Follow the money

A week is indeed a long time in the hit-and-run politics practised by the mayor of Wanganui. It’s just over a week since Michael Laws launched his assault on the Government-funded tourism MRI (Major Regional Initiative) designed to develop international-standard branding and promotion of the attractions of the Ruapehu, Rangitikei and Wanganui districts.

Many Watchers have found remarkable similarities between this episode and the shameful Sarjeant Gallery campaign with which Mickey commenced his reign of terror as the Mad King of Wanganui two and a half years ago.

Both involved:

• Mayoral abuse of individuals who were voluntarily giving their time, expertise and passion for good causes.
• Mayoral abuse of the ratepayer-funded Council website to dance around the lines of defamation.
• Hysterical demands for the resignation of individuals concerned.
• Much ado about 'confidential' minutes.
• Dumb and complicit silence from council CEOs and others like, in this case, Cr Murray Hughes.
• The whole thing fuelled by the willingness of the Wanganui Chronicle (with John Maslin acting as chief propaganda minister) to run Mickey’s press releases under the biggest headlines while leaving any attempt at balance coveraged for later, and smaller.

As some Watchers have noted, Wanganui’s Mickey Mouse mayor briefly went quiet, retired to his hole, chewed his tail and planned his next assault on decency and democracy. The Chronic got around to running some stories from the other side (notably, though, by reporters other than Michael Laws' one-trick pony John Maslin) and even, today, an editorial attempting to be balanced. Then Mickey burst out of his hole this afternoon and upped the ante by pretending his madness might be taken seriously by the Auditor General.

But no doubt the "victims" of the MRI tirade, principally its chair Uwe Kroll, are now wondering, "what the hell was that about?!" Similar rhetorical questioning is no doubt taking place in the minds of those, like David Cairncross and Bill Millbank, who were left in the Sarjeant wreckage and are now reconsidering the worth of volunteering their time and expertise in future.

As one commenter has advised LawsWatch, when you’re looking to explain the apparently inexplicable actions of Michael Laws, it always helps to follow the money. And once again, the money trail seems to lead to Mr and Ms Flim-Flam's (a.k.a. Mickey and Sally Patrick) grand Heart of Wanganui folly.

Way back in late 2004-early 2005, when the Heart was no more than sketches on a paper napkin left behind after Mickey and Sally met for coffee at Indigo, it would have been apparent to a blind mouse that the Sarjeant extension plan, with its generous dollop of government dosh, could not be allowed to progress if Mickey and the then-librarian were to push their mega-million dollar library-museum-underground carpark scheme past an unsuspecting public. By now Watchers should be chanting, pantomime-like: "Follow the money!!"

Fast-forward to February 2007 and there’s a referendumb on Sally's and Mickey’s Heart project looming, not to mention another election. Mr Flim and Ms Flam know their cockamamie scheme is in for a hiding as some hard questions begin to be asked about funding arrangements. Vision has shaken dry just about every council piggy bank Mickey can get his hands on, from mayoral relief funds to prime land assets, so the MRI money box (with its cool $2 million), must be looking pretty attractive right now. Especially since it seems some of that dosh will be headed the way of the Waiouru Army Museum multi-million dollar expansion when according to Mickey’s "me me meeee!" brand of illogic, it should be tossed with gay abandon at his delusional Heart.

So, just as the Sarjeant extension had to go – and went, amid a hail of bullets and corpses – Michael Laws will doubtless have seen the MRI’s democratic processes for allocating the cash from its piggy bank as a threat to the Mickey-Sally Flim-Flam Inc museum-library-carpark. He may even really believe that he can convince the government to disband the MRI and give him the keys to the piggy bank!

So where’s the harm in that, Watchers? Consider the damage that’s been done to Wanganui’s reputation as a result of this bout of mayoral madness. And it’s not just about Michael Laws, who’s headed for a dose of his own medicine at the ballot box in just over seven months (further headline-chasing cheap publicity stunts notwithstanding) because the stink of institutional rot at 101 Guyton Street will linger long after he’s danced off the scene.

CEO Dr David Warburton has shown an astonishing degree of complicity in allowing the council website to be used to put the ratepayers in jeopardy of civil action and Michael Laws even seemed to be pointing the finger at his CEO in the matter of the leaked MRI minutes.

Forelock-tugging Vision lackeys like Murray Hughes may not have the good sense to flee the wreckage of their inglorious time in power and leave Wanganui to get on with the job of rehabilitating its reputation, but others can see this for what it is - just another step in Wanganui’s journey under Michael Laws to pariah-dom … a rogue district that cannot be trusted or liked by its fellow councils or governments or government funding institutions and is the object of ridicule and contempt wherever thinking people gather.

