Laws Watch

... and the loser on the day is Whanganui

2007-10-13T21:48:00.000+13:00

Sorry, Wanganui! You’ve contributed about $100 million in rates over the last three years (not to mention your contributions to John Maslin’s salary) funding Michael Laws’s re-election campaign.

Many of you have, however, fought the good fight and you’ve helped emasculate the party platform that has allowed the Mad Mayor to trample democracy and decency into the Vision mud.

His loyal lieutenant Murray (‘dishwasher’) Hughes has been consigned to the scrapheap and we now wait to see how long it takes for Rangi (‘I forgot to put my hand up’) Wills and the very strange Rana (mad-dog) Waitai to bed down with Vision. With luck Mr Waitai’s tenuous provisional margin will disappear and the independence of this council will be strengthened by substitution of that courageous campaigner Allan Anderson.

With even more luck, the pathetic Randhir Dahya will put the shenanigans of the past three months behind him and realise he’s got as much chance of getting the mayoralty when Mickey runs off to give birth to Vision First next year as Marty Lindsay has of being minister of broadcasting (actually, Mickey, why not take the whole lot of them with you to national ignomy – ed). To the Warburtons, Rewitis, Harknesses, Roses et al, may you drown in the toxic swamp you have personally created at Guyton St.

Congratulations to all those brave non-Vision souls (especially very high pollers Stevens and McGregor) who put their heads above the parapet and were rewarded with a very respectable number of votes from those who believe Wanganui has a future. Kia Kaha to all those who find themselves now in a position to pull back a smidgeon of respect for the democratic spirit.

10454 LAWS, Michael Brian

7044 MARTIN, John Bruce
1082 DAHYA, Randhir
270 FLEMING, Russell William

249 OSBORNE, Chandra Michelle

Blank 238

Informal 43

McKINNON, Dorothy Margaret (Dot) 10400

STEVENS, Raymond Mark (Ray) 10375

McGREGOR, James Roland (Don) 10269

DAHYA, Randhir 9359

BULLOCK, Barbara Lynn 9290

BAKER-HOGAN, Philippa 8911

LINDSAY, Martin Graeme (Marty) 8262

HIGGIE, Nicole Andree (Nicki) 8205

WESTWOOD, Susan Moya 8106

JONAS, Danny Ronald 7484

WILLS, Rangi Marehua 7445

WAITAI, Rana 6984

ANDERSON, Allan Royce 6978

HUGHES, Murray John 5976

EDMONDS, Matthew Lyle (Matt) 5960

MITCHELL-ANYON, Ross 5760

MOORE, Robert Joseph (Rob) 5475

SIMPSON, Kirsty Nicole 5423

BROWN, Ian Grant 4923

FLEMING, Russell William 4319

KEELTY, Gordon James 4064

SMITH, Rory James 3925

FORLONG, Shaun Graham 3922

MILNES, John Ingham 3898

OSBORNE, Chandra Michelle 3405

McNABB, Andrew 3102

SEARS, Victor Frederick 2686

HUDSON, Phillip Edward 1950

STEVENS, Gary John 1875

JANGO 1676

LITTLE, Ian Paul 829

Blank 215

Informal 78

AND IT’S THE MICKEY n CLIVE SHOW AT THE DHB:

SOLOMON, Clive 6717 1

LAWS, Michael Brian 3941

BAKER-HOGAN, Philippa June 2870.75

FAUMUI, Penaia Albert (PJ) 2848.24

ANDERSON, Allan Royce 2689.08

STEWART, Ailsa Crawford 2627.91

WAITAI, Rana 2494.04

DOUGLAS, William John 2340.34

The Walking Dead

2007-10-05T21:25:00.000+13:00

Those of you who have followed LawsWatch through 367 posts over two years will know that we Watchers are seldom lost for words. We sometimes think we’ve seen it all, like the world weary forensic pathologists on our favourite television gore-fests. We’ve often felt in danger of becoming inured to the unspeakable horrors revealed by our weekly dissections of the rotting remains of the walking dead around His Worship the Mayor of Wanganui Michael Laws.

We’ve gasped and we’ve raged at the ghastly crimes against truth, justice, democracy (and most recently the sanctity of the Prince Edward Auditorium at Wanganui Collegiate) committed daily by the Beast of Taupo Quay, aka John Philip Maslin! We’ve cracked our cynical medical jokes at the ineptness of the Foolish Felons operating under the Sign of Vision! We’ve even developed a grudging respect for the ability of the Devilish Doctor Warbottom and his Guyton St Gang to evade the Bungling Cops in Wellington!

But we have to confess, Dear Readers, that events of the past three months have left us wondering just what deadly pathogen has infected the Wanganui body politic and its parasitic media. Since this vile disease called Election Fever was unleashed three months ago we’ve seen sights that have turned the stomach of even the most seasoned Watchers.

But nothing to match the appalling sight on page ten of the October 4 issue of the tacky and thoroughly corrupt little rag called River City Press. There, Dear Watchers, you will be shocked to see the grinning skulls of Dr Warburstein and his very own creation Julian Harkless proclaiming they ‘have their fingers on our council’s financial pulse’ and that everything – believe them – is hunky dory!

Debt is good! Debt is great! says Dave. We’re doing a terrific job! says Julian. Watch their lips … VOTE VISION!! Their jobs depend on it, and the financial genii at the River City Press aren’t in the mood to argue. Like the rats down the drainpipe at Wanganui’s decaying morgue, they’re happy to feast on whatever comes their way.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN BLOGSVILLE …

We’ve been amused in the last few weeks by the emergence of a couple of Wanganui wannabe blogs which have fizzled and faded like soggy sparklers on a wet November 5. The first was the curious case of http://wanganuigossip.blogspot.com which set itself up as an alternative to LawsWatch, professed to be seeking the dirt on (night)mayor Mickey and attracted about five desultory comments before disappearing mysteriously into the blog fog with an announcement that:

This blog is open to invited readers only.

AND THEN

… there was the curious case of the newbie blogger at http://whanganui.org who lasted only a couple of posts after erupting with a hiss and a roar on September 17 with these promising gems …

Many feel that Michael has done God’s work but that it’s time for a rest from the politics of aggression and intimidation and for a bit of co-operation.

The Vision team bear an uncanny resemblance to Czarina Helen’s ministers: what the head prefect says goes. There’s one person making the decisions and we all know who it is. Supporters of Rob Muldoon and Maggie Thatcher will be suffering severe déjà vu.

I’m open to persuasion, but my feeling is that Wanganui folk are ready for some decorum and unity.

OF COURSE

The RIGHTeous Blogmeister turned pollster David Farrar boasts nothing if not longevity with his KiwiBlog. Mr Farrar, famous in his own lunchtime for the fact that ‘Michael got me arrested 13 years ago’ very kindly includes a link to LawsWatch on his very well-read site which recently discussed his polling pranks on behalf of the Wanganui Chron(ic).

Friday's poll results - see comments

2007-09-28T10:35:00.001+12:00

CLICK ON IMAGE TO SEE LARGER PRINTABLE VERSION

See the Chron's inept coverage here

An orchestrated litany of lies

2007-09-22T07:23:00.000+12:00

---------------------------------------------------------

STOP PRESS: READ HERE WHAT THE CHRON WON’T TELL YOU!

Police are investigating an alleged assault at a Wanganui mayoral election forum earlier this week after a candidate's mother claimed that a man had hit her several times.
----------------------------

Watchers reporting from the streets, supermarkets and cafes of the River City are seeing an overwhelming swing in voter opinion against Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws and his Vision Wanganui henchmen. Despite the outbreak of ratepayer-funded pork barrel politicking by Mickey (free ice-creams for kids, for heaven’s sake!), the electorate has had enough of three years of grandstanding, abuse and anti-democratic diVision party politics. Even previous non-voters can’t wait to cast Laws into talkback oblivion on October 13.

And Watchers are quick to remind their whanau and friends how lucky they are to have the right to vote for 12 non-Vision councillors after around 100 brave souls stood up for democracy, faced down the mini-dictator and succeeded when the Local Government Commission exposed MickeyMayor’s lies and propaganda and upheld the status quo. (Three years ago division ‘policy’ was to cut the number of elected councillors to eight with a claimed saving of $100,000 per annum). However, not even Cr Rangi Wills' duplicity and the Vision puppets' complicity could save this attempted further lurch to dictatorship after the people spoke – crucially they spoke to a statutory “outside” body where the customary Vision bullying carried absolutely no weight.

Meanwhile, as Capt Michael Laws steers Air Vision Wanganui on the flight path for its Electoral Erebus on October 13, our fair city finds itself engulfed in the white-out conditions of, in Justice Mahon’s immortal words, an orchestrated litany of lies. Only paid up mayoral groupies John Maslin (see Mas’s ecstatic editorial of May 2004) and Catherine Kennedy seem to have kept the faith.

And as the first hint of Wanganui’s equinocal nor-wester littered the Cave with a plethora of pamphlets from election hopefuls, Watchers weren’t surprised to find among the pictures of Mayor Michael Laws’ kids, parents, defacto etc (bet he’s wishing he had a dog or cat or two to complete the line-up – Ed) more dodgy claims of personal policy triumphs over the past three years than you could shake a mayoral stick at. In fact, we suspect that MickeyMayor has none other than his old PR queen Antoinette Beck running the Vision Wanganui propaganda machine!

When the Cave TV set is on the blink Watchers can sometimes be found playing a game of their own invention, called Where are they now? This involves crudely scrawling in charcoal on the Cave walls lists of Vision promises from 2004 that have never seen the light of day, or worse have turned out to be A-Grade, Money-wasting Flops. (You’ll note that we don’t include consequences like Politically Damaging, Ballot-Box suicide, Credibility Busting. These are the obvious kinds of collateral damage that Vision-style failures generally bring down on the heads of their promoters in more enlightened areas of democracy that are blessed with a free press, and journalists and opposition politicians worthy of the name. All entirely absent in Wanganui!

Scroll down for evidence of some 2007 campaign lies from Wanganui mayor Michael Laws and a small selection of broken promises and other lies from the 2004 Vision policy manifesto:

WALKING THE TALK

Regarding the new river walkway, Mickey said the following: "The total cost to the ratepayer will be just $800,000. The total budget may be $2.2 million, but $1.4 million of that sum has come from sources other than the Wanganui ratepayer."
The funding for the project includes $1.3 million from Development Contributions and approximately $800,000 loan funded. If you remove the spin, the Mayor has spent $2.1m ($1.3m + $800k) of Council money on the walkway. Council money. Our money.

AND

The financing of the walkway is perhaps the most cynical act perpetrated by M Laws and his Vision muppets since taking office. Development Contributions is a fund that is built up through a levy of $1800 per section paid by anybody who creates a new subdivision. It is set up by all councils to provide funding for future subdivision infrastructure. At 30th April 2007 Council minutes show that the fund had a balance of $1,120,627. I believe that Laws sought a legal opinion on whether he could divert the funds away from the purpose it was supposed to be used for- future subdivisions- and into his pet project. In the agenda preamble council officer Natalie Cowper said" Special Funds are Council's monies that can only be spent on expenditure for which the fund was originally set up. They are termed "restricted equity" according to the Local Government Act 2002. The redirection of these funds is a scandal, and would not happen in any other Council.

MUSEUM MOMENTS

Here's one, from a Chron article by Maslin on 12/6/07: “Mayor Michael Laws told Monday’s meeting that the museum board had cost ratepayers $60,000 because of its ‘intransigence’.”

RATES RORTS

This is a pretty good one about the rates. From the Chronicle 12/6/07 (Maslin, of course): Laws was adamant the rate increase and impact of the levies could not be considered in percentage terms. Cr. McGregor said it was "misleading" to keep the items separate. But Mr Laws said ....”You can’t, because it could then be argued we’ve delivered something like a minus 3% rate”. Mr. Laws said...for the third year in a row Wanganui was on target to effect the lowest annual rates increase in the country

AND …

I'm still trying to find somebody whose rates only went up by 1.7%. Most of the properties in my area had about a 10% increase even before the bullshit levies are added.

CAMPAIGN SLIME
Here’s a nice promise from Wednesday’s Chron. Virginia Lake will be algal bloom-free this summer. “in the short-term, and for a cost of around $20,000, we can ensure Virginia Lake is healthy and algae-free this summer”. That is the sort of promise you can make if you are willing to bypass democratic process completely. So much more efficient to just have a word with Leo and Dave. And why not. The timing’s perfect. Campaign in full swing. All those pesky meetings are over and YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH IT!

