An idea born of desperation
Fresh from failing to turn up to berate other Councils for not following his lead and turning everything over to populist volkpolitik, Mickey decides to regain some precious column centimetres in the Chron by talking about something which isn't the province of Councils at all. Still, no one ever fell afoul of the voters by calling for more doctors, nurses, firemen or policemen.
But while in other countries the provision of some level of health infrastructure is the business of local councils, here in New Zealand it's none of Mickey's business at all. But that's never stopped him before, Watchers, and certainly won't stop him now.
While we're all for more midwives we can't help wondering just what on earth Nicki Higgie's Community Development Committee will do with their Mayoral mandate to tackle the problem.
Of course there's nothing to prevent a local Council from setting a precedent and contributing towards local healthcare. Except that Wanganui's Council is simultaneously cash-strapped and spendthrift.
But then we figured it out, Watchers. Yes, it's a brilliant plan, even by Michael Laws' standards. Clearly Nicki's job is to organise the new signage.
Comments on this post are now closed.
32 comments:
Good idea, LawsWatch. It's a pity water births weren't in vogue 49 years ago when little Mickey slipped into the world. He almost certainly would have sunk without trace then, instead of the weary world having to wait till October 2007.
LW you twat. If you've ever attended any meeting with Cr Westwood present, or were even passingly conversant with the Local Government Act you'd know that councils are legally charged with the "economic, social, environmental and cultrural welfare" of their citizens. That would seem to include maternity issues or are you not claiming any parentage yourself :)
Michael, you're so incompetent you can't even manage to retain a column in the Wanganui Chronicle. What do you know about the four well-beings? You can spell them, and you know how to pronounce the words, but the concepts are obscured by your overweening sense of yourself.
Try a course of neuroleptics.
I'm not Mickey but I enjoy your paranoia when his name is mentioned as well as your obsession. That he SCARES so many people amingst you lot is very amusing.
Now answer the question, Dipshit. The four wellbeings obviously give councils not just the power but the responsibility to get involved in anything that affects their constituents.
Another LW boo-boo.
I'm worried.
When ML first got elected he told the Wanganui public and staff that he was only in it for 1 term. In fact he joked with staff how he was only in it to make sweeping changes and then exit stage left having done what he came to do.
Now he is intimating (not sure if he has done this pubically yet) that he may/will run again. Perhaps he is not the TV starlet he planned to be by now.
PLEASE Wanganui look at the big picture, lets halt this madness before we get in any deeper.
Sorry if this has been debated here previously... first time caller so to speak.
Didn't the mayor have a go at the midwives last year? Can any one remember what he said?
Didn't the mayor have a go at the midwives last year? Can any one remember what he said?
+++++++++
So since when did anyone have any experience with Mickey or the mayoress that was in any way reassuring?
Weekly Column: 21 June 2004
Lack of Maternity Choice in Wanganui
The things you find out by necessity. As you know the Amazonian is now 14 weeks and has the bump to prove it.
Not unnaturally, we both want the best maternity service - so decided that our lead maternity carer (LMC) should be a GP with obstetric experience or a specialist obstetrician. Our only experience with a local midwife was, sadly, not a reassuring one.
But no. Not in Wanganui. It’s a midwife or nothing. Worse still, all the midwives recommended to us by our GP were fully booked. Seven months out from the event! In the end, to get the choice we wanted, we had to go to Palmerston North. Crazy.
The responsibility for recruiting midwives, and providing genuine maternity choice, ultimately rests with the district health board. Plainly they have let the situation slide – to the point where the midwives admit that 150 pregnant mums-to-be in Wanganui will have difficulty getting the carers they need.
For some time now, I have been concerned that the DHB is not meeting a superior or even good standard in its delivery of basic services. Its primary care promotions are certainly poor if the level of avoidable hospitalisations is any indication. Which was a point that Philippa Baker-Hogan also made in announcing her DHB candidacy last week.
Now answer the question, Dipshit.
Answer what question? You haven't asked one, just made a bunch of Mickey-aggrandising statements. You're so deranged you've now claimed that it's Local Governments responsibility to interfere in every aspect of their constituents lives.
Whereas Council's job is to keep the water clean and otherwise leave people alone to go about their lives. Now go licence a dog or something.
He's still telling staff that he wants to do 10 years work in 3 and that he's now thinking it can be done in 2. And check out Chch City Council [Press] for the second wave of redundancies (50) for how CEOs act when the rates squeeze goes on. They are cutting senior managers too.
