Sherri looked at him without an expression on her face. "Would I have your official backing?"

"Yes and no; in the election I will only be able to tell the rate payers that you were a highly capable manager who, because of my seniority, has been unable, as yet to become higher in the council management structure, and are universally recognised as the next person in line to take this position. And that is especially if they put the position onto the public marketplace as is current practice. I am not allowed to say much more, legally, as I must be seen to be independent of party politics. Behind the scenes, you will have me, and all our family, all your family as it is, backing you."

"Presuming you are elected we have the pressure points to touch, which, up to now, have allowed Labor Party sycophants to sneak through undetected until too late, to become councillors and mayors. They will be your power base, and if, the big if, we play our cards right, you and I will have something Ray always wanted. The ability to make events happen that would have been political suicide and would be now easy, as we, you and I, will be making the correct decisions, party politics be-damned. How we make those is immaterial, as we will be singing from the same hymnbook. Sherri, this is not personal, this purely political."

"Maureen..."

Maureen just turned her head to look at the woman she considered her fellow wife and who, she held dear.

"I would like a wives and hangers on meeting tonight, without this devious, Machiavellian prick's input, and we'll talk it out. I know you all love him, I fucking love him, but I want the group Sisters' political points of view." The two of them got on the phones and tonight David was taking all of his kids to the movies. Miranda Fair has enough going, so he should be able to satisfy everyone. His thoughts were; the older ones will want to see something advertised a lot and there are usually cartoons to suck the parent or grandparents in because littlest kids can't go into the movies without adult's supervision, therefore the cartoon has to have something adults will enjoy; little things like featured music from an older or more mature background.

In this day and age, Bambi would suck the big time. For kids dragging adults along; tonight would be Shrek. Let's be honest, close to the end they feature Leonard Cohen's, Hallelujah. If you took a head count in one hundred percent of the theatres showing the cartoon, hands up which children, no, no, not you, grandad, children had heard of Cohen or even Hallelujah, yet his record had been out five years and he himself began recording in the sixties. Call him Biased, with respect Mr Biased to you, as Cohen was David's favourite singer. That is him and The Palmers, and they are both writer/singers, but the thought of The Palmers (read Duet, on SOL) being put on public view is quite laughable. The older, cooler, kids, have got three times as many movies, which are must see. To prove David wrong, all of them came with him, and one night mid-week, the Newman family filled the theatre showing Shrek.

To point out some realism, David's youngest born to an official wife is Jeremy, his mother is Marilyn David's sister, and he turns seventeen this year, 1995. David treasures his daughter/wives/concubines/pets, not so much the toys, yet, even the family toys and pets have children acknowledged by him, and they are his, and we had a great time making them. Who for instance is going to inform Sherri that she isn't his wife, and her five children weren't sired by David. What was believed outside the Newman family is immaterial. All their/his/our children are with him tonight. This may surprise anyone with our lifestyle in mind, but neither himself, nor his female partners, screw around outside the relationship. There is actually no need to if one stops and thinks about it. Even the beautiful red headed Felicity who is married outside the family, each of her three children were of David's loins, each red-headed, green-eyed and freckled. As much as that would surprise her husband. Her relationship with David could almost be seen as bigamous, but her husband quickly got into the married rut. That would never happen with David.

Some things he hasn't gone into as deeply as he could have, as it became complicated. David does not like this defining of family positions in a multi-tiered set of hierarchical levels. My women seem to have a deep down need to place their siblings and companions, each other, into pigeonholes, or caste classifications. He, personally thinks of his women, as leaders, and followers who didn't want the responsibility of managing the family, and not by coloured dots of paint on their foreheads.

Sherri had five children, nominally to Ray, and one more by a miracle of the waters a year after his death, but because of his previous marital machinations, he was unable to supply any. Do not misjudge David's attitude to these children; they are his, and he is deeply attached to all his children. That he had a different surname to them had never even occurred to them and had no interest to David; to them and him, he is Dad. Felicity's lot caused some confusion but it was handled in-house. With all that, she who was classed as a toy by her fellow family members, as she will do anything that feels good and some things that don't. To Sherri's own mind she was a permanently kept woman who also just happens to work and live with David.