A SMALL SELECTION OF BROKEN PROMISES AND OTHER LIES FROM THE 2004 VISION POLICY MANIFESTO:

There will be no rates increase under a Vision Wanganui-led council in the 2005/06 financial year. #failed (oops – they forgot it was a revaluation year)

Create a ‘Residents’ Rights Charter’ that explicitly defines the service standards a ratepayer and/or resident may expect from Council #failed (mayor decided residents should have no rights)

Start discussions with our nearest territorial neighbours to see if some efficiencies cannot be gained from aggregating particular services. #failed (Mayor decided to insult and abuse them instead)

Institute quarterly suburban meetings to ensure that the Mayor and councillors go to their constituents rather than vice-versa #failed (no one turned up after liar-fatigue set in)

Hold a yearly Expo in the War Memorial Hall to canvas the options before Council before each yearly rates round and better inform citizens of the civic services available to them. #failed (Mayor replaced citizen consultation with citizen abuse)

Establish a Writer`s Residency that is regarded as one of the top literary prizes in New Zealand. #failed

Establish a mayoral office on Mainstreet. #failed (councillors & staff said ‘thanks but no thanks’ – too dangerous to actually meet residents.

Double the Debt = Half the Vote

2007-09-18T13:33:00.000+12:00

Sadly, dear readers, the inconvenient scheduling of last night’s Mayoral Forum meant Watchers were gathered round Shortland Street on the gas-fired TV set at the LawsWatch Cave, where Sophie, Nate, Tess, Durville, Justine et al were going about their non-business, oblivious to the drama being played out at the Prince Edward Auditorium. Other Watchers, though avid Wanganui Chronicle readers one and all, missed the drama … the conflict … the applause … simply because the Chron managed to forget to tell anyone it was on!

So we are forced rely on reports from no less than the collective geniuses from the Chron, and to piece together comments to this blog (scroll down for the prize snippets) from Watchers who passed up Shortie Street for the night. To summarise:

Mas and Kirsty put together a macabre collection of questions for John and Michael and Russell and Randhir but not Chandra because she was staying home and sulking about something that happened ages ago and sent someone who looked like her Mum to make a nuisance of herself. It got so bad that Mas told her off and then Michael behaved badly and Kirsty made a fool of herself by letting him have his own way. Suddenly Kirsty was being booed and jeered for showing her organ’s Visionary bias in public and then Michael got even more angry and Kirsty was glad when it was all over and she could go home and watch the video of that night’s episode of Shortie Street which she’d had the foresight to tape …

The morning after hang-over must have been a shocker in the Maslin household when he saw what he’d written the night before and waited for the phone to ring with an early dose of mayoral abuse from his buddy Michael:

Martin tops mayoral forum poll

WE CALLED it "forum feedback" and if that decided the outcome of Wanganui's mayoral election race, then we’d have a new mayor! John Martin.

Of those who took part in our ballot, 64 said they'd vote for Mr Martin, 41 for incumbent mayor Mr Laws, one for Mr Fleming and none for Ms Osborne or Mr Dahya. And did the forum help in the voters' decision-making? Sixty-six said it did and 38 said it didn't.

So diVision apparently managed a turnout of roughly the same number of candidates and Bob Walker's fellow realtor Catherine Kennedys as they did at their damp squib launch a week earlier, while Randhir Dayha’s apparently undentable ego got the bash.

But the Cave’s discerning followers of the TV soaps were delighted to find the Chron(ic’s) new soap queen Lin Ferguson, editor Kirsty MacKnucklehead’s fellow Southland Times graduate, writing in the style to which they have become accustomed in a gushing review of Episode 981 of Vision Street in which Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws stars in yet another a crude election special down by the riverfront, specially funded by the Ratepayers of Wanganui …

"Michael Mayor's here! yaaay," a small group of children whispered as the opening of the Riverfront Walkway got under way on Saturday. The balmy, spring day attracted a crowd of more than 300 people to cheer on Wanganui’s latest community project.

Meanwhile, back to the Vision Street reviews provided courtesy LawsWatch’s anonymii:

ML goes Surreal on debt
Anyone who missed the forum this evening passed up the chance to listen to Mickey explain how the $31.5 million we owed in 2004 was actually less than the $67.5 we now owe and the $48 million peak we were predicting in 2004 for 2010 has now actually been reduced to $74.6 million. It was surreal

Jokers, pretenders & losers
Tonight’s mayoral forum illustrated clearly that we have a two man race. Russell Fleming is a joke and Randhir showed us all how badly he is out of his depth. Ms Osborn chose not to attend, but sent a heckler to represent her. Wonder how Randhir Dahya feels this morning? The world's biggest loser maybe?

Business as usual for Chronic
What the Chron didn't say this morning was that it didn't take long for the editor to abandon her presence of neutral chairpersonship and give ML a second crack at a question. Sure, he went through the motions of appearing to throw a wobbly at her but it was plain he was going to get his own way. Why should Monday night be any different to any other day of the week?

Vision lacks numbers
The numbers in the chron say it all - from where I was sitting down the front there appeared to be a formidable chunk of paid-up vision party candidates and their hangers on at the back plus the seriously weird Catherine Kennedy and her long-haired companion. They must have accounted for most of the 41 pro-mickey "votes" between them!

Cornered rat
Laws was really in cornered rat mode last night. The neering/shouting/snarling act probably made some of the Visionaries think wistfully about a change of mayor. I wonder if they are allowed secret votes or if they have to hand over their voting papers for mayoral inspection before putting them in the box.

Poor old Randhir While Russell Fleming turned out to be a worse buffoon than expected, one couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for Randhir. He was so clearly out of his depth and fumbling ... then with his quote about how "when he is mayor" he'll appoint the highest polling as his deputy he went and spilled the beans on his three bitter years and the deal that Mickey dangled before him to get him to make such a dick of himself by standing for mayor. If he wasn't so old, you'd want to tell him to grow up!

Promises and lies

2007-09-08T15:05:00.000+12:00

Three long years ago, Wanganui mayor Michael Laws convinced himself that people’s memories were so short he could rise again from the ashes of his ignominious failure in national and local politics. He worked his Svengali magic on the likes of Nicki Higgie, Marty Lindsay and John Maslin then booked the 830-seat Opera House for the Vision Wanganui lunchtime launch. And from the clutter of zimmer-frames and wheelchairs on the St Hill St pavement, it seems the lure of an hour’s free operatic entertainment was sufficient to draw a good number of the aging Bob Walker’s friends from their rest-homes, though not to keep them from their midday naps (see picture above).

And what an appropriate venue our grande dame of opera was, as the castrato boy-who-would-be-mayor warbled his way through the lamentably overwrought libretto for the debut performance of diVisionii’s Promesse e bugie (that’s Promises and Lies to you, Bob! - Ed) which needless to say brought the house down among the Vision Wanganui fan club at the Chronicle editor’s office that night.

But oh how the Diva of the Ditch has fallen! After three long years of screaming abuse at Wanganui citizens and council staff, his once powerful castrato voice has lost its range and he’s reduced to performing diVisionii’s 2007 operetta Più Promette e si Trova (that’s More Promises and Lies to you, Bob! - Ed) in the 200-odd seat Davis Lecture Theatre. Or, Watchers are suggesting, is it really a case of mayoral cold feet?

The Diva has done enough polling by now to know that the citizens of Wanganui are weary of his promenading and performing, and they’ve certainly had more than enough of his Vision Wanganui promises and lies. So like a fading Dame Nellie Melba, the Diva of the Ditch has wisely chosen not to risk playing to an empty and cavernous Opera House for the last stop on his Vision Wanganui political farewell tour.

STOP PRESS: LAWSWATCH PROVED RIGHT ON THE MONEY AGAIN ... NOT EVEN MAS COULD HIDE THE FACT THAT WANGANUI MAYOR MICHAEL LAWS WAS REDUCED TO RANTING TO A PRACTICALLY-EMPTY VENUE AT THE VISION WANGANUI 2007 LAUNCH. FORCED TO ADMIT THAT 'A LITTLE LESS THAN 40" (It's time the boy reporter was sent back to school for a basic lesson in countable nouns and their appropriate adjectives - Ed) FRIENDS, RELATIVES AND BOB WALKER'S MOTHER IN LAW COULD BE LURED OUT OF THEIR RETIREMENT HOMES. IN FACT AS MAS FOUND OUT, MICKEY'S PROMISES AND LIES ACTUALLY OUTNUMBERED HIS AUDIENCE.

And from the August council minutes, two snippets follow on the Who pays the piper theme from last week’s post (see the sordid tale below of how Randhir Dahya learnt to blow for Vision):

Before members of the public were excluded from the meeting, Mayor Laws thanks John Maslin, Wanganui Chronicle Newspaper journalist, on behalf of the Council for his accuracy in reporting the Council’s meetings during this term of the Council. Mayor Laws said it had been a boon to the Council to have a veteran professional reporter. He hoped that Mr Maslin’s appointment as Council reporter would continue following the upcoming triennial election.

… and lest anybody lucky enough to win Mr Quigley’s Events Lotto should think there are no Vision strings attached, we came across this little gem in which Ray Stevens leads the way in suggesting a nifty little cost-cutting ruse for the election ‘celebrations’, much to MickeyMayor’s delight:

Cr Stevens suggested that as the Council had previously funded jazz festivals, the jazz band entertaining at the Riverfront Boardwalk and Upokongaro Jetty openings should provide its services free of charge. Mayor Laws agreed and asked Mr Quigley to follow this up.

Who pays the piper …

2007-09-01T17:58:00.000+12:00

Fittingly, former Wanganui mayor Chas Poynter was piped on his final journey last weekend by his loyal lieutenant, friend and former deputy Randhir Dahya. Few Watchers in the Collegiate Chapel to celebrate the life – and mourn the death – of a true son of Wanganui can have been unaware of the irony surrounding Cr Dahya’s bizarre decision to ‘do a Chas’ and make a vote-splitting run for the mayoralty this year.

Wanganui mayor Michael Laws probably managed a sly smile at the thought that he may yet have the gullible Randhir to thank for finishing the job Chas started three years ago when unnamed dark forces were alleged to have persuaded him to make the mayoralty a three way race that went to bolter Laws. He may even have toyed with the idea of giving Randhir star billing on his own billboards in the sharing, caring Vision election spirit. (Yeah right! - Ed)

The punters who did their dough on Chas and found themselves living in a city struck with an epidemic of Vision flu have had plenty of time for regrets – none more so than Randhir Dahya and the other councillors who ran in independent colours in the 2004 WDC Cup. They’ve found themselves pulling up hobbled and lame through three miserable years of fixed race meetings, while the nags from the Vision stable were mercilessly whipped into shape by their cruel owner-trainer.

So what got into Randhir’s oats, you ask, to make him run against the odds for both mayor and councillor, and risk not even making it to the weigh in for either race?

The answer, from the horse’s mouth, is apparently a Faustian Bargain struck by Randhir with Wanganui’s very own Beezlebub.

As the Vision ring-ins have discovered over the past three long years, the old idiom is true: Who pays the piper calls the tune. And we are grateful to the anon who spilt the beans about Randhir’s bargain here on August 24:

Randhir had a long chat with Laws and they agreed that Randhir didn’t have a chance of winning but would be a serious vote-splitter. So Laws told Randhir that if he would run and fulfil this function, Laws would step down and hand the mayoralty over to Randhir after the election.

This came from the horse’s mouth and illustrates just how thick Randhir is in two ways. (a) He apparently believed Laws after seeing him in action for three years and (b) He told another person about the proposed ‘arrangement’. The indiscretion of (b) must have dawned on him because he has since denied the whole thing, but that is hardly surprising.

It has been said he wanted Maslin to write a story of his denial, which would have made the Chron even more mysterious reading than usual.

Thanks for that insight, anon. And wherever knowledgeable Wanganui punters gather to study form, the smart money all goes one way:

After a string of wins in previous races for council, Randhir has been saddled up by MickeyMayor for a one-way ride to the knacker’s yard as the punters punish him for trying to rig their city’s most important race.

Games people (& politicians) play

2007-08-24T13:09:00.000+12:00

Local Body Elections: Nominees

Mayor
DAHYA, Randhir; FLEMING, Russell William; LAWS, Michael Brian; MARTIN, John Bruce; OSBORNE, Chandra Michelle.

