King of the (Ozark) Mountain

Noam Chomsky has defined a rogue state as "a state that defies international laws and conventions, does not consider itself bound by the major treaties and conventions… in fact anything except the interests of its own leadership, the forces around the leadership that dominate policy".

Remind you of anyone? Yesterday Michael Laws used the death of Tonga’s King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV to further push Wanganui into rogue statedom. Sadly, the King had the bad timing to expire at the start of a six-monthly radio ratings survey period and that was the signal for Wanganui’s mayor to spew forth a masterful piece of hate-filled media grandstanding rivalled only by his hysteria about patched gang members that won him prime time attention during the last ratings period in February.

In New Zealand flags on government buildings were lowered to half mast, except in Wanganui where mayor Michael Laws refused and called the king a "brown slug" who had ruled a corrupt country. - Dominion Post

Mr Laws used his Radio Live show to say the Wanganui flag would not be lowered for "a big brown slug". “We honour people who have contributed to the community or the nation," he told the Herald. "Not someone who has been a despotic beneficiary of the New Zealand tax-payer." - New Zealand Herald

Meanwhile, back at LawsWatch, an anonymous commenter with an uncanny knack of sounding exactly Michael Laws has advised Watchers thusly:

The Tongan royal family have been ripping off the Tongan people for generations and its your MAYOR that's the problem? Time to get some perspective, people - which your mayor seems to have.

Which prompts the question … Just what perspective does "our mayor" seem to have? The perspective of a minor media "celebrity" with a cowed and stupid council majority, more than a few screws loose, and a big ratings problem, perchance?

Six months down the track from Radio Live’s last survey bomb, Auckland’s media moguls are all aquiver at the start of a new ratings period, running till October 13th. Heaven knows what it has cost Wanganui’s ratepayers, but Mickey’s famous gang patch bylaw stunt did nothing to stop the bad news for his little earner Radio Dive, with the February survey showing it haemorrhaged 12,000 listeners and won the New Zealand Herald title of "big loser". We’re predicting there’ll be more bad news when the latest results are released on October 27th.

So, Watchers, welcome back to Wanganui showtime where a mayor who is campaigning to attract intelligent, qualified medical people to the city goes out of his way to portray Wanganui as a red-neck paradise awash with ignorance and racism and rivalled only by a few charming little hamlets deep in the backwoods of the Ozark Mountains.

It’s all been a bit much for former military man and flag-lowering devotee Cr Don McGregor who once did a tour of duty in Tonga, but we shouldn’t expect Mickey’s loyal sychophants to be much bothered by what might look to sane reasonable people to be an outburst sure to bring the city and its council into disrepute. As perspicacious Watcher and regular commenter Bearhunter has quite rightly pointed out, such mayoral obscenities are protected by precedent, aka the Code of Conduct ruling last year by said mayoral sycophants:

"Mickey said these things while NOT being mayor of Wangers, which should be clear to all those mental giants who listen to talkback," says Bearhunter. "I know he did this because Dotty (speaking of mental giants) told me so, as she told everyone after the Code of Conduct fiasco. SO that's all right then, there is no way ANYONE could think that the Mayor of Wanganui was actually speaking as the Mayor of Wanganui..."

Of course, the irony of this can’t be lost on Cr Don McGregor whose hand shot up with military precision, along with those of Rangi Wills and the diVisioners in support of this bizarre theory advanced by Michael Laws in his defence.

So not only does Wanganui’s Mickey Mouse Mayor have the endorsement of a majority of councillors to launch attacks like these, he’s also able to (and does) cite their approval for the flag-lowering policy he introduced in the wake of the song and dance last year following the demise of King Faud of Saudi Arabia, who apparently topped the list of Middle Eastern despots identified by the Michael Laws Institute for Democracy, Transparency and Openness.

He wasted no time using the WDC website to bash the council with its own flag-raising policy, probably in anticipation of being strung up by McGregor et al at tomorrow’s Strategy meeting (where chairpillock Dot McKinnon will doubtless again fall off her chair in a fit of giggling as she did during the last mayoral rant about flags and despots - when "Mayor Michael" talked about the person Dotty described as "Professor Phard" in her breathless report in the River City Press). We hope she’s got her laughing gear in order for tomorrow because it’ll be her job at tomorrow’s meeting to shut down any debate about the latest outbreak of mayoral dysentery.

Here he is on the WDC website today trying to explain that his "personal views" really have nothing to do with where the flag flies on the council’s mast because it all comes down to "policy":

"I have strong personal views, having recently visited Tonga, as to the non-democratic and corrupt political structure of that country. However, whatever those views, the King's death did not meet council policy.

"Personally, I think we demean the whole process if we simply lower the flag every time a leader of a non-democratic nation dies. Tonga is the Zimbabwe of the South Pacific and we can only hope that the new monarch will allow his people the economic and democratic ability to escape their relative poverty."

Mr Laws said that he had been inundated with calls from throughout the country supporting his stance but reiterated that he was simply employing existing council policy."

A neat little rationale that overlooks just one awkward fact - a Mayor acting on policy would not then jump on talkback radio and claim he acted on prejudice. Unless, of course, he took his citizens, and his listeners, for utter fools.

And even the "policy" argument overlooks one thing. The King is dead, as was "Professor Phard". While supposedly in honour of the deceased, the flag-lowering is also a mark of respect for the nation that has lost a leader. One that might not be to Mickey's liking, but their leader nonetheless. But we're sure the thousands of Tongans in New Zealand understand it's just politics. Oh, and ratings.

Meanwhile, a Watcher has reported that a Wellington-based acquaintance responsible for a significant government programme available to local authorities let slip recently that the organisation’s limited resources and limited time wasn’t likely to be wasted on any council run by "an idiot like Michael Laws". Rogue state, indeed!

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