Admin note - 28 February, 1.15pm: Formatting edits were made to this post to correct HTML errors caused by the transfer of text from Word to Blogger. The opportunity was taken to make small changes to the text which do not alter the sense of the post. A new illustration was also added.

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Prophet at the margins

Update 2.30pm Friday 23 February: Seems we were wrong... it's not merely the WDC's contribution Mickey wants to get his hands on (which he's placing at $48,000 not $35,000) but "one-third of the $2 million ($666,000)" spent on the MRI so that he can use it on Wanganui's "own tourism branding and promotion".

We can well imagine such a campaign: $660,000 spent covering cost over-runs on Mayoral "tourist attractions" such as the Splash Centre and $6,000 on a road sign pointing the way there.

No thanks, Mickey. Let's leave it to the professionals, shall we? Bail out your own failures and then explain the debt burden you leave behind as your legacy.

Which isn't to say that some of the criticisms of the MRI campaign aren't valid - though market research suggests the public likes the brand. And it's the wider public - not Mickey, not the MRI Board, not LawsWatch, not even local iwi - who will decide whether it works and whether they want to visit the region.

And while Michael Laws has never been known for his sense of subtle irony, accusing all and sundry of unprofessional behaviour whilst publishing the link to a website he's obviously been given in confidence proves he doesn't have much of a sense of hit-over-the-head-with-a-brick irony either. As a result the website has had to be taken down.

But, courtesy of Velocity, Watchers can still get a look at and example of the tourism branding. We couldn't do the photograph justice by reproducing it here, so just click on the thumbnail at left and you'll be transported to the full view. This isn't the entire campaign, remember, just a sample of it.

On a slightly different note, and with a hat tip to Kiwiblog, we can't resist reproducing this illustration to aid those Watchers, from both sides of the fence, who come here to engage and debate and wonder why others in turn can't bring rationality to their arguments:

Plagiarism 101

There's some confusion, understandably, amongst commenters about what constitutes both defamation and plagiarism. That's understandable - no one who visits here, either to criticise or support Michael Laws - appears to have an advanced law degree so can't be expected to comprehend the nuances of either.

So let's see if we can simplify things.

The potentially offending statement is: "...actually plagiarised another commercial brand!"

Several commenters have pointed out that under the Defamation Act, Mickey will have a defence if he can prove that statement to be true. They are correct. Hold that thought.

The Oxford Dictionary definition of plagiarism is "to take and use another person’s thoughts, writings, inventions etc. as one’s own". In other words, intent must be present.

So, for plagiarism to have occurred, the writer or artist must have seen someone elses work and then deliberately copied it - with subtle alterations - and tried to pass it off as their own. Thus for Mickey to succeed with the "truth" defence, a judge or jury must first be convinced that both of those things occurred with the tourism MRI logo. In effect, to prove truth the defendants (one MB Laws and D Warburton (on behalf of the ratepayers of Wanganui)) would first have to prove plagiarism.

And no, a "legal opinion" received by the MRI isn't proof - it's just that, an opinion. And frankly, we doubt any lawyer with even a rudimentary understanding of copyright law would use an inflammatory word like "plagiarised" without at least prefacing it with a qualifer like "possibly" or "appears to be". Even more likely, we think, is that a form of words such as "appears extremely similar to" may have been used, which Mickey the Headline Hunter has warped into "plagiarised". We could be wrong, of course, but we're still waiting for Mickey or Uwe Kroll to release the MRI minutes.

Seems the tourism MRI joins that long list of local organisations: Port of Wanganui, the Splash Centre Working Party, the Council itself... who consider themselves unaccountable to the people who provide them with the money they throw around.

But back tp the topic. If you're thinking that it's easy to prove that a person copied someone else's work, think again. The most famous recent example of just how impossible this is to prove is The Da Vinci Code case, in which the authors of a 1982 book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail accused Dan Brown of stealing "the whole architecture" of their work.

Now anyone who's even flicked through both books at an airport bookstore would probably have accepted that there were similarities between the two. But the plaintiffs lost, with the judge holding that any similarity between the two books was due to "unprotectable ideas".

Lest anyone be thinking at this point that "unprotectable ideas" must be confined to very broad concepts indeed, think again. Have a look at these logos, three of which are in common use in Europe and one of which is that of a NZ company:

None are held to infringe the copyright of any of the others... though The Bruges Group, MTC and Convention Management are politely suggesting that the next country to take on the EU Presidency might like to consider a slightly different design.