WDC election at Large
ANDERSON, Allan Royce; BAKER-HOGAN, Philippa; BROWN, Ian Grant; BULLOCK, Barbara Lynn; DAHYA, Randhir; EDMONDS, Matthew Lyle (Matt); FLEMING, Russell William; FORLONG, Shaun Graham; HIGGIE, Nicole Andree (Nicki); HUDSON, Phillip Edward; HUGHES, Murray John; JANGO; JONAS, Danny Ronald; KEELTY, Gordon James; LINDSAY, Martin Graeme (Marty); LITTLE, Ian Paul; McGREGOR, James Roland (Don); McKINNON, Dorothy Margaret (Dot); McNABB, Andrew; MILNES, John Ingham; MITCHELL-ANYON, Ross; MOORE, Robert Joseph (Rob); OSBORNE, Chandra Michelle; SEARS, Victor Frederick; SIMPSON, Kirsty Nicole; SMITH, Rory James; STEVENS, Gary John; STEVENS, Raymond Mark (Ray); WAITAI, Rana; WESTWOOD, Susan Moya; WILLS, Rangi Marehua.

Whanganui District Health Board
ADAMS, Graham Patrick; ANDERSON, Allan Royce; BAKER, Kevin Owen; BAKER-HOGAN, Philippa June; BROOKHAMMER, Leonie; CURRY, David Andrew; DOUGLAS, William John; FAUMUI, Penaia Albert (PJ); LAWS, Michael Brian; MORRIS, Nygllhuw James (Nigel) ; RAAYMAKERS, Karen Ann; READING, Elinor Ann; SMITH, Heather Marion; SOLOMON, Clive; STEWART, Ailsa Crawford; STRONG, Trevor Alan; STUBBS, Timothy; TURNER, Michael Fisher; TUTHILL, Patricia Elizabeth (Trish) ; VALENTINE, Diana Mary (Di) ; VAUGHAN, Brian Patrick; WAITAI, Rana; WILLS, Rangi Marehua.

More tomfoolery in Visionland

2007-08-18T12:12:00.000+12:00

`Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, `and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'

We beseech you, dear Watchers, to join us for another chapter in the tale of Antoinette in Visionland, where our heroine finds herself in the midst of a strange menagerie of Vision candidates wearing funny hats as she defends herself on charges of forging a document.

Even stranger, the King of the Vision court is wearing eye makeup and the Queen is wearing a funny Horizons hat, even though she hardly ever goes to Horizons meetings. (For the evidence of that, dear Watchers, please click here or see the post below). OFF WITH HER HEAD! we hear you shout.

Can this be the sort of ‘tomfoolery’ that caused an outbreak of tutting and tongue clicking in an editorial cutely titled Wrong Choices in today’s Chron(ic)? Of course, we at LawsWatch are reluctant to add to the distress of the House of Laws already caused by the public airing of the oh-so-delicate topic of Leonie Brookhammer’s ratepayer rip-off … distress so acute, in fact, that Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws was forced to breach his own policy of only talking about personal family matters in colour spreads in the Wimin’s Daze or the Sunday Crimes. There he is, on page 3 today, confiding in his buddy Mas that his children’s health may have had something to do with the fact that “Leonie had been unable to attend all those meetings”.

We would love to be able to report that Mas then had an acute attack of journalistic instinct and pointed out to readers that Brookhammer’s maternal obligations didn’t prevent her applying for and getting a Wellington-based job … but of course Mas was inoculated against all variants of Journalism Syndrome the day Mickey rode into town and infected him with a bad dose of Mayoral Love Disease. And that also presumably explains why he politely didn’t ask the Object of his Affection just why he and the mother of his oh-so-sick children still feel comfortable banking close to $90,000 worth of Horizons ratepayers’ dosh, under the circumstances.

We’re inclined to label the whole sorry tale the most immoral and corrupt facist act that we’ve witnessed in the last three years with Michael Laws as mayor .. but that line has already been taken by none other than our bold and fearless defender of democracy himself on today’s front page.

Neither did Mas probe just what sort of shock and horror prompted this comment in the ghost-written press release in the Brookhammer name that carried his byline the day before:

"I also believe that I have the experience and ability to make a greater contribution to Wanganui, closer to home," Cr Brookhammer said.

We are of course awash with empathy for her situation. It must be just awful to have to travel to Palmerston North to put in an appearance at every fourth meeting, in order to avoid being kicked off Horizons and losing the $1200 per meeting she’s been pulling in. So whatever new close to home ratepayer rort Mayor Michael has in mind, we’re sure she’ll not only stand by her man but ensure the House of Laws continues to receive it’s share of ratepayer or taxpayer funding.

Meanwhile, Watchers, we were somewhat amused by the antics of that venerable old rag Women’s Weekly which kicked up its heels, lifted its skirt, poured a nice sherry and engaged in a bit of risqué humour to celebrate its 75th birthday. Running photos of the eye-linered one and “courageous cancer battler” Jools Topp of Topp Twins fame, WW pointed out the uncanny resemblance.

Which prompted the Stuff gossip columnist to opine:

I'd say we blame Michael Laws for this fashion crossover and suggest he stop wearing so much eyeliner.

Here at LawsWatch we think it’s hardly fair on either Topp Twin to be compared with what TV One’s Monday satire show FaceLift more accurately referred to as “Wanganui’s poofter mayor”.

Nice work if you can get it

2007-08-18T11:04:00.001+12:00

RECORD OF ATTENDANCE OF CR LEONIE BROOKHAMMER PROVIDED BY HORIZONS REGIONAL COUNCIL UNDER THE OFFICIAL INFORMATION ACT

NB: CR BROOKHAMMER IS APPOINTED TO THE ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE AND THE PASSENGER TRANSPORT SUB COMMITTEE. ALL COUNCILLORS ARE INVOLVED IN COUNCIL MEETINGS ,STRATEGY & POLICY CTTEE MEETINGS , AND WORKSHOPS.

2004
Meetings held 6 Attended 5 Apology 1

2005
Meetings held 38 Attended 22 Apology 8 , Leave of absence 2 , No apology 6

2006 to August
Meetings held 27 Attended 16 Apology 8 Leave of absence 2 No Apology 1

Since Sept 06 to end June 07
Council/ Special Council ( 10 meetings )
26/09/06 Present 4hours Meeting duration 5 hours 23min.

24/1006 Present 50 mins Meeting duration 5 hours 49 mins

28/11/06 Present 1hour 35mins Meeting Duration 5 hours 12mins

19/12/06 Apology

27/02/07 Apology

13/03/07 Did not attend/ No apology

27/03/07 Did not attend/ No apology

24/04/07 Present 1hour 45 min Meeting duration 5 hours 55min

22/05/07 Apology

26/06/07 Present 1 hour 55min Meeting duration 6 hours 2 mins

Strategy & Policy ( 9 meetings )
12/09/06 Leave of absence

10/10/06 Present 4 hours 45min Meeting duration 5hours 56mins

14/11/06 Present 2hours 36min Meeting duration 3hours 55min

13/02/07, 13/03/07, 21/05/07, Did not attend/ No apology

23/05/07 Apology

6/06/07 Present 1hour 40mins Meeting duration 4hours 5min

Environment Committee ( 5 meetings )
13/09/06 Leave of absence

15/11/06 Present 2hours 2mins Meeting duration 3hours 52min

30/01/07 Did not attend/ No apology

14/03/07 Apology

9/05/07 Did not attend /No apology

Passenger Transport Subcommittee ( 3 meetings )
21/11/06 Present

20/02/07 Present

15/05/07 Present

21/06/07 Did not attend/ No apology

WORKSHOPS Records for attendance began Sept 05
2005 from Sept 2005 Held 11 Attended 4 Apologies 4 No apology 3

2006 to 16^th August06 Held 12 Attended 1 Apologies 3 No apology 8

from Sept o6 to 30^th June 07 Held 15 Attended NIL Leave of absence 1

Apology 2 No Apology 12

Summary

Meetings held during term 139 Attended 54 39%

Meetings held prior to parental leave 81 Attended 46 56% No Apology 7

Meetings held since parental leave 27 Attended 9 33% No Apology 9

Workshops Held prior to parental leave 23 Attended 5 21% No Apology 11

Workshops held since parental leave 15 Attended Nil Nil No Apology 12

Remuneration
TERM Oct 04 to June 07 $ 86,153.55
LAST TWELVE MONTHS 1^st July 06 to 30^th June 07 $ 32,429
Since returning from parental leave $24640
Hourly rate for actual attendance at meetings since returning from parental leave
( 20.5 hours) $1200
Per meeting ( 9 ) $2738

The stupidest tea-party

2007-08-11T15:44:00.000+12:00

`At any rate I'll never go there again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. `It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!'

It must be hell being a Vision CEO right now. On the one hand you’ve got the Auditor-General waving his pre-election guidelines and ruling out the use of council resources for electioneering purposes … on the other hand you’ve got your mad mayor demanding you flout those guidelines with one last mad tea-party … and on yet another hand you’ve got the same mad mayor publicly grandstanding over the cost of you providing him with the very same guideline-busting electioneering photo-ops that he’s demanding from you.

Watchers’ hearts go out to poor Dr Warburton after his very public smacking last week by Wanganui mayor Michael Laws. There he was, busy cleaning the red carpet and dusting off the best wedgewood china for the series of Mad Mayor’s Tea Parties he was told to arrange for voters in the run up to the October 13 elections, when ‘them upstairs’ told him to mind his budget.

All very amusing, no doubt, for the Auditor-General’s lot who seem to labour under the delusion that CEOs are generally a decent, independent bunch of chappies who will happily blow the whistle on blatant electioneering with ratepayers’ money – not merely quibble over the amount to be spent buying votes for the incumbent political party.

Meanwhile, not even the Auditor-General would be naïve enough to expect the Vision dwarves to resile from the chance to push their vote-collecting barrow at the ratepayers’ expense in the Council’s weekly newspaper spin sheet. Since the onset of the three-month pre-election period on July 13 the ‘Councillor comment’ Roll of Shame has featured Vision look-alike Rangi Wills, the incredibly thick Marty Lindsay, bob-each-way Don McGregor, and mayoral wannabe Philippa Baker-Hogan.

However, credit where it’s due and LawsWatch is pleased to toss a bouquet in the direction of perpetual bridesmaid Dot McKinnon who, despite being jilted at the altar by Michael Laws, is gamely sticking around for a slice of the wedding cake. Her last appearance in the tacky little River City Press was on July 11th and she has since spared RCP’s masochistic readers her froth and drivel. Well done, Dotty!

Watchers wondered whether Rana Reckoned he’d also been torpedoed by the RCP after last week’s McKinnon & Waitai-free issue, but it turns out he was just off having an epiphany. No doubt inspired by his fellow ex-cop Chester Borrows’ recent stomach stapling, our Rana has had a bile duct reassignment and he won't be coming to Mad Mickey's tea party after all! After a suitable period of bed rest he was back in print warning the voters against having any truck with his ex-pal Mickey, while beating the drum for challenger John Martin.

Those commenters who have concluded, on the basis of Rana Waitai’s weekly ‘columns’, that he was a prime contender for microchipping or worse, especially those when he’s been barking in support of Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws, may like to take a peep at page 7 of the current River City Press. There he is, pointing the bone fairly and squarely at Mickey for playing the vote-splitting game and treating Whanganui with contempt.

My, how things have changed since the Xmas fairy tarted up her eye-liner and prepared to drop down the Buy-election chimney on December 23, 2005, when our Rana was only too happy to leap in and split the vote for Mickey’s crew. Back then, our favourite anonymickey (the one with 20:20 Vision into the mayoral brain, not to mention his running shorts – but let’s not go there!) made a heartwarming declaration of academic and filial love for “independent” Candidate Waitai:

You've got Rana Waitai wrong - he and the Diva are good mates and saw them together last month. They were in the same Vic law classes and it was actually Laws who encouraged Waitai to stand. They have a mutual relative too I've heard – anonymickey, 5:36 PM, December 23, 2005

Now, Watchers, doesn’t that sound an awful lot like the kind of vote-splitting bile that same anonymickey is now spreading all over the blog, and every other available outlet, as he strokes the Ego from Double SS, aka Candidate Stevens?

Whistling up the dogs

2007-08-02T21:47:00.000+12:00

Well done, Wanganui! Your mayor (the one who dragged you into the national sewer when the King of Tonga and Kahui twins died) is at it again.

Just when it seemed he had no better topics than his battle with the Employment Relations Authority or the Museum or the Arts Trust or the iwi … for his Sordid Sunday Sermon, an abused Rotorua toddler was unfortunate enough to end up in Star Ship Hospital. She promptly became collateral damage in Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws’ desperate dog-whistle politicking for the recognition (and votes) of the same rednecks whose racist insecurities lead them the slimy downside of the radio dial. (See Nicky Hagar’s The Hollow Men for an introduction to this sordid form of politicking as cynically employed by Barmy Brash during his brief reign, and across the Tasman by his ideological twin Horrible Howard – or for that matter, any study of Hitler’s enlistment of the anti-Semite cause. Closer to home, refer to Laws’ ignominious days of Asian and Somali refugee bashing as Winston Peters’ chief string-puller with New Zealand First).