I have to agree with an earlier remark that the mayor is right, and Laws Watch wrong, on both his & his council's abilities to comment on the maternity issue at the hospital. (Which he is dead right on, by the way.)
Here is the relevant section from the Local Government Act of 2002:
3.Purpose—
(d)provides for local authorities to play a broad role in promoting the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of their communities, taking a sustainable development approach.
Michael Laws comments on the maternity situation in Wanganui in June 2004 were accurate. The situation has got much worse since then with the only public sector specialist - Mark Stegman - resigning and the paediatrician Dr de Zoysa about too. Instead of criticising the mayor, why not be positive and get behind the hospital in telling its management that we need proper maternity and child health services in Wanganui?
Anon said:
I'm not Mickey but I enjoy your parania.........
Sorry 7:28 you seem to read this blog wronge, people come here to have a little laugh at a little man.
anon said
You're so deranged you've now claimed that it's Local Governments responsibility to interfere in every aspect of their constituents lives.
>>>>>>>>>
I think this anonymous is somewhat misguided. Of course the mayor does not think it's Local Governments responsibility to interfere in every aspect of their constituents lives".
He just thinks its another useful way of getting himself in the headlines, another populist cause, another chance to waste council officers' precious time and ratepayers' money ... in other words another chance to grandstand and make himself hero for a day.
In the case of ChCh, much of the staff loss is down to the CEO, A Ms McTurk, who has alienated most of the senior management and everyone south of them. It's more than 50 gone, too. Over the last two years there ahve been about 270 staff members taking the one-way option. Just goes to show what a restructuring conceived by an unpopular CEO can do to an organisation. And talk about unpopular! Councillors were pressured to sign statements supporting Ms McTurk, depsite personal misgivings.
Wonderful load of bullshit form MM today in his e-coli. Might I pick up on a few points:
"I must say that it's been my experience that the younger the reporter, the more accurate the reporting. In which respect, I suspect that is not an uncommon experience in most provincial 'papers throughout the country. "
No, actually. The younger the reporter the less likely they are to have the institutional knowledge to understand what's going on. But they're easier to bully, eh, Mickey?
"Already – I must confess – I'm looking at things we can do this term that I would have thought would take another term, or one after that. That includes the Heart of Wanganui project (the rejuvenation of the district's cultural precinct), and the further development of the riverfront."
So whatever happened to being a one-term mayor? After all, you did tell one reporter that you believed that if you were mayor for more than one term you were "part of the problem, not part of the solution". WHy the change of heart?
Mickey says …Putting aside the disagreement between myself and editor John Maslin over fair comment and censorship …
^^^^^^^^
Now I’ll wager that disagreement is being carried out in the strongest and most admirable Socratic and Platonic traditions of dignified and respectful discussion and debate.
C’mon on Mickey, show us the emails, why don’t ya?
Imagine what WDC staff (well the few who are left anyway) are saying about the latest rantings of the mad mayor. Even his devoted "PA" will be choking into her LawsWatch coffee mug.
Instead of criticising the mayor, why not be positive and get behind the hospital in telling its management that we need proper maternity and child health services in Wanganui?
We refer you to the original post, in which we said we support the provision of more midwives.
Our point, however, is perfectly encapsulated by anon @ 9.34. It's an issue that has nothing to do with Mickey, that he can't hope to fix, and is merely another platform on which to grandstand and give the appearance of action while actually doing nothing.
Unless he plans on announcing a grant towards the provision of better health services? Well, Mickey?
"Already – I must confess – I'm looking at things we can do this term that I would have thought would take another term, or one after that."
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He'll have to do 20 terms to get everything done.
At the current rate of completion we'll have the downtown mayoral office by 2009 and the improved roading by the time we all use hover-cars.
http://www.wanganui.govt.nz/news/showNews.asp?id=599&show=single
"The Ten-Year Plan – My Work Is Done"
I could swing for the man!
Your work?? Who worked the long days and weekends under constantly changing directives often with staff disappearing left and right.
Your contribution was to stay away and do your radio/tv/other things.
For that we are grateful.
Some of us Mr and Mrs Wanganui's are relatives and close friends to WDC staff and we know the truth.
I'm sure Jason Gunn was rolling his eyes when he talked on National Radio this evening about the preciousness of Mickey on Trash Island.
When you think about it, the posers who volunteer to take part in these sorts of stunts probably think it'll be money for jam and don't expect to have put up with Mickey at close quarters.
Anonymous said...
I'm sure Jason Gunn was rolling his eyes when he talked on National Radio this evening about the preciousness of Mickey on Trash Island.
