Vodafone boss’ fond farewell. We first revealed the significant job cuts at Vodafone. And now the man at the top has offered his own head. Chief executive Nigel Dews resigned this morning after a turbulent 18 months of service outages and customer revolt. We got hold of his email to staff:

Hi all,

I want to let you know that I am leaving VHA, and that Bill Morrow is taking over as Chief Executive. Please join me in welcoming Bill (if you are at the Ark, you will see him around, and no doubt he will want to meet many of you personally). As you will see from the attached press release, he brings a wealth of very valuable experience to VHA to take the company forward from here.

I am proud of what we have achieved through the integration of 3 and Vodafone, and as we have discussed many times, I remain very confident that the enormous amount of high quality work you have put in since the formation of the company, and particularly in the past 12 months, will bear fruit. 2012 is the start of that and 2013 will be even better. I look forward to watching your success and knowing I was part of building the foundations with you. You are a great team — Bill is very lucky to get you all — and it has been a privilege to work with you.

I will be around for the next month to support Bill and the team through the transition and I look forward to catching up with many of you before and after I leave.

As always, if you have any questions or issues, please let me know.

There will also be a series of staff briefings (GMs, Senior Leadership, All Hands and others) where you will get a great opportunity to put your questions to me, Vittorio, Canning, Nick, Frank and Bill.

See you then.

Regards

Nigel

Social discontent after Westpac rally. Reports of staff discontent at Westpac after a rallying address from CEO Gail Kelly. According to our spy:

“Gail Kelly recently addressed the leadership teams all around the country, and in high drama, berated the hundreds of leading bankers that she has been on for so long about getting deposits; it’s the number one priority for the bank and they should be speaking with all their communities and really focusing on the social sector for significant growth, etc. Much muttering and bizarre looks all around the country — given she just axed the entire social sector banking team. Happy redundancies all around.”

Libs line up candidates for Clover assault. Word out of Liberal HQ (or at least an apartment block where some live) is that the party is incredibly confident of tipping Sydney mayor Clover Moore out of state parliament. A nosey neighbour reports:

“I live in a building in Woolloomooloo that’s home to more than a few prominent Liberals, and from what I hear things are getting very interesting now it looks like BOF is going to be able to force Clover Moore to resign from her state seat. While nobody really thinks they can knock her off for lord mayor, the mayoral election is a great dry run for the state byelection. Perennial candidate Shayne Mallard was first out of the blocks with the story on the weekend saying that he’ll be the candidate, but I hear the party reckons he has burnt too many bridges locally and that it could do better with a more high-profile candidate. Lucy Turnbull’s name keeps coming up but that’s not a serious option. Former pollies are being sounded out and at least one is apparently giving it some serious thought.”

SOS for Adelaide’s late buses. Adelaide readers: has your bus been running late? The Advertiser reported over the weekend service cuts and delayed times, and we’re told route planning has now been shifted to Sydney. Reports one insider: “The new contractor was unable to access the long-standing traffic history from previous owners. Result is they are starting again with people unable to get to work over the past three months. Complaints everywhere. New minister is holding a poisoned chalice.”

Coffee tips for bored AFP cops. The saga of the AFP cops marooned at Balmain continues. A Crikey reader quizzed one of them on Darling Street — and offers an important tip on coffee houses:

“The poor buggers have been there for over two months now, and I don’t think they are particularly happy about it. One of them told me that there had been threats made against a politician based in the building they are stationed outside. I’m guessing they are there until the threat has been reclassified. The poor buggers have to sit there in their red cop cars for extended stretches, and swap when the next AFP vehicle comes along. They only get out of the cars to pick up coffees from Birra e Pizza (unfortunately they are parked about 200 metres up the road from Bertoni’s, where they could get a much, much better coffee). They sit in their cars drinking their coffees and playing on their smart phones. Not much fun for them.”

We know you’re not allowed to speak to us officially, guys. But we do hope you take the coffee advice. Still conflicting advice on why they’re there: we know there’s a Syrian consulate on the street, but we can’t confirm another report that Iran has a mission “above a Thai restaurant there”.

Exercise with gladiola at Jenny. First Magda, then a Spice Girl, now a man in a dress will be the new face of Jenny Craig. A caller to the 3AW Rumour File reckons Dame Edna will be announced as the new spokesperson soon.

Sushi for Canberra: we’re on board. Finally, an anonymous plea from the press gallery:

“Konichiwa sushi loving colleagues at Parliament House in Canberra. I’m trying to convince the staff dining room to add sushi to the menu. The manager told me to leave pro-sushi comments in the comments box, which is located at the self-serve register. If you could kindly add your support for California rolls next time you visit, that would super!”

We’ll get Bernard Keane onto this. He likes sushi.