So here he is last Sunday:
Maori culture is simply a motif to pick up when the cops come calling … What is it about Maori and child abuse? .. and then back to the familiar refrain: The time has arrived: remove these children at birth from this sub-culture.

And little more than a year ago when the Kahui twins tragedy was unfolding, he was there too – our very own racist Forrest Gump, putting the boot in and tickling the talkback tongues:

But why Maori? What dark skein twists itself within that culture to produce rogue whanau like the Kahui? … And are the Kahui rogue? Or are they symptomatic of an underclass within Maori who are resistant to both mainstream and Maori assistance?

As a LawsWatch anonymii with a penchant for numbers reminded us on July 30:

Last Sunday when yet another battered toddler made the front page of the paper he leapt in and hurled abuse at the perpetrators. How profound. In a column that used the words Maori or Maoridom eighteen times, sixteen of the references were extremely negative. He excused himself of racism on the grounds that he was throwing off the bonds of political correctness. This will give racists a righteous rallying point.

I wonder if the grand plan is for the child beaters to go to war with the racists, or if there is no grand plan and he just can’t pass up a chance to set one part of society against another.

Thanks, Watcher. And predictably, within days Mickey had his Mouthpiece John Maslin whipping up a bit of front-page and editorial page racism in our nasty little excuse for a local rag.

Meanwhile, on the home-front, he’s also stepping up the war with local iwi over that perennial whipping boy – the H! Seems those uppity iwi thought they had been commissioned to come up with a carved entranceway to the council chambers that, as Mickey proclaimed in November 2005, would:

"… recognise the invitation our local iwi gave to settlers to share this region" … “At last,” he said, in the full flush of a little bicultural tic, “we have a Council Chambers that belongs to all of Wanganui, that celebrates our heritage and of which we can all be proud."

But then he saw ‘H’ and then he saw ‘Red’ and a predictable mayoral ‘H’issy Fit ensued .. and you read it here first, Watchers.

So what, we hear you ask yet again, maketh the man(iac) who rides the troughs of gutter politics? Is it that Michael Laws is simply a father and family man beyond moral reproach (you’ll have to ask his extended whanau what they think about that proposition as paraded in the wimins’ mags) or is it something deeper, darker … altogether dafter in fact.

Turn a couple of pages in last week’s Sunday Star-Times from his breakfast bilge and we find Victoria University psychologist Dr Marc Wilson neatly assessing Michael Laws’ political personality as being “remarkably similar to the psychopath”. Says Wilson:

It’s pretty common for people standing for political office to talk about devotion to the public, their commitment to the nation’s interest, their strong sense of responsibility. It’s unusual for politicians to say ‘I’m interested in getting paid and I’m a megalomaniac.”

(And before the sad, single anonymickey of Porritt St rushes to proclaim our First Citizen’s selfless devotion to the public good that leads him to give away his salary, we would point out that the unique ‘salary cycle’ he rides simply positions the mayoralty of our unfortunate city as a means to an (inflated salary) end via the media mouthpieces and dancing spectacles that are sufficiently desperate to be wagged by his 2% redneck tail).

Take a spoonful of sleaze & call the doctor in the morning

2007-07-21T19:14:00.000+12:00

Shocking as they are, the revelations reported in the Chron(ic) and DomPost about the sordid goings-on and contempt for employment law shown by CEO Dr David Warburton following the firing last year of Wanganui District Council’s community development manager, it will have come as no surprise to Watchers who remember LawsWatch’s revelations about the then newly-appointed CEO. (NB:For the benefit of those who foolishly rely on the Chron(ic) for their information, we hear that after pouring good ratepayers’ money after bad at the Wellington lawyers running the case, the good doctor made an acceptable offer at the end of a torrid two-day hearing to settle the case.)

On Friday, September 9, 2005, this blog reported that the good doctor’s Kaitaia timber company Tanner Group had recently lost an Employment Relations Act case in which it was alleged to have "threaten[ed the] applicant with disciplinary action over [a] term of employment that had not been directly and expressly negotiated and [the] contents of which remained uncertain between parties".

“Hopefully”, we told Watchers with amazing percipacity at the time, “Council staff have dotted the i's and crossed the t's in their employment contracts”.

We also noted that Dr Warburton’s list of achievements included the fact he was also a director of Fibrecraft Industries, placed in liquidation in Wanganui High Court on 2 June 2004 on petition of Nuplex Industries. Interestingly, Warburton’s fellow director in the failed fibreglass venture, Bruce Nicholson, was installed as a director of Wanganui Inc, about the same time as Mayor Michael Laws, deputy Dot McKinnon and the rest of the capitalist raiders were finding their new CEO (and we all know what happened with WINC, don’t we).

Meanwhile, back in Kaitaia in 2005, according to MP Sue Bradford, “in (Warburton’s timber company) TGL ... we have a company that has obviously kept its workers in the dark for some time and has then attempted to make itself look good by offering a fig leaf of consultation."

Welcome to the world of Dr David Warburton, whose contempt for employment law obviously was not left at the door to 101 Guyton St. As for his pretence of recognising the fundamental provisions of the Local Government Act 2002 -- “I will need to learn to work within the constraints of the Local Government Act,” he said at the time of his appointment – the DomPost coverage of last week's Employment Relations Authority hearing revealed he may have missed the bit about the CEO – not the mayor – being responsible for hiring and firing staff.

As commenters have pointed out, Sally Patrick hasn’t exactly covered herself in glory since taking her seat at the right-hand of Warburton and Laws, and it was no surprise to experienced Watchers to see her name on the roll of shame of the “anonymous” Greek chorus of letter writers eventually outed by Warburton and listed on the Chron(ic)'s front page. There she is, with the Spin Fairy's former squeeze Julian Rewiti, the impeccably pedigreed Stephanie Rose and non-entity Jill Jones.

Another area of CEO responsibility for political neutrality that seems to have escaped Dr Warburton’s notice has become glaringly apparent in the first week of what the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) calls “the pre-election period”, ie the three months leading up to the October 13th election. According to the LawsWatch calendar, that started July 13th -- but you wouldn’t know it from the likes of Philippa Baker-Hogan who commandeered the ratepayer-funded Councillor Comment advert in the July 18th MidWeek, and on the WDC website, for a fevered bout of electioneering.

Like many “watchdog” provisions, the OAG’s Communications Guidelines are the sort of toothless tigers that Mayor Mickey, his Visionaries and their pet CEO routinely treat with utter contempt. But it’s safe to assume the OAG is keen to hear about blatant flouting like we’re already seeing, and no doubt will be seeing much more of ,in the next 12 weeks. You can read the full Guidelines here

You can find contact details for the OAG here if, like us, you find it hard to see why Warburton thinks he can continue to turn a blind eye to Vision’s contempt for clauses like these in the OAG’s guidelines:

Principle 12: Communication of a Member’s personal views or opinions using Council resources is unacceptable during a pre-election period.

Principle 13: A Council’s policy should also recognise the risk that communications by or about Members, whether in their capacities as spokespersons for Council or otherwise, during a pre-election period could result in the Member achieving electoral advantage at ratepayers’ expense. The Chief Executive Officer (or his delegate) should actively manage the risk in accordance with the relevant electoral law.

Principle 14: The use of Council resources (including stationery and internet, e-mail and telephone Communication facilities) for re-election purposes is unacceptable.

The princess & the plonker: a Grim tale

2007-07-14T18:43:00.000+12:00

Gather round, Watchers, for a story by the Brothers Grimly.

Once upon a time there was a far-away place by the river with lots of lovely old buildings. On the top of the hill in the middle of the town lived a beautiful princess who had so many books she kept running out of room for them.

Next door to her were some people who lived in a very beautiful old building. They loved paintings and because they were such nice people they were given lots of lovely paintings and they tried very had to look after them but they didn’t have enough room, either.

Down at the bottom of the hill were two more big buildings. One had lots and lots of very old stuff in it and the people who lived there also tried to take good care of their old stuff, but they too had run out of room. Nearby was yet another building where the townspeople liked to gather to make merry fun. Like the other three buildings, this one looked very sad and dirty where once it had gleamed a brilliant white.

“Oh dear,” said the beautiful princess. “What is to be done? I simply must get some more space for all my lovely books but I have no money and those people next door with all those paintings are going to get lots of money so they can make their building bigger and more beautiful while I get none.”

She sighed as she slowly stirred her coffee. A tear trickled down her cheek and dropped into the cup. “If only a handsome prince would come and build me a new palace for my books, I’d be so happy,” she thought.

A sudden gust of cold air rushed into the room and people at the other tables screamed and rushed for the door. A strange little man appeared before her. “One day soon I will be the mayor,” he said, “and because you are such a beautiful princess I will make you the Queen of the Park.”

The princess couldn’t believe her eyes. The scrawny little man was ugly and unshaven, with bright black paint around his eyes. “But how can you be the mayor?” she asked. “You look just like the troll that lives in the bushes on the hill.”

“Just shut up and listen to me, lady, or you’ll be sorry,” snapped the strange little man. “I’ll make your dreams come true. You’ll be Queen of the Park and everyone will have to bow when you pass. But most importantly, I will give you all the gold and silver you need to build a glittering palace for all your books.”

“Oh thank you, mayor,” said the grateful princess. “Just tell me what I have to do and I’ll do it.” She grabbed a pen and a paper napkin and drew a picture of a glittering palace. She showed it to the mayor, who said, “Sure honey, you can have one just like that but first you’ll have to do lots of things for me that will make the peasants hate you.”

The princess grasped the mayor’s knarled and twisted hand. “Oh sire, I’ll do whatever you say.” But then her dream turned into a nightmare. She toiled from morning to night doing whatever the mayor told her and every day she felt the wrath of the people. But she was steadfast and never wavered in her devotion, even when the people laughed and jeered at her and made fun of her plans for the glittering palace.

But worse was to come. The mayor grew tired of her and their glittering palace plans. “Forget it, Princess,” he said with a cruel twist of his ugly mouth. “You and your books are so yesterday. Lady Philippa’s hot, baby, and you’re not. The peasants don’t care about books or art or old stuff. I’ve wasted $250,000 on you and you’re not getting another penny. I’m going to bury your silly palace plans and weave my magic spin for Lady P’s velodrome.” With that he hitched up his green lycra shorts and rushed towards the door.

Suddenly, the princess woke. She had fallen asleep amid her books and she realised the whole thing had been a nightmare.

New Projects Referendum – 2008:

The most far-reaching decision is that the 'Heart of Wanganui' project – and its constituent parts – will go to district-wide referendum in February/March next year. But the projects will compete against other intended capital works to determine their public and funding priority. Those other projects include the Events Centre/Velodrome and the redevelopment of Kowhai Park.

We salute you, Mickey!

2007-07-07T12:27:00.000+12:00

As the NZ Listener pointed out last week, its latest Readers’ poll shockingly showed Sir Edmund Hillary to be the most admired New Zealander. This, observed Listener hack Denis Welch, was …

“Another setback in Michael Laws’s campaign to get his face on the $5 bill.”

Here at the Cave, Watchers’ hearts went out to Murray Hughes’s very own hero. What a cruel blow, especially in a week when that very campaign reached a pinnacle (or nadir) of sorts with Mickey’s desperate attempt to convert the awarding of a VC to a New Zealand soldier from Somewhere-other-than-Wanganui into a Michael Laws feature story.

So sad. So desperate. So very very Mickey. So in the spirit of recognising true heroism and humility for what it is, LawsWatch has given Mickey his place in history and put this real Kiwi hero on our Five Dollar Bill. In doing so we right the wrong perpetrated by whichever government flunkeys made the foolish mistake of selecting Ed Hillary when, as Cr Murray Hughes would enthusiastically proclaim, Wanganui has its very own hero.

COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

Michael Laws’ shameless attempt to muscle in on the VC limelight prompted a spate of send-up stories from LawsWatch resident wits who posited that naturally, Taranaki’s tornado headlines must have been hard to resist by the talkback mayor who sees opportunities for self-promotion in the most unlikely places. A sample of winning comments by our anonymii:

"Wanganui needs to have a tornado or two of its own, Mayor Michael Laws said tonight.

AND

Mayor Laws said Council would take action to ban tornados from the CBD. "They are urban terrorists. The previous Council's attitude to tornados was to pretend they didn't exist. They misled Wanganui and this new report from Larry Mitchell will show that they in fact covered up hundreds of tornados. Not this mayor."

