The geyser erupts

As a recent commenter pointed out, Mickey's latest rant against the regional tourism initiative (tourism MRI) has the usual overtones of furious Reich-building, insisting the problem is that 15 people are involved.

Less is always more when speaking of "democracy" in Laws World. Why have 15 people contributing when you can have just one visionary leader telling the Herrenvolk what's good for them?

Rory Smith, owner of Tamara Backpackers pointedly commented that, before bursting forth with such an opinion, it would help if Mickey understood tourism "but unfortunately he doesn't".

These demonstrations of the complete ignorance of Michael Laws about any topic on which he comments are becoming so passé that we can barely overcome our ennui to muster a post. "Mickey mouths off again" has a certain sameness to it after the 100th post on the topic.

But this is a little different, Watchers. Because sometimes, for reasons best known to Mickey and whatever counsellor he's seeing (and we can only hope he's seeing someone), he decides to try and reinforce his criticism with personal attacks.

Not content with merely saying he thinks the tourism MRI is rubbish, he over-reaches himself by needlessly alleging that the logo designers plagiarised the thing:

Mayor Michael Laws today said that the tourism MRI (major regional initiative)... "is an exercise in flim-flam that won't deliver one additional visitor to Wanganui. It has been botched from day one and is so far behind because Velocity, the initial consultants responsible for creating the regional brand, actually plagiarised another commercial brand! And their contract was allowed to continue!"

We can only repeat our gratitude to Jonas over at the NZ Games Forum for coining that picturesque description of Mickey "spouting opinion after opinion like a vomit geyser" so we don't need to struggle to encapsulate in a sentence the activities of the last few weeks.

So a major Auckland design firm, who've created iconic brands for clients from Nautilus Wines and Manukau City Council to AgResearch, Winstone Agrregates and Fletcher Construction, whose work has made the cover of Ad Media, decided to risk its entire reputation by producing a cheap knock-off of someone else's brand?

Figuring the Chron would never bother running anything that wasn't a pre-masticated Guyton Street press release, we put the question to Guy Whateley, Velocity's Director: did Velocity knock off a commercial logo to produce one for the tourism MRI? Mr Whatley replied:

Velocity refutes unequivocally the allegation of plagiarism made by Mr Laws. What he says in this regard is wrong. We can only conclude that he has been misled.

Mr Whatley's being nice, of course, perhaps in the hope that Mickey might be persuaded to take his foot out of his mouth and apologise. Fat chance, but then he doesn't know Mickey like we do. We've written back to Mr Whatley to ask what, if anything, the company plans to do about a statement which some might think is clearly defamatory. Watch this space.

Update (10.00pm 14 February): LawsWatch has emailed Uwe Kroll, Ruapehu District councillor and chair of the tourism MRI, with the following six questions:

1. Did the Board receive, as Mr Laws alleges, legal advice suggesting that the logo provided by Velocity infringed the trademark of any other body?
2. From whom was such advice received?
3. At whose behest was it sought? (In other words, did the Board seek this advice because it had concerns of its own, or was it approached by lawyers for another trademark holder?)
4. If such advice was received, what action did the Board take in this regard?
5. Did the Board feel that any similarity between Velocity's first design and the trademark it allegedly infringed to have been deliberate plagiarism or inadvertent?
6. How much was paid to Velocity for its work?

As with the Port of Wanganui debate, we feel the tourism MRI ought to be accountable to the people whom it serves (no, not you King Mickey, "your" ratepayers). So we hope Mr Kroll opts to answer at least the first five questions.

We've also made a third change to the link to Mickey's article, this time to the Google cache of his original statement, since all reference to the allegation that Velocity "actually plagiaried another commercial brand" have now vanished from the Council website, to be replaced by the statement that they "apparently" did so.

For those Watchers puzzled by Mickey's apparent hostility to the tourism MRI, a clue might be found in this sentence of the revised statement:

He had told them repeatedly that "the river and the mountain" were the integral features of the wider region "and it doesn't require a consultant to point that out".

Let's see if we can read between the lines: Mickey scribbled his instructions for the logo design on a square of 3-ply expecting them to be carried out (other people are just at the table for window dressing and to say "yes, Michael", after all) but his ideas were rejected by the other members. Perhaps Velocity ignored his input in drafting their design. And we all know there's none so bitter as a Diva spurned.

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