Beth of course has had one child, Ita ... so far. At her school, it was said about her at the age of fifteen that she had an accident, and the family who had adopted Elizabeth in the first place had also adopted Ita, and at home, between the women, Beth is currently classified as a protected pet. No mention has been made of Beth's sister, Jennifer, who decided that David Newman was the one and only for her, and has had four children over the space of twelve years; their surname is David's as was hers now, as she wanted it that way. Her little sister Beth, is trying to persuade David that now she had graduated and was earning good money, that another four or more isn't out of the question. He would admit that she was now a beautiful mature woman, who knew what she wanted; it just happened to be David. But David was not so positive that another four Newmans was such a good idea, not at his age.

Beth and Ida-May had a lot in common, including that indefinable relationship. They seem to come under the heading of Pets. Jennifer had redefined her role to Toy. She explained it to me as a self-esteem issue as she enjoyed being used as a fuck toy, a subtly complicated woman, who was confining herself to my use, but like Helen, anywhere, at any time, but only with me and her multiple Sisters.

My daughter/wife Phoebe Marie, was twenty eight and had born three little girls, all also by immaculate conception, before she received her BA (Sc.), and then three more in the six years after achieving that goal. She had been true to her youthful judgement, that the so called adult games played by her male counterparts were so childish and below her maturity level. What made a lot of these mature men childish in her eyes, was because she was so ravenously beautiful it made grown men go to infantile lengths to impress her. Her Dad tells her the blunt truth, makes her understand, to him, she walks on water and she doesn't have to do anything to prove anything to him. The same as to her siblings that her beauty is immaterial. He would go to any lengths to make sure his children had the best life possible and were happy, showing no preference between them.

During her university final year, she was badly manhandled by a professor who thought he could do what he liked, otherwise the lowly, beautiful undergraduate, would not receive her degree. The man had not done his homework on the background of his student, and it is an, unwise practice, simply to follow the dictates of your penis.

She barricaded herself in a broom cupboard and rung Daddy on her mobile which took up most of her book bag because of the mobile phone sizes at that time. Daddy left half way through a council deposition for increased funding on council playground repairs(Sherri took his place), and rode his now infamous Norton, up the University's front steps and two more major internal flights of stairs, ramming the professor against the wall with his front wheel, breaking the man's pelvis in the process.

The Professor sued him for assault, and the Professor lost his tenure as her Daddy had found ten other undergrads and graduates who'd had similar experiences with him. You can then add sixteen years gaol for multiple rapes, to his loss of work. Every time the ex-Professor tried to receive legal redress, another source of utter humiliation was piled on him. Her Daddy was the smartest, most masculine male Phoebe had ever met. Even her brothers Manny, Philly and Jeremy, paled into insignificance compared to her Daddy, and she considers them good in bed, as do all their sisters. Of course, the pregnant Phoebe was at Sherri's meeting, as her six children are with their father.

Ditto his other daughter/wife, of similar age, Wanda, whose three children were also with their father. She has limited her pregnancies as she found pregnancy itself, a living nightmare because her body, especially her pelvis, had never matured internally enough to allow the babies easy access; ergo all caesarean births. Eight more adult or almost adult aged children were in attendance others not wanting to participate in their parent's political games, as well as David's four wives, two concubines and assorted toys like Felicity and thirteen year old orphan, Eve. She followed Maureen home one day on a stolen motor bike, wearing nought but a faded blue labourer's singlet. Maureen asked her husband if she could keep her, once she was house broken and vaccinated. David sighed in resignation, but kept a rolled up newspaper at hand for toilet training accidents.

Eve's main disadvantage was that she stole the bike from outside the Bandito's Outlaw Gang's headquarters, where she was being held prisoner as a mattress and property of the club, and her benefit was that her competition point score was impressively outstanding within her first year of residence, regularly outdoing Helen and Sherri. She would do anything, anywhere, at any time, sort of another Maria and Marilyn, rolled up in one. We left the massive Harley Davidson bike on the concrete centre dividing strip on the Princes Highway south of Tom Ugly's Bridge, and opposite the most popular hamburger shop south of the city, it couldn't be missed. She was a bit pissed because she really wanted to see Shrek with the other kids and she had to make the decision whether we were going to treat her as an adult or a child, it was up to her.