STOPPRESS:

Word from Guyton St is that they've lost their nerve about putting the Heart of Wanganui out to referendum in conjunction with the October election and they're retreating to Feb-March 2008. After almost three years of shambolic spending and mayoral meddling the stark political reality is that not even SpinMeister Laws and his tame Guyton St spin machine could turn that turkey into a vote winner.

Muzza shows he’s got what it takes

2007-06-30T17:42:00.000+12:00

LawsWatch is pleased to report that Muzza (kennel name Mental Muzza of Guyton) has been named Vision Obedience Club’s Mayoral Lackey of the Year following an outstanding performance on the Wanganui District Council’s website in the past week.

“When I picked him up from the pound three years ago I wasn’t sure he had what it takes,” said his proud owner/trainer Michael Laws. “But persistent training, and persistent use of a very clever electric shock delivering apparatus – well, I’m sure you can guess where – paid off when he obediently put his paw print on the press release I wrote for him last week.”

Muzza, as Mayor Michael fondly calls his faithful companion, narrowly beat out Mr and Mrs G Pleasants’ Killer of St John for the Mayoral Lackey title. Mayor Michael said that though he lacked the killer instinct displayed by the Pleasants’ four-legged friend, Muzza more than made up for it in other areas.

“He’s so well behaved at council meetings, I sometimes forget he’s even in the room. But then his big brown eyes gaze at me across the table and his face screws up in such bewildered fashion, and I realise he’s just waiting for the signal from me to leap into action,” said Mayor Michael.

“I have to confess that I sometimes like to tease him. I give him our secret signal – a half wink – but as soon as he starts barking and growling I push the secret shock button in my pocket and he sits back looking even more hurt and puzzled. I know … I know … it’s cruel and I shouldn’t do it, but holy shit, it IS fun.”

Mayor refutes McGregor & Arts Trust claims - 28/06/07

Mayor Michael Laws today refuted comments by both Cr Don McGregor and the Arts, Culture & Heritage Trust after the council's unanimous decision, during its 2007/8 Annual Plan process, to not renew its $30,000 funding to the Trust.

Allegations by Cr McGregor disputed - 28/06/07

Cr Murray Hughes has disputed many of the issues raised by Cr Don McGregor in his statement (Wanganui Chronicle, 28 June 2007) regarding the funding cut for the Whanganui Arts, Culture and Heritage Development Trust.

* For more on the strange case of WDC, Muzza and dangerous dogs see Carol Jones' Whatsup blog.

Black eyes & baloney in the Blue corner

2007-06-24T07:04:00.000+12:00

Watchers with acutely tuned hearing swore they picked up the sounds of former National Party leader Jim Bolger spinning in his political grave last week as Michael Laws celebrated the gullibility of Nat deputy leader Bill English and Nat wannabe top cop Chester Borrows with hilarious photo ops in the local rags.

As an astute commenter reminded us, any politician who comes within a bull’s roar of the Mad Mayor and former Parliamentary Destroyer is condemning themselves to a big dose of political embarrassment and ignominy, along with a certain black eye or two. Above all, anyone with a drop of Blue blood in their veins should know this better than most. As an anonymii reminded us on June 22:

"It's a sad commentary on the lack of institutional knowledge remaining in the National Party that people like Chester and English aren't being reminded what happened to anyone who got within shafting distance of Mickey last time he cultivated the party, ie they duly got shafted.

If John Key has learned anything from his predecessor's flirtation with the Brethren he would do well to apply the lesson to anyone who thinks it's okay to be used for photo opps with Mental Mickey. Compared to the stench that he carries, the Brethren come up smelling like roses.

But as Steve Braunias reminded us in last week’s Sunday Star-Times, Chester may be the biggest rooster in the parliamentary Nats henhouse, but he isn’t exactly the brightest. And Bill English may have fought his way out of the backbench graveyard because John Key needed the numbers, but he’s no stranger to making an ass of himself in ill-conceived political stunts either, as Wikipedia notes:

“By late 2003, however, National's performance in opinion polls remained poor. The party had briefly increased its popularity in the year following the election, but by October its support had fallen to levels only slightly better than what it achieved in the last ballot. English also appeared in a boxing match for a charity against entertainer Ted Clarke. This "stunt" did not boost his polling or that of the National party either, with suggestions that it devalued his image as a serious politician. Don Brash, former governor of the Reserve Bank and a relative newcomer to politics, began to build up support to replace English. While Brash lacked overwhelming popularity, the electorate perceived English as highly ineffectual and prone to embarrassing mistakes. On 28 October, Brash gained sufficient backing in Caucus to replace English as leader."

So when Chester begged his boy pal Bill to come play Gangs-and-Cops with his little friend Michael, one wonders why Bill didn’t opt instead to stay home and update his scrap book with clippings from the last time he stepped in the ring with an “entertainer”.

Instead, he found himself on the ropes and punch drunk. Instead of taking a swing at the Mad Mayor, babbling Bill delivered a wild left hook at Wanganui and showed just how unsuited he is to life in the political ring when he said he'd heard Wanganui is one of the quietest cities in NZ after dark: "Is that because people are too scared to go out?"

Newboy John Key was safely out of the country when Michael Laws was rubbing the Nats’ noses in his political excrement so perhaps he’s blissfully unaware of the sewerage pond that his deputy and big member for Whanganui are wallowing in. Jim Bolger, on the other hand, has never forgiven nor forgotten the time that Michael Laws went through the Tories like a dose of epsoms salts. As he told the 1996 National Party Wellington Division conference in Palmerston North:

“Special greetings to the delegates from Napier and Hawke's Bay where the political spotlight has focused these past few days. Where the New Zealand First politician Michael Laws cheated, covered up, was found out and resigned. There was nothing noble in the resignation, it was forced on New Zealand First in a desperate attempt to stop a sordid story of deceit engulfing the whole of New Zealand First.”

And as an aside, we’d be grateful to any Watchers who might care to enlighten us what dark deeds Bolger hinted at next:

“With the many allegations still around it is a case of watch this space for further developments. Including who, or what, the original cover-up was designed to hide. Who were the "certain people", using Michael Laws' own words, that he was trying to protect from what?”

Meanwhile, Michael and his imaginary friends continue to play his solo game of Stand-or-Not to a chorus of yawns from Castlecliff Beach to Aramoho and beyond. We’ll leave the last word on that to a comment made on David Farrar’s KiwiBlog back in November when Mickey got himself and his kids into Women’s Daze with the breathtaking announcement that he had discovered there was life after politics and his kids were just the best thing since sliced balony. From KiwiBlog:

"I don't think Michael Law's latest break from politics will last very long. Spending more time with the family? Yeah right! He'll be bored stiff. He can get his own talk show on one of TVNZ's new digital channels. Perhaps a NZ version of "Jerry Springer". Or why not combine travel show with reality TV and let Laws holiday in Tonga where he'll be running for his life from a lot of very angry strapping Tongans who may well take offence at his "brown slug" tribute to their former king. Or he could team up with infomercial queen Suzanne Paul and use his considerable persuasive skills to hook us onto a new range of "non-run" mascara."

AND LAWSWATCH MICKEY AWARD FOR COMMENT OF THE WEEK GOES TO:

The first meeting of the Mayoral/Iwi Taskforce on Gangs was held this afternoon. It resolved the following:
* that the taskforce reflect these emphases by changing its name to the Council/Iwi Taskforce on Youth Well-being;

********
Hey Mickey, sounds like you got told where to get off yesterday! What's the matter with those Iwi people -- don't they understand you called it the MAYORAL taskforce because the focus was on YOU? 1:42 PM, June 22, 2007

Watch those stubborn stains

2007-06-09T14:48:00.000+12:00

Watchers in the habit of scanning the Chronic’s headlines and quickly passing over anything carrying John Maslin’s byline may have mistaken today’s front-page screamer ‘Banned and bankrupt: What council didn't know about branding man’

At the very least, they might have expected it to explain why the Mack Report was slipped onto the WDC website thirteen days earlier bearing the title: Council inquiry into allegations of improper influence.

They might have expected Senior Reporter Maslin to have included in his story the report’s excerpted email comments purportedly sent from Mr Mack to Chronic managers and editor, such as:

“We would like to see somewhat of a shift in editorial pertaining to Wanganui … We have a fundamental problem with the ‘Wanganui bashing’ that is so prevalent in your publication … for Energy Direct to be seen to support an entity that does not support their views on how Wanganui should be portrayed is not a viable option.”

AND

“As you could imagine, since the WDC is the primary stakeholder for this particular client, their opinions are rather weighted and carry some considerable clout. You must also agree that they do not hold your paper in a very good light, rightly or wrongly, that fact still remains the same and has a great deal of influence on media planning.”

But perhaps the dynamite implications of his own GM’s “allegations of improper influence” just weren’t sufficiently clear to Mas. And he clearly wasn’t able to grasp the extreme irony of omitting entirely the evidence of threats against his organ’s editorial independence. Instead, readers were treated to a SHOCK!! HORROR!! PROBE!! SPECIAL INVESTIGATION into the bankruptcy of Mr Mack – something that could be verified within seconds by anybody with an internet connection.

Meanwhile, back at this blog, a commenter fondly known as anonymickey gently reminded Watchers that ….

’ahem: Wasn't it the mayor who actually made everything public?’

We couldn’t ourselves do better than another Watcher’s swift retort to little piece of mayoral dissembling so, Dear Readers, we’ll run the anonymous Watcher’s comments in full for your edification:

Read the front page again, fool! As always the Guyton St Gobbels you call the mayor did just enough to give himself an "alibi" by slipping the report onto the council website, without comment, knowing very well that the Chron had well and truly got the message about how Mickey and Mack expect them to treat any not-good-news stories about the regime.

That's in stark contrast to the way he makes other stuff "public" like broken toes, his views on gangs etc etc.

Surely if he really wanted to make it public and didn't want the Chron to feel compromised he could have ordered that it be published in full on Community Link, written to the paper summarising the report and providing a link to the website version.

Better still, he could have turned the whole thing into a lovely glossy brochure and delivered a copy to every household, perhaps with a simple "community survey" attached, ie:

1. Do you think this incident indicates the council is
a. incompetent or
b. corrupt or
c. both of the above

2. In view of your answer to the above who do you think should be sacked:
a. The CEO
b. Claire Cilliers
c. The entire council management
d. The entire remnants of WINC
e. The gas company chair
f. The entire gas company management
g. The mayor & deputy mayor
h. all of the above

And courtesy another of our anonymii:

David Mack's cak-handed and corrupt attempt to suborn the fourth estate and subvert democracy is a perfect metaphor for Vision Wanganui.

IN PASSING

1. We also wondered why the fearlessly independent and unintimidated Chronic ran acres of excitement about the Community Views survey without asking the question that has been on everyone else’s lips: ie How did new-boy survey company Perceptive get hired ahead of National Research Bureau, the firm that has done years worth of surveys for Wanganui and other New Zealand councils; and what are the implications of its survey questions mirroring those of NRB so closely that Perceptive (and Mickey) claims to be able to make valid comparisons between the 1003 and 2007 results.

2. We note the ‘comeback kid’ is back on the Council website with the start of his election campaign, ably supported by has-been Dotty’s very own effort at using ratepayer-funded resources for blatant electioneering. Poor Dr Dave - who’d be in his shoes when he has to explain to Mickey that his arse will be on the line with the Auditor General if such breaches of election rules continue.

The screaming of the lambs

2007-06-03T13:36:00.000+12:00

You still wake up sometimes, don't you? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs – Hannibal Lecter

But there’s one thing about the media in this country. They don’t report the news any more – they interpret it. They predetermine winner and losers, goodies and baddies, and then bend the facts to fit their prior prejudice. – Michael Laws, Sunday Star Times, June 3

Without a hint of irony, Wanganui’s mayor smacked ‘the media’ in his Sunday newspaper column this week for 'not reporting the news anymore’. What’s more, they ‘predetermine winners and losers … then bend the facts to fit their prior prejudice’.

While Michael Laws was trying to refocus his reading public on his heroic dancing display with “leggy Lauren”, Watchers’ attention was elsewhere. Forget Mickey’s stumbling attempts to keep up with his Dancing with the Stars partner: on the Wanganui political dance floor last week, away from the lights and the beady-eyed judges, he seems again to have been rewarded for a perfectly synchronised media two-step that has kept from the public eye a scandal that would have aroused any self respecting newspaper to paroxysms of SHOCK! HORROR! PROBE! headlines and billboards.

By now well buried in the oxidation ponds of mayoral press releases that clutter the ratepayer funded WDC website, eagle-eyed Watchers followed the tell-tale smell to a little gem of a report titled Council inquiry into allegations of improper influence.