Bruges complained publicly when the EU design first came out, but lawyers told them not to bother. Birds in flight are another of those "unprotectable ideas".

Actions for plagiarism are notoriously tricky, because they must prove an element of intent: the second designer did see the work of the first and intentionally copied it and tried to pass it off as his own. Short of the designer admitting this, or a colleague testifying against him or her, it's then a matter of the court's judgement which, in a civil matter, is decided on the balance of probabilities. And the elements copied must not be "unprotectable" which, though not well defined, seems to mean broad general ideas like mountains, rivers, birds in flight and so on.

Thus for Mickey to advance truth as a defence, it would first have to be proven that his allegation of plagiarism were true.

Good luck with that, Mickey.

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In hot water

It seems Velocity are making no further comment, at least at this stage.

Nothing from Uwe Kroll, either, though to be fair those questions were only asked late last night and not everyone obsessively reads their emails every ten minutes like most Watchers and some commenters.

We do, however, have a definitive answer for the many commenters who asked whether it was possible to sue a company and whether any such action had been brought in NZ. Commenters such as our old friend Pottymouth, for instance, who put it this way:

Hey arsehole at 9.30pm.
Can't you read, moron?
You can't defame a company!
The challenge remains for you legal dickheads in here - name a case in NZ defamation law where a company successfully sued for defamation.
I'll make it easy for you.
There isn't one.

Sounds remarkably like Mickey, doesn't it? Not saying that it is, of course - but it seems that his supporters approach debate in the same way as their hero: abuse your opponents, then throw out challenges which are only obliquely relevant in the hope of diverting debate (whether or not it's been done before, or whether it was successful, doesn't excuse Mickey exposing ratepayers to an unnecessary and expensive legal battle).

Rather than assume, as various commenters have done, that a close examination of our own navels would produce an expert legal opinion we instead asked Ursula Cheer, Associate Professor and Proctor at the School of Law at the University of Canterbury and co-author (with J Burrows) of Media Law in New Zealand (5th ed) (2005). She kindly responded as follows:

LW: We understand it is possible to defame a corporation under the Defamation Act, as a corporation is a "natural person" under law?

UC: Yes, companies can sue. It doesn’t matter whether they are regarded as natural persons or not. Section 6 of the Defamation Act allows corporations to sue for damages if they can show that financial or commercial loss has occurred or is likely to occur.

LW: Commenters have alleged that it is, however, effectively impossible for a company to win such an action because it needs to show either the possibility or the fact of pecuniary loss as a result of the alleged defamation. Our own research indicates this is correct - if so, how difficult would it be, in your opinion, for a company to convince a jury that the statement had such an effect (as opposed to any number of external factors)?

UC: Whether this would be successful depends on the evidence in each case. If actual financial loss has occurred then you look to produce evidence of that eg: loss of takings, angry letters from clients, etc. Likely loss is obviously more difficult to establish. Again, the plaintiff just puts forward as much evidence as they can to support the likely loss.

LW: Other commenters have alleged that no defendant has ever been found to have defamed a company (as opposed to an individual) in New Zealand. Is this the case? If not, can you cite some case law for us?

UC: A number of cases have been successful in New Zealand and often companies sue each other. The best example is Mount Cook Group Ltd v Johnstone Motors Ltd [1990] 2 NZLR 488, where Mount Cook was able to satisfy the court that its goodwill had been damaged leading to likely loss, although the court took a conservative view and the damages were small.

We'll make it easy for you, Pottymouth, since your grasp of the language suggests a reading age of 10 or under.

Hey arsehole at 9.30pm.

On their behalf, greetings to you, emotive nincompoop @ 9.40 pm

Can't you read, moron?

They can, it seems, better than you.

You can't defame a company!

Yes, you can.

The challenge remains for you legal dickheads in here - name a case in NZ defamation law where a company successfully sued for defamation.

See above. We assume an associate professor of law and co-author of a definitive book on the subject doesn't count as a "legal dickhead"... though if you'd like to match your law degree against her LLB/LLM, by all means feel free. The "challenge" for you, by the way, is to try and debate other adults in an adult manner.

I'll make it easy for you.
There isn't one.

We'll make it even easier for you: there is, and you're an idiot.

Much as we might enjoy the sport involved in shooting the dull-witted fish in this particular barrel, this episode serves to highlight two important points:

1. Mickey's supporters, just like Mickey himself, aren't above stating wild speculation - or perhaps even known lies - as though they were fact. Comments here should be read with that in mind.
2. Even more importantly, whether or not Velocity sues, the facts are now incontrovertible. And they are that Mayor Michael Laws has knowingly and recklessly exposed the ratepayers of Wanganui to the potential of paying to defend him against a defamation suit; and to the costs that would be incurred (in terms of both punitive and actual damages and plaintiff's costs) in the event the plaintiffs were successful.