++++++
It sounds as though there's not a chance that Julie Christie will be calling Mr Laws again. As Mr Gunn said, he does everything sooo personally and thinks he's a one-girl drama club.
Gosh, looks liek he the only way he can get on the cover of Wimin's Daze is to breed. Heaven help us!
"The Ten-Year Plan – My Work Is Done"
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Wow lets clone this man and sell him to other councils. If he can do all that work without the help of councillors, management or other wdc staff... just imagine what he could do if he did more than 15 hours per week!
So who's the Winc resident genius who decided to use a pussy cat logo for the feral foods f___kup?
And how much ratepayer money is went to said genius?
Is this yet another gravy train for the new-boy network?
C'mon, Mickey and Nig. We're all your friends here:-)
Anonymous said...
I'm sure Jason Gunn was rolling his eyes when he talked on National Radio this evening about the preciousness of Mickey on Trash Island.
Poor Mickey, he tried so hard to be a turkey but he didn't get so much as a slap.
It looks as though even the Sunday Star Times are getting sick of their most embarrassing columnist. Last weekend they left him off the list of writers promo’d on the front of the section while putting the likes of Frank Haden there. And in the glossy magazine there’s a story about Finlay Macdonald that notes “he’s not cut from the same glass that fills the full-length mirror of Michael Laws.”
Last week’s piece of crap, when he was so desperate to shaft Higgie, McKinnon et al that the boot into artists, art etc won’t have helped.
Wonder how long Mickey’s contract has to run? At this rate he’ll soon find himself "disagreeing with another editor over fair comment and censorship.”
The jealousy against the mayor on this blog is amazing. Yep, Julie Christie obviously had her fill of ML so she re-cast him on both Superstars of TI and 2 series of Out of the Question. He's great TV.
As for the Sunday Star-Times, I looked back on my copy and saw that the magazine item was on the Kahuis and all three columnists had also written on the family and hence the linked items. The mayor wrote on local government last week - probably because, according to the Stuff website, he'd written on the Kahuis ("brown dysfunctional trash") the week before.
Can't you people research anything and get it right?
As for the alleged WDC staff member's relative: when was the last story or leak LW ran froim over 200 council staff? Yes, you would be right: Never.
Is this the ame Michael Laws who -
+ has his own national radio show?
+ has his own TV sports show?
+ appears in a P{rime Tv show?
+ has his own national newspaper clolumn?
+ is mayor of Wanganui
+ kicks the arties' arses everyday of the week?
Yeah, it is. Go ML - love what you're doing to those art cretins who think their finger painting is a John Constable.
PS Just before you accuse. I'm not your notorious muse but I'd like to be because how comes he gets all the fun kicking your arses?
Thanks Mickey, you're a laugh a minute and I haven't had so much fun since my grandma got her tit caught in the wringer.
He's great TV.
___________
Of all the evidence to hand that the mayor is without question certifiably mad, this self-deluded nonsense removes all doubt.
If this stuff wasn't so tragic (in the true Shakespearean sense) it would be side-splittingly funny.
It's silly to even begin to point out the obvious to someone so off this planet as to post this stuff, but his early exit from the Superstars of T (as he calls it) farce was instructive. As was the fact that despite an inordinate amount of self-promotion in the Chronicle before leaving, he slunk back into town and not a word appeared about how he had been given the heave-ho by his fellow "celebrities".
But the most disturbing feature of this stuff appearing here (with the routine denials as to his identity) is that he doesn't realise just how much of a fool he appears.
Anonymous wrote:
PS Just before you accuse. I'm not your notorious muse but I'd like to be because how comes he gets all the fun kicking your arses?
Ooh, I'm scared. So you honestly think that someone who "kicks arses" is to be admired? And I bet you also wonder why there is so much crime and violence in NZ society. You are truly a troubled, troubled soul. However, if you want to try to kick my arse, have a go if you think you're hard enough. But you better bring the artillery, pal....
As for the alleged WDC staff member's relative: when was the last story or leak LW ran froim over 200 council staff? Yes, you would be right: Never.
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You've lost me, are you saying that because WDC staff don't rush here to dish the dirt (there is none at ground level to speak of) that my posting was somehow inaccurate?
Most of the issues or eye opening events happen at the political or public meeting level. What would the staff have to say that isn't public knowledge?
But thanks for the logic lesson Michael. What have Prime ever created that has been worthwhile watching? You'd be right: Nothing.
On that basis I won't be tuning into your program.
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