This, it would seem, was a scandal tailor made for Wanganui’s fearless daily. In fact, not only had the Chronic (through its GM) outed the perpetrator of the dodgy dealings to the council, but the Chronic was crying foul and casting itself in the role of victim.

With bated breath Watchers snatched their papers from their letter boxes, poured strong coffees and with trembling fingers opened their morning paper to see how big the type was that was used to break the story of the year about undue pressure being brought to bear on the editorial content of that very same organ by none other than the man whose praises the Michael Laws was singing six months ago for the cheap and nasty rebranding job perpetrated on an unsuspecting Wanganui.

But alas, as Watchers scrunched up the Chronic and used it to light their first fires of winter, they had to conclude that down at Taupo Quay our town’s fearless journos and management had, in their customary manner, decided that the citizens of Wanganui had every right to know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about this scoop that they alone had set up!

Read the report, weep and Go figure, Watchers! It’s election year, after all, and clearly Ms Editor has made the bold decision to ensure nothing gets in the way of Mickey’s spin machine.

PART TWO: Michael Laws and ‘absolute sincerity’

In their weekend social intercourse around Wanganui and elsewhere, Watchers found some of the hoi polloi were a little surprised at reports in the Saturday Chronic and DomPost that Michael Laws “is reconsidering his earlier decision that he would be a one-term mayor only”.

Then Mas attempts to explain the turnaround by assuring us that, not to worry: “Mr Laws said he was being "absolutely sincere" when he said the first time and again the second time that he was not standing "but I've promised people I will take their views seriously and give a decision later this or early next". (Next what? – Ed)

Watchers who know that Michael Laws is no more capable of ‘absolute sincerity’ than Antoinette Beck is of winning Dancing with the Stars noted at the time of the Women’s Daze ‘I’m going to be Mr Mum’ scoop that a little lie (“My family comes first”), easily reversed by another little lie (“I’ve been begged by so many people to stand again”) was a small price to pay for the acres of media exposure that followed.

Just to pad out the Chronic's 'scoop', Mickey tells Mas “the approaches had come from commercial leaders, local iwi and individuals’. (When does Bob Walker count as a commercial leader? When does Rana Waitai count as local iwi? When do Bob Walker’s alter-egos count as individuals? – Ed)

A notably ungracious mayoral wannabe Dot McKinnon tried to put a brave face on the fact she’d been shafted and withdrew her candidacy, saying: "it would be a bit pointless going against Michael" in the October elections. (She obviously doesn’t think she’s got Mickey’s ability to manage the Chronic and keep the lid on the dirt! –Ed)

AND:

Randhir Dahya confided to Mas that "Everyone's encouraging me to stand, and I will do so” thus confirming his determination to ‘do a Chas’ and help deliver Wanganui into Mickey’s hands. (A fitting end to a career distinguished only by extraordinary talent for fence-sitting – Ed)

PART THREE - Perplexing poll problems

We are grateful to a LawsWatch anonymii for tipping us off about the back story to a wee morsel on the agenda for Tuesday’s 10am council meeting.

It is all around town that the Community Issues survey gives the thumbs down to the council and particularly the mayor. He tried to hide it but the CEO would not let him so if we want to be entertained we should get to the council at 10am on Tuesday and enjoy the humiliation. Dr Dave is asserting his authority and making this lame duck mayor suffer. - LawsWatch anonymous

Tucked away at the bottom of a mind-boggling (even for Mickey) piece of spin attributing what he says is a low number of submissions on the annual plan to widespread satisfaction with his regime, we’re told that the results of said community views survey will be presented at Tuesday’s meeting, at 10am, as a warm-up to Vison's yearly orgy of annual plan submitter abuse.

The survey company ,Perceptive, presumably a newcomer to the field, doesn’t list Antoinette Beck in its staff numbers but Mickey must have been hoping that by stepping outside the nationally respected National Research Bureau exercise he could escape its (no doubt invidious) comparisons with other councils around New Zealand.

PART FOUR: Meanwhile, back in Guatemala

Last week we mused on similarities between Michael Laws’ fascist mini-state and that of Dr Ropata’s Guatemala. In view of the Chronic’s failure to run the David Mack revelations, Watchers were interested to learn that media freedom is very much an endangered species in both places, but the difference is that Guatemala has at least one newspaper that isn’t prepared to keep silent:

"We can't keep silent," reads a full-page ad in El Periódico, the most progressive of the three main national newspapers of Guatemala. Fear is still very much around, censorship is alive and well, and the media in Guatemala are still subject to threats and manipulation.

You’re not in Guatemala now, Michael

2007-05-27T09:13:00.002+12:00

Watchers who are wondering what Guatemala and Wanganui have in common may not be surprised to learn that the rulers of the corruption-infested Central American nation immortalised in our very own soap Shortland Street (and retained for posterity at youtube) also enjoy a referendum or three.

The only difference would seem to be that when Guatemala’s citizens line up to vote “according to the customs and traditions of the communities - by a raising of the hand, a paper vote, or the signing of a list provided by the community mayor”, there are no fewer than “384 national and international observers, as well as delegates from the Human Rights Procurator's Office” keeping a beady eye on proceedings.

Incidentally, the hapless citizens of Guatemala are also in the early stages of a campaign leading up to September elections and in the same week that Michael Laws was honing his political assassination hit list at a meeting debating the gang bylaw, ABC was reporting that they’re also wasting no time getting down to the messy business in Guatemala, where “20 political figures had been killed before official campaigning even began”.

We’re not in Guatemala now, Watchers, but many of you are asking about the mysterious disappearance from the mayoral agenda of the Mad Mayor’s Heart of Wanganui project. And at the Cave we are beginning to suspect it might have been rubbed out in an unusual and stealthy act of political assassination.

As we prepare to turn the calendar page on yet another month in Referendum City, we stumbled across the October 4th 2006 news release promising the biggest ever propaganda campaign in the leadup to a mid-May referendum.

The campaign will kick off on Thursday, October 26. After the initial meetings, further information will be provided by:

Advertising the options in 'Community Link' (the council's weekly page in the Wanganui Chronicle).
Special pamphlets delivered to every householder (two deliveries).
Suburban public meetings and presentations.
A dedicated website.
A shopfront display on Victoria Avenue.
Further public meetings in the lead-up to the referendum in mid-May 2007.

Oops! Items 5 and 6 seem to be missing in action, as the Chron(ic) beats the drums for Philippa Baker-Hogan’s alternative monument at Cooks Gardens, and breathlessly reports that “at this point a rough estimate of a possible price of a full events centre would be somewhere around $10 million”. Cheap as chips, really, compared to the mega-millions (and up to $284 per ratepayer impost) needed to give birth to Mickey’s Heart.

No mention yet of a referendum and we look forward to hearing just how financial wizard Julian Harkness will find $80,000 for a feasibility study for this new slice of pie in the Wanganui sky, on top of the more than a quarter of a million already tossed at the Heart project.

But back to the Heart of the Matter, Watchers. Idle speculation over Sunday lattes at the Cave has us wondering whether the Heart has flatlined because it’s just too damned hard to squeeze the myriad and confusing options onto a referendum that by it’s very nature must be nothing more than a propaganda campaign to ensure voters tick the box that Michael Laws wants them to tick. In view of whispers here at LawsWatch that Deputy Dotty has done the deal of her life to be put up as Vision’s Great Mayoral Hope, on a nightmare ticket with Mickey running as Deputy, can it be that’s she’s losing her taste for caviar and champagne projects like the Heart?

Meanwhile, the ratepayers are stuck with the bills for last year’s Heart design extravaganza. Tony Van Raat may have been a buddy of Arts Czar Sally Patrick, but there’s no suggestion that his services, or the proven world-class talents of his fellow rich-and-famous Auckland architects Pete Bossley and David Mitchell came cheap. Unlike the forlorn, fading and just plain freaky “branding” exercise that polluted Wanganui’s streets and approaches with tackiness hailed by Mickey on December 12th last year as being an "extraordinarily cheap" example of mates rates by an Auckland hobbyist who, Commenters have been explaining under the last post, just happens to be a mate of a staffer of Mickey’s discredited Wanganui Inc.

And as we approach the start of the pre-election period with its ban on using council channels to promote the changes of incumbents, it’s no surprise to see Mickey also demanding dollars for Vision campaign events to “celebrate” everything from the sewerage plant and splash centre extensions to the airport runway improvements.

It’s all there in the minutes of the May 10th committee meeting, though there’s no record of the sniggers that undoubtedly emanated from the three remaining “independent” councillors at this little mayoral gem:

Mayor Laws said if the council agrees [to the Vision propaganda blitz] each project requires its own commemoration, a budget would be required. He said because of the timing of the triennial elections, a decision needed to be made now as a new council would not have time to make the necessary commemoration arrangements.

Now for the Miracles of Saint Dotty

2007-05-20T10:21:00.000+12:00

Watchers have been moderately amused in the past week to see what appears to be the start of the canonisation of Deputy Dotty by Pope Michael Laws I and his conclave of diVisionary cardinals. Just a week ago an anonymii whispered in the comments section of this blog that:

Word is that Dot & Mickey have made a deal to swap places. He's so certain he'll be Deputy Mayor (as a Councillor), he's now planning which 'celebration' of the capital projects Dot will front in November. (12:15 PM, May 14, 2007).

A continuation of the Laws-Vision trainwreck for Wanganui, but a cosy arrangement for a mayor who knows his time is up, and the puppet deputy he so assiduously selected, fashioned and trained to dance to his mad tune. More convincingly, it’s the only way he could hope to keep his hands on the strings of power while also keeping Dotty from spilling her bags of dirt on the papacy of Michael in a gloves-off campaign against him for the mayoralty.

But as students of the wider church know, sainthood can’t just happen on the day the election campaign starts. As Wikipedia tells us,

“… the act of canonisation … occurs at the conclusion of a long process requiring extensive proof that the person proposed for canonisation lived, and died, in such a way that he or she is worthy to be recognised as a saint.”

While Dotty might well claim sainthood on the grounds that her years of officiating at the opening of an envelope while the real mayor is off doing his media thing(s), beatification usually requires a miracle or two. Hence, it was no surprise when John Maslin breathlessly and unquestioningly reported Mickey’s claims of sainthood for Dotty and the District Holdings crew who had managed to turn, not water into wine, but city debt into city surplus.

Holding co hailed as council saviour (19.05.2007 )

THE PERFORMANCE of the Wanganui District Council Holdings Ltd has been hailed as the major reason for a turnaround in council’s financial fortunes, helping turn a projected deficit into a forecast surplus. …The council is now forecasting a budget surplus of $265,000 for the quarter ending March this year, representing a major shift from the December 2006 forecast of a $384,000 deficit.

Read on and the fine print tells us the key reasons why the Council was headed for a whopping deficit for the quarter:

“….$150,000 for legal fees involving 24 separate legal actions council is involved in [and] $185,000 economic development overspend…

So we have Wellington lawyers from Sue Grabbit and Run cranking up the fees for a council that is so incompetent and litigious as to get itself involved in “24 separate legal actions” and a council that is so incompetent and so beholding to its mad mayor’s events city meisterplan that it has allowed $185,000 to be tossed at disasters like Mickey’s Boxing Day concert blow-out.

Never slow to spin a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, Mickey saw this as a golden opportunity. After months of hysteria about the previous council’s alleged failure to account for the international downturn in forestry returns, Mickey now tells us that the latest “miracle” had a lot to do with the flow-on effects of an upswing in forestry (that HIS council was too incompetent to forecast) and property returns, a lower interest costs:

The improvement from the previous quarter is mainly due to additional dividends from Wanganui District Council Holdings Ltd and forestry, additional income from Council properties and a reduction in interest costs.

And once he’s drawn a discreet veil over the bad news of the management bumbling that led to the deficit in the first place, Mickey returns to his favourite fantasy:

Mayor Laws said that the new managerial and financial structure at Council "has markedly improved internal efficiency and ensured that ratepayers' monies are properly spent. The Audit Office is no longer knocking on Council's doors every five seconds!"

And let’s not overlook this wee caveat emptor:

The surplus is a forecast and could change, depending on events in the final quarter of the financial year.

Meanwhile, the week that was offered one flicker of hope for Wanganui. Barbara Bullock has consistently stood up for truth but has been less than honestly reported by Mickey’s pet Maslin. So let’s remember this moment, when Mas momentarily forgot Mickey’s orders and was suddenly endowed with enough lead in his pencil to quote Cr Bullock’s courageous summary of her stand on the gang patch farce :

“I’m voting against the gang insignia bill. I never approved of it from the start, but I’m quite happy to work with people in the community, with gangs or other offenders.