In most democracies, it'd be about now that we were hearing the word "impeachment" being bandied about.

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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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Containing expenses

You've heard of those "Guess the Weight" contests that used to be popular at the seaside... well here's the LawsWatch version.

Guess the weight of the financial burden imposed on Wanganui's ratepayers by the necessity to have this wall of containers put in place to protect residents in the area from the noise of tired and emotional persons attending the Masters Gamers.

Of course this attractive amenity was never required for past Games, but the problem this year is that the "tent village" which is usually at the back of the stadium buildings can't be built there because that, of course, is home to the construction of Mickey’s Mega Splash Centre extension.

Last games here two years ago Mickey, in the first flush of his mayoral power trip, was heckled and booed by some sporty guys as he appeared at the opening ceremony. Here's hoping they'll appreciate his generosity this time (we're sure he'll take the credit, even though it's the ratepayers who are providing the barrier).

So Watchers, is the cost of this (no doubt kept well off the Splash Centre balance sheet) largesse:

1. Hardly anything
2. Not much at all
3. $60,000 (yes, that's right, $60,000)
4. Whatever Mickey says it is as he butt-covers on his website and Warburton looks for a reason to slip the account into the Public Excluded order paper.

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Art for publicity's sake

New arts wing opens at UCOL

Monday, Somtime in the not too distant future

UCOL Chief Executive Paul McElroy was today delighted to announce the formal opening of the Michael Laws Memorial Arts and Culture wing. Formerly a dilapidated cowshed on a nearby dairy farm, the newly renovated "open plan teaching area" - reportedly refurbished at a cost of several thousand dollars (including transportation) through a generous donation from Mr Laws, who went without gas in the Mayoral racer for a week to fund the project - boasts an innovative free-flowing design.

"Since there's not any actual walls," Mr McElroy explained, "lots of things can flow freely through it. Wind of course. And cows. We couldn't actually afford to pay the farmer enough to decommission the shed, but as long as we don't have classes too early in the morning, and students bring along their own brooms... Oh, and other students will pass through on their way to the courses that actually make us a profit... because of course that's what educational institutions exist to do.

"As our PR person - yes, of course we can afford one of those," he snapped at a quizzical-looking reporter, "anyway, as she said, we've had $7 million less income over the last few years through all this cross-subsidisation. By making each course a stand-alone profit centre we're better able to provide facilities for those courses which produce graduates who go on to well-paid jobs, join our alumni association, and get badgered for donations for the rest of their days so we can employ even more PR people," he explained.

Pointing to the gleaming glass tower far on the other side of campus, Mr McElroy cited it as an example of UCOL's new "invest in jobs growth" philosophy, inspired by Mr Laws. "That's the new home of the Business School's Communications Studies, which is devoted almost entirely to training new press secretaries for the Mayor's office. They seem to go through three or four a year. Plus the new Human Services course. There's a grave shortage of really skilled HR people in Wanganui," Mr McElroy explained, "the kind who can recruit people to a dysfunctional organisation and figure out ways of making them stay there despite receiving no recognition at all unless. Unless you count being abused, of course," he chuckled, drawing what looked like a warning frown from the guest of honour.

"Now some of you may have been surprised by the fact that it was Michael Laws who stepped in to provide this wonderful piece of architecture," the CEO went on, "given that he issued a statement which seemed like it was dancing on the grave of our glass course, saying that 'if tertiary providers are going to offer courses then potential students need to be assured that there is a job or career at the end of it'. But by the simple expedient of changing the headline once he realised there was some publicity to be had, the Mayor managed to make it sound like the statement said the exact opposite, so the Chron could dutifully report him as 'looking for a lifeline' rather than looking for a length of rope.

"With form like that we naturally asked Mr Laws to be a guest lecturer in the advanced module of our Business Communications course, but prior commitments to ongoing photo opportunities make that impossible. He needs to be on standby in case Paris Hilton or Victoria Beckham aren't available and the Womans Daze needs a cover photo. However, he's kindly offered the services of his personal pollster, Miss Antoinette Back and we're looking forward to her arrival. In fact I know many people who've been longing to meet her for years."

Duncan Milne, Chair of the UCOL Council, wasn't available for comment. He was believed to be ramming through a motion to rename UCOL "Universally Cherised - Our Lawsy". "Same initials see, so we don't waste money on signage," he was heard to say upon heading into the meeting.

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