ETU internal strife. A union insider writes:

“The Victorian Electrical Trades Union elections are heating up with incumbent Dean Mighell feeling the pressure from a challenge from current ETU national assistant secretary John Ingram and two ex-Victorian officials David Mier and Paul Coffey. Mighell is fighting against ETU branches in NSW, Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia, plus a few internal threats that have started a grouping calling themselves the “ReCharge the Recharge Team” in an obvious pun to Mighell’s 1995 “Recharge Team” success.

“The ETU elections have become a lawyer’s picnic, with numerous actions under way on various matters. And while Mighell now claims 18,400 financial ETU members in Victoria, the reality is that less than 15,650 will actually vote on whether Mighell will live or die. His members are leaving in droves following his supposed cuddling up to the Greens and the large amounts of money he has donated to that party in recent times.”

Will The Fin be outsourced? Is Fairfax planning to outsource more of its subbing ranks? That’s one obvious conclusion, according to one insider, from the fact off-site sub-hub Pagemasters is training its staff in the Methode system. Where else is Methode used? At The Australian Financial Review, which has so far retained its subs as those from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have been dumped. Meanwhile, in transitioning The Canberra Times to the new Pagemasters model, another staffer reports: “Staff aren’t offered redundancy, the powers that be are just not replacing people when they leave.”

Film festival out of focus. There’s been praise for the program of Melbourne International Film Festival, but the transmission of the films has angered some popcorn munchers. According to one: “I have seen two good films and two great films ruined by crappy projection — out of focus, disappearing sound, poor framing, subtitles disappearing off the screen, and to top it all off on Sunday night, a disco light show with the house lights and an orange spotlight on the screen, which made the last 10 minutes of the film invisible.” Our resident film guy agrees. Luke Buckmaster is blogging the festival at Cinetology and reckons lots of film-goers are talking about the cock-ups.

Census countdown. You can fill your census form out online, did you know? But sometimes they make it hard … “Opened up my e-census form to go online to fill it in. Trouble is I do not have an e-census number. The field where it is supposed to be is blank and they did not leave me my secret decoder ring and the 1300 help number is an infinite queue — been waiting 15 minutes to talk to someone about this. What a joke!” We’d love to hear more about your census misadventures. — drop us a line.