“But I’m not going to sit hear and listen to the crap you have just put forward that we are making a wrong decision. It is our right as councillors to make our own decisions and I’m not going to be publicly humiliated by you.

“I respect your opinion, but don’t have disrespect for mine,” Cr Bullock said. “I have a lot of support out there for voting against this gang insignia bill.”

There was, unsurprisingly, a simply fantabulous display of butt-covering and mayoral bum-licking by the Vision lackeys and more importantly the likes of Randhir (the Ego) Dahya and Rangi (the Puppet) Wills.

As Mas sadly reported: When it came to the crunch, not surpisingly Crs Higgie, Baker-Hogan, Randhir Dahya, Wills, Lindsay, Dot McKinnon and Mr Laws voted to take the gang insignia bill to Parliament with Crs Westwood, Bullock and Stevens voting against.

Mickey lies; the camera doesn't

2007-05-12T17:04:00.000+12:00

When Palmerston North pollsters Competitive Edge ring in the middle of Sunday dinner preparations to ask Watchers who they’d vote for, they’re naturally reluctant to reveal who’s buying their services beyond saying it’s a private company. But dollars to donuts the answer is either Vision, mayoral mystery-man Michael Laws or mayoral wannabe Dot McKinnon … or any combination of the above.

Which has us wondering why the pollsters list of Wanganui mayoral possibilities includes none other than Michael Laws, who’s been riding a wave of spin since announcing last November that he wouldn’t be standing again because his work in Wanganui was done and because, as he whispered to the women’s mags, his latest offspring were entitled to the kind of parenting he notably failed to provide for his first batch.

More recently Dot McKinnon has leapt into the fray and announced she’ll be “seeking the Vision nomination”. The chattering classes were quick to pick trouble at (Vision) mill amid the resounding silence from Mickey and his hired gun Bob Walker. So much for Mickey’s promise to Dotty that she was his chosen one, his anointed successor. Looks like the bridesmaid has been left standing at the altar while her fickle fiancé plans another fling with the voters of Wanganui.

But it’s been quite a roller coaster few weeks for Mickey, who doesn’t really need Competitive Edge, or even his favourite pollster Antoinette Beck, to tell him his honeymoon with long-suffering Wanganui is over. By the end of his dancing nightmare it was clear that he was a white dwarf on the way to becoming a black hole. Not even his frantic publicity campaign or the Cancer Society’s need for funds could persuade people to txt for the desperate non-celeb who proved in his short, doomed run that the camera never lies.

While he managed to provide Woman’s Day readers and Wanganui District Council website surfers with carefully staged happy family images, the judges and viewers of the dancing disaster saw, as one judge pointed out, an over-excited smutty schoolboy alternating with a frustrated and angry loser hurling insults at a visiting judge. Worse, the stills provided by the show’s promoters ensured readers of the country’s main dailies and visitors to the TVNZ website saw the truth about the man.

Then he woke to the news that his Radio Live stablemate Marcus Lush had taken the big prize at the radio awards, and scored the breakfast slot that Mickey has coveted as a possible path out of the 2% ratings doldrums.

We can only presume that by last Saturday night he was dreaming of salvation from his ongoing ratings slide and publicity nightmare. By Monday morning he was telling National Radio that: “Not in my wildest dr …. nightmares” could he have expected a toddler to be slain in an outbreak of gang violence on his patch. After that oh-so-Freudian slip he spent the week making sure his dream of a speedy return to the Six O’Clock News came true. By midweek he was unable to help himself seizing upon the Chron(ic) editor’s rally plans and even snatching her own “scoop” from her.

Now was HIS time to play the statesman. The masterplan: Grab a kid – any kid, even one with the kind of name that’s reduced him in the past to advocating eugenics – and take the high moral ground. Be seen smoking the peace pipe with the kaumatua who’d carpeted him for his racist holiday season headline grabber about third world conditions on River Road. Throw in a good dose of the warm fuzzies. Show up those Watchers who predicted he’d turn Majestic Square into Wanganui’s own Nuremberg stadium. Talk warm … caring … compassionate. Unlike those awful unguarded moments of madness captured by the TV cameras over the past few years, he’d be in control. But as the DominionPost showed its readers the next day, the camera (unless of course its wielded by the photographer to the court of Michael Laws’ ) never lies.

Walking the plank and jumping ship

2007-05-06T09:12:00.000+12:00

It’s hard not to feel sorry for Ron Janes, Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws’ erstwhile captain of enterprise – unless of course you’re a victim or member of the clean-up squad after his last foray into public service at the Wanganui Hospital Board. Or you may be one of those who believe that anyone, like Ron and the Visioneers, who thinks dancing with Mickey is the path to glory and riches deserves everything they get when the ship goes down.

You see, poor old Ron’s valiant efforts for the Vision cause was a nice little earner for him as chair of Wanganui Inc, presiding over Mickey’s events city meisterplan and fiddling while the ratepayers’ cash burnt at hopeless mayoral headline grabbers like the Boxing Day concert and mayoral mile.

How frightful, then, for Ron to hear from not one but two Chron reporters (and the sub-editor who gleefully reminded readers that the Chronic had been the first to tell Ron about the mayoral press release on the Council website) that like the souls he’d sacrificed in his slash and burn health system days, he too had been declared surplus to requirements:

THE news that Wanganui District Council has asked for the immediate resignations of Wanganui Inc directors as it takes control of the economic development agency took newly deposed chairman Ron Janes by surprise.

Mr Janes said he was used to business being conducted face-to-face and not in the way he was informed when the Chronicle rang yesterday to get comment.

Mickey knew the Winc game was up before the leftover Christmas turkey was cold, as LawsWatch was told by an anonymii conveniently privy to the innermost workings of the mayoral mind. But we’re now hearing the decision to pull finally pull the plug on Mickey’s merry band of Winc men came from none other special sub committee chair and mayor-in-waiting Dot McKinnon. that’s appropriate because it was Dotty and her sub committee that built the Winc golem in the first place and let it loose in the council coffers.

Moneybags Mickey, meanwhile, rides in on his white horse and tells us that $800,000 will continue to be tossed at ‘economic development’ (read events) by an increasingly well paid branch of the new boys’ network called Wanganui Holdings. But, says Mickey, ‘the estimated savings from the revised structure were between $65,000 and $95,000 a year’. Not even enough to cover the losses on the Boxing Day concert.

As we wait with bated breath for Deputy Dot to start covering herself in glory and pointing her electioneering finger at her ‘triumphs’ at the business end of Vision’s woeful term, it’s also worth noting a wee paragraph buried deep in the Chron(ic) story reporting (ex) Chairman Janes’s surprise at not being told he’d been given the boot:

Former director Nygllhuw Morris had already resigned two weeks previously: “I think Winc will be able to move forward, and I totally support them.”

So we can assume that Mickey had a word with his buddy Nygllyhuw, even if he didn’t have the bottle to pick up the phone and ring Ron. And Nygllhuw, doubtless with an eye to candidate nomination day, decided to jump the Winc ship in timely fashion without waiting for Dotty to march him down the gangplank. Or perhaps he was just too busy working on dottyandnygllhuw.co.nz, the sequel to michaelandlauren.co.nz which undoubtedly ranks as his greatest tribute so far to the fast-fading glory of Mickey Mayor.

Now for the hypocrisy two-step

2007-04-29T09:37:00.000+12:00

Just as the pundits in the LawsWatch Cave were falling about laughing at the breathtaking failure of the Mayor of Wanganui to win enough txt votes to survive beyond the second round of Dancing With the Stars, an alert watcher stumbled across michaelandlauren.co.nz.

Yes, Watchers, not content with desperately hijacking the Wanganui District Council website, using week after week of his sordid Sunday columns, and prostituting his kids in the women’s rags to buy votes, Michael got his web-pal Nigel Morris to knock together a web site devoted to the ultimately futile txt vote chase.

But even seasoned Watchers who no longer pause over their Sunday lattes to draw breath over Mickey’s endless litany of lies and hypocrisy choked on their Eggs Benedict this morning when they came across this whopper in today’s Herald on Sunday:

… Laws was voted off last week after recording the lowest score in the show's history. Laws said he had decided not to make use of his high profile as a mayor and radio host to campaign for votes. "I'm not going to ask for people to vote for me if I can't dance. I didn't lobby at all, didn't make any trips or say vote for me," said Laws.

And as a commenter pointed out on LawsWatch yesterday, Mickey got off to a galloping start in the weekend porkies and hypocrisy race when he went ballistic for the Chron(ic)’s benefit over an Amnesty International request for support for a petition protesting China’s human rights record.

The Chronic breathlessly reports him opining that “Human rights in China is foreign policy and not the domain of local government".

On and on he goes:

"I think it stupid local government get involved in international relations and it’s an attempt to embarrass government. I will not allow the Wanganui District Council to be used as lobby fodder by an interest group which has a grievance against the government’s foreign policy."

Now isn’t that rich coming from the man who has spent most of the past few years using his mayoralty “celebrity” trying to embarrass the government, culminating in his meltdown over its foreign policy on Tonga in a delightful little November 22 2006 “mayoral e-column” called WE’RE IN TONGA… WHY?

It’s been a rotten week for the man who would be mayor and then, just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, the Radio Awards judges joined the Dancing judges and voted him biggest talkback loser. Right at the moment he was being re-humiliated with the replay of his freakshow failure on DTWS, he was watching Marcus Lush get covered in glory at the radio awards as the old lefty from Bluff took the best talk or current affairs host award from shortlisted Leighton Smith and Paul Holmes.

And just to underscore his abject failure in the radio stakes, he didn’t even make any of the many shortlists, though just about everyone else who managed to sit in front of a microphone did.

Face it, Michael, they don’t like you

2007-04-25T08:16:00.000+12:00

The Wanganui Chronicle tells us Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws was uncharacteristically ‘unavailable for comment’ in the aftermath of the humiliating on-screen trainwreck that saw him stumble from the annual orgy of mediocrity and stupidity that passes for celebrity entertainment in Godzone.

However, LawsWatch can reveal it has scooped the Chronic and the Women's Daze, and has obtained an exclusive interview with the elusive loser. After wiping the mayoral spittle from his face our intrepid reporter filed this dispatch:

LW: Well Michael, you sure made a fool of yourself this time. You must be wondering what made you do it?

ML: What gives YOU the right to even speak to me, you pathetic loser. What have you ever done to promote yourself, eh? How many acres of news coverage have you managed to whip up for yourself and your cronies? How many times have you managed to get yourself and your kids in the women’s magazines? How many hours of your own radio talkback show have you managed to hijack to try to con the fools out there to vote for YOU?

LW: Surely that’s not the point. But it’s good to hear you admitting that you’ve lied from the beginning of this slow-moving trainwreck by claiming it’s all for Wanganui and Cancer.

ML: Lie? Of course I lie! Everybody knows that. What are you? Some sort of fool?

LW: It’s been interesting to hear the council insiders’ story of how you threw a fit when you were told you couldn’t hijack the ratepayer funded Wanganui District Council website for your own promotional purposes, and how the CEO caved in and let you make a laughing stock of the city.

ML: Of course he caved in, you fool. Why do you think I handpicked him and the other crawlers I surround myself with? You wouldn’t believe what a sweet deal I managed to get for him, so of course he does what he’s told.

LW: Your blatant use of council resources to promote yourself has been commented on in the DomPost and elsewhere, including by blogger Aucklander-at-large in a piece titled Politicians and Reality TV do not mix. It was noted that Rodney Hide also tried to turn his dancing scam into public support, but at least he paid for it … and the blog wondered whether the Wanganui District Council would charge you for the website exposure, or at least count it against your election expenses.

ML: Who takes any notice of that sort of rubbish by journalistic hacks and has-beens? I haven’t heard John Maslin even mention any of that, let alone complain about it. And everybody knows that he’s the most fearless, independent media sycophant I’ve ever managed to batter into abject submission.

LW: But the fact remains that you’ve effectively subjected yourself to a national popularity contest and despite the vast amounts of free publicity you’ve managed to give yourself, the people have spoken. Face it, Michael, they don’t like you.

ML: That’s just the point, isn’t it? The whole country is awash with subhuman fools who don’t yet know that what’s good for Michael Laws is what’s good for them!!

Dirty Dancing mayor milks the public vote

2007-04-19T18:33:00.000+12:00

A month ago, when Mickey’s dancing incompetence was just a matter for endless mayoral press releases and the famous broken toe was a mere twinkle in his eye, the Chronicle’s senior mayoral sycophant John Maslin noted that Mickey wasn’t about to resile from his criticism last year of the way Southland Mayor Tim Shadbolt curried favour with the public in order to gain a stay of execution from Dancing With The Stars.

