news, local-news

IF BURNIE City Council erects a statue of some American dude holding a can of Fosters and a platypus, it can get its hands on the website burnie.com. Actually, it would also need to hold a parade in his honour and allow him to march at the front. Burnie Mayor Steve Kons last week denied ever approaching the US man with the last name Burnie, who registered burnie.com many years ago. ``Council has no record of ever approaching Burnie Burns, nor has it sought to register that name,'' Mr Kons said. But in a YouTube video, Mr Burnie said he had been approached about the website, which shows a man playing a cowbell. ``The city of Burnie, Tasmania started to contact me and they wanted the website and I made these outrageous demands . . .'' Mr Burnie said. ``Like I will give it to you as long as you have a parade in my honour and I get to march at the front of the parade and you build a statue of me, which I'll pay for, but you have to put it up in a park somewhere where it's me and in an outstretched hand I have a can of Fosters and tucked under my arm I have a platypus and I get to make up the inscription of why I have a statue.'' Mr Burnie said the council responded, asking him to ``at least modify it to something less offensive''. ``And I said, `it's just a blank page'.'' But it turned out his friend Gus had modified it to welcome visitors to the site with an obscenity. ``Your little vandalism probably cost me my statue!'' Mr Burnie said to Gus in the video.

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