Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Non, Monsieur Le Mayor!


Anonymous (does anyone in Wanganui have a name? Even a fake one, so at least we can tell you all apart?!) asked us in comments:

When was the last time a blog ever got sued? You're being paranoid.

Going slightly off-topic (we hope), the answer to that is quite recently, actually. Several blogs have been sued.

The most relevant example is probably that of Christophe Grebert who is being sued by the mayor of the French city, Puteaux (close to Paris) in which he lives because of his blog comments which crticise the way the city is run.

The council (which makes ours look positively independent) has voted a budget of 29 000 € (about NZ$51,600) towards silencing Christophe.

Oh, and that was after he was arrested by the local police for his blog. We await a visit from the Mayor's Unmounted Vigilantes. Paranoid? Who, us?

Comments on this post are now closed.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Christophe Grébert an angel?
I think no!!!
Why? I explain that on my blog.

Anonymous said...

Etes vous un "single issue nutter"?

Anonymous said...

I heard from a friend at the council that the Diva paddled his waka into the Moutoa Gardens trust board meeting the other day without even knowing the land was owned by the Crown. But the amazing thing is that apparently he confessed to his stupidity at a council meeting - said he hadn't read the agenda properly or something. How embarrassing. I wonder how long it will take for Ken Mair et al to sink his waka and make him dog paddle to Tasmania or somewhere?

Anonymous said...

Cool, Mayor vs. Mair. The rematch.

Anonymous said...

A bit of modest candour is no bad thing. And the editorial in the Chronicle this morning applauded his actions re Moutoa - long overdue & an acknowledgement of local iwi from council at last. I'm no Laws fan but credit goes where credit is due. If this blog castigates everything Laws does then its going to look foolish and lose the opportunity to influence others.

Anonymous said...

Yeah right. A little ignorance goes a long way, especially when it's harnessed to a lot of arrogance.

He didn't win many friends among the iwi for booting off the existing council reps, who had built up a good understanding of the issues and mutual respect, and replacing them holus bolus with newbie Vision people including his own worshipfulness.

He then stayed away from every meeting till last week's (too busy ranting on the radio Friday mornings) then turned up without doing even the most basic homework and grandstanding about how he's "driving re-ordered priorities" or some such crap.

As always the Chron took the bait, hook, line and sinker.

Anonymous said...

That's a bit like the "nil rates rise" promise -- ie don't waste time finding out what happens to rates in revaluation years, just tell the people, and the Chronicle, what they want to hear.

When it all looks like turning pear-shaped, bring in the lawyers and try to get them to agree that it's okay to break the law. When that doesn't work, then bring on the semantics and wriggle and slither out of it by "redefining" a nil rates rise.

Funny, but I don't remember seeing any editorials analysing that in the Chron.

Anonymous said...

Well, give them a chance. There's the care and welfare of inner city roosters to consider too, y'know.

The Wanganui Chronicle should be dragged around the back of the barn and killed with a blunt axe.

The last straw for me was the "Newer, Dumber" content. Still, it's all about selling newspapers, right, John?