In a March 10th story headlined “Dancing in Tim’s shoes” Mas breathlessly reported:

“YOU’VE heard of Dirty Dancing? Well, for Wanganui’s mayor it may be more of a case of desperate dancing. But he will not recant on his stinging criticism of Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt, the man who took ballroom dancing to interesting levels in the first Dancing with the Stars competition in 2005. “This wasn’t about dancing in Tim’s case. He had so engineered the vote that the dancing was irrelevant,” Mr Laws said.

Well, engineering the vote is something Wanganui’s Mayor has obviously spent more time practising of late than the dance demeanour that is needed to convince the judges that, as one perspicacious adjudicator noted at the end of the horribly embarrassing performance in Round One, he’s more than “an overexcited smutty little schoolboy”.

Apart from the loyal and devoted Wanganui press, which has decided to draw a discreet veil over the leering, panting, poncing Mayor’s woeful performance, Mickey treated Women’s Day readers (prime DTWS voting demographic) to a heart-warming family photo and story about how he’s going to be Mr Mum because his partner’s following in that other Vision councillor Sue Pepperell’s tyre treads and fleeing Wanganui for Wellington.

Needless to say, Women’s Daze didn’t waste precious space discussing Ms Brookhammer’s already woeful performance as Mickey’s puppet on Horizons council, or asking whether she’s continue drawing her member’s salary. And even more needless to say, neither did Mas or his lady editor think to do any more than just run Mickey’s press release after being “scooped” by the women’s trash mag.

Nor has Mas thought to ask about the propriety of the Wanganui District Council throwing ratepayers’ dollars at the problem of how to persuade people to vote for Michael Laws despite his obvious incompetence and unwillingness to learn from his mistakes. Add up the hectares of space the ratepayers are buying for Mickey in the likes of Community Link and other council organs, and then ask why council communications like emails are urging people to gamble their hard-earned cash on a proven loser.

But if you have the misfortune to be a council staffer, whatever you do don’t try to defend the WDC website real estate against the mad marauding mayor, because that will land you in trouble. A recent LawsWatch commenter who noted that early resistance to Mickey’s demand for a vote-harvesting picture of him and his long-suffering dance partner had proved futile apparently triggered what’s been described by another commenter as a “witch hunt” at 101 Guyton St. In the event, the result has been a great promotion for this blog with the few remaining staff members who were not already visitors asking how to tap into the only real source of honest comment about Mickey’s Mad Empire.

So as we watch Mickey hanging on by his paws and continue to embarrass Wanganui on national TV with his best Hannibal Lector impersonations, it’s worth remembering Tim Shadbolt’s words of wisdom in Mas’s prescient March story:

“In terms of the dancing, Southland’s mayor has some wisdom to pass on there as well: “Get really fit and really disciplined. If you’re just disciplined but not fit, you’ll never make it. And if you’re fit but not disciplined you won’t make it either.”

Michael and the Bad News Bunny

2007-04-06T08:56:00.000+12:00

Wanganui mayor Michael Laws rubbed his eyes and realised it was Easter. He leapt out of bed and raced out to the lounge to see what the Easter Bunny had brought him. Then he remembered he was supposed to have a broken toe so he stopped, hopped up and down and cursed a couple of times because his kids were threatening to dob him in with Women’s Daze.

But there it was! He could barely contain his excitement! A big Easter Egg in a special box with HIS name on it. Shoving the kids out of his way and shouting something about every parents’ right to smack, his trembling fingers grabbed the gift tag on his Egg. To Michael, from the Local Government Commission is what it said.

"Well, that’s about time," he thought to himself. "They’ve left it till the last minute and Bob’s getting all antsy. But here it is, time to really stick it to those anti-democracy whingers and nutters who reckon Wangas need all the non-Vision councillors it can get."

He ripped away the foil wrapping and bashed the giant egg on the hearth. It shattered into dozens of pieces and out fell the Local Government Commission Determination of representation arrangements for the election of the Wanganui Distsrict Council to be held on 13 October 2007.

His eyes darted through the 14 pages... 91 written submissions... 11 oral presentations... 37 appeals! "So what?!", he screamed. That meant nothing compared to HIS referendum and he'd done a fine job of abusing those malcontents who objected to him chopping the council down to size in the best interests of Michael Laws. Of course, the Local Government Commission would see it his way.

Tearing off page by page and flinging them round the room, he got to page 13. Commission’s Determination. He read on... No (2) was all that mattered.

(2) The Council shall comprise the mayor and 12 councillors, elected by the electors of the district as a whole.

He couldn’t believe his eyes! The fools! The bastards! How DARE they meddle in his town! How dare they listen to those malcontents! He stamped his foot a couple of times and then... It happened! All his fury became channelled into his foot. It lashed out and hit the hearth with the full force of a man thwarted.

"My God!" he screamed, "I've broken my toe!"

Watchers can find the full determination here at the Local Government Commission website. Pages 6 & 7 in particular show that the Commission took the submitters / appellants views on Mickey's referendum misinformation more seriously than it did his grandstanding and abuse. Some excerpts:

We understand that councillors do not have the ability to decline the salary determined by the Remuneration Authority. We agree with appellants / objectors who said that the alleged advantage of a reduced number of councillors was erroneous... Some appellants said that some councillors and the Mayor had not engaged in the representation review process in an open and transparent manner, instead deferring to the referendum results. We note that the High Court has ruled that the weight of numbers in favour of a particular position cannot be a mandatory consideration for it, and that a single submission may, in itself, provide sufficient material for the Commission to reach a decision...

We are satisfied that Referendum '06 ultimately formed a small part of the Council’s formal representation review process.

Happy Easter reading, Watchers!

My name is Michael; my karma is bad!

2007-03-30T19:29:00.000+12:00

Sunday night couch potatoes may have been laughing along with My Name is Earl while they bide their time waiting for Wanganui mayor Michael Laws to spin across the floor in an episode or two of Dancing with the Stars (or as some watchers have uncharitably christened it, Poncing with the Losers) before getting the shove by discerning judges and viewers.

Like the eponymous Earl Hickey, Wanganui’s hapless mayor has stumbled into late middle age leaving a trail of bad-karma-inducing acts behind him. In one last desperate grab to be taken seriously as a "celebrity" (now how hard can that be in the very small pond that passes for celebrity-dom in Godzone? – Ed) he put himself forward as the born-loser of the 2007 series of the tired, overwrought and passed its use-by date DWTS.

Just over ten years ago he and then dance partner Antoinette Beck slow-waltzed from the hallowed halls of Parliament into ignominy and disgrace; since his third-rate cha-cha into the Wanganui mayoralty partnered by the likes of Nicky Higgie and Sue Pepperell, he’s made more stumbles and falls than Tim Shadbolt and Rodney Hide put together on a bad day – especially when he’s in front of TV cameras.

But this afternoon, just 11 days from his debut with the latest TV One stable of fellow dog-tucker nags like Paul Holmes and Suzanne Paul, Michael Laws breathlessly tells us he danced into a whole new self-generated publicity frenzy by BREAKING … wait for it Watchers … HIS BIG TOE!!!

Here in the LawsWatch cave we’ve been getting a mixed response to this SHOCK!! HORROR!! PROBE!! D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R!!! Some Watchers say it serves the little crawler right … others say that in view of the fact he’d be gone by lunchtime if he’d fronted up to the start line of DWTS it’s more than a fortuitous accident. Remember, they say, his oh-so convenient scratching (due to oh-dear so unfortunate injuries) from the 2006 Mayoral Mile and the Twin Towers climb. Not to mention his failure to deliver on his threat to appear naked in the main street of Ohakune when the Overlander was saved.

Remember, say the Doubting Thomases (and Julians, Dicks, Annes, Georges and Timmys), his ignominious exit from Julie Christie’s Trashy Celebrity Treasure Island after a couple of episodes in which the contempt of his fellow wannabe-celebs was almost palpable?

Could it be, they insist, that Cunning Mickey did the numbers and figured he’d get more column centimetres (certainly from his old pal Mas at the Wanganui Chronic) and seconds air time by bumping his BIG TOE and scratching himself from the BIG EVENT, where he was sure to be an also-ran? Or does he figure (as one National Radio commenter posited) that if he does limp up to the birdcage he’ll get a “sympathy vote”. Certainly, his constant faked self-deprecation about flat-footedness would have worn thin by the second ad break and txters all round New Zealand, desperate to get him out of their lounges, would be boosting TV One and Telecom’s profits.

As an aside, LawsWatch – ever concerned about the health and wellbeing of Wanganui’s one and only mayor – admits to having been more concerned in recent days about the threat to Michael Laws’ typing digits, such has been the overactive commenting emerging from the Laws camp after kids' bedtime and during the 9-noon news and commercial breaks at Radio Live. As Watchers have pointed out, much of it, especially the evening frenzy, has been quite breathlessly obsessed with the bodily attributes of Mickey’s 20-something dance tutor.

Curiouser and curiouser … because as the 11am news hit the Radio Live frequencies this morning the dedicated commenter who some Watchers have christened anonymickey (because he’s got Mayor Mickey’s inimitable style down to a tee) made this prophetic contribution to this blog:

That dancer girl is beautiful. How come a prick like ML gets all the breaks. It is enough to make me lose my faith in karma.

Perhaps he too is an inveterate watcher of My Name is Earl and, as Mickey Hickey must have worked out by now:

When you do good things, good things will happen to you, do bad things and they'll come back and bite you in the ass.

Let’s hear what you think, Watchers? But with all due concern for our poor Mayor we would urge anonymickey to give it a rest and keep that BIG TOE of his RICED (Rested Iced Compressed and Elevated) and to save his typing digits for his next BIG PRESS RELEASE to Mas.

Comments on this post are now closed.

Sold to the lowest bidder

2007-03-26T21:55:00.000+12:00

We've had quite a few people complain that the diVision recruitment pamphlet was so poorly reproduced on the front page of the River City Press that they could hardly make out the faces, let alone the names, of most of the people pictured on the back.

Every ready to assist, LawsWatch forensic scientists have placed the pages under a microscope and, by applying certain specialised filters we are able to reproduce at left, in perfect clarity, the line-up of compliant sock puppets Mickey and Bog Walker are planning on foisting on the electorate*.

What's more, our filters have been able to bypass the somewhat prosaic descriptions in the diVision document and provide essential background information on what drew these folk to want to mouth Mickey's madness in the first place.

Especially when those who were inveigled (or narrowly avoided being inveigled) last time are now busy spilling the beans.

Rob Vinsen, target du jour of Mickey's supporters, revealed on LawsWatch that he'd been received not one but two "telephoned approaches" from Mickey to join the diVision ticket. As he tells it:

In the last election after refusing Michael Laws two telephoned approaches to me I ran for the Regional Council. The Vision momentum (and advertising) was enough for Leonie Brookhammer to pip me by about 5,300 to 5,600. Bob Walker trailed well behind. I wonder how many votes Leonie would have got if voters knew what her subsequent attendance record at Horizons meetings was going to be.

But more telling still is the admission from Joan Street that Mickey's hand-picked candidates are assigned tasks that most people with an ounce of integrity would refuse:

I was given by the great man the task of being in charge of letter-writing - this was in the presence of other Vision candidates at the time I was to agree to letters being written by ML(and, perhaps, other candidates) and then I was to have them signed by someone who supported Vision from a list to be given to me by ML.

Nicki Higgie and I discussed the morality of this - I refused - and the proposition was dropped... though letters were written by Sue's husband at that time and signed by his mother - remember???

Now why would Mickey and Bog Walker think that the people they'd surrounded themselves with would perpetrate such a fraud? Simple: they'd paid good money to own them. Joan Street again:

Without going over old ground I need once more to clarify the cost of standing for Vision and the fact that - having paid the $2,500 to ML as [the] cost, according to him, of my proposed candidature, I was appalled to find that the cost - according to the sheet presented to [the] council [returning] officer after the election by ML (unseen by me!) of my standing was twice that!

I told Noeline M of my dismay at knowing nothing of this - and was told it was legal for ML to pay extra as he had done!!!! -for me!!! I remember the conversation with Sue P. where she stated, like me, she knew nothing of all this and both of us agreed we would have refused such an offer if we had been asked to accept it...

I was such an idiot not to see what ML was really like! I feel sad for those at the coalface who still bear with him and those who post here without any real knowledge of his horrific personality.

Now this may or may not be true. We'd tend to take Ms Street at her word, but at least one anon proposed a different scenario - one which, we must admit, we also find plausible:

If Mickey had approached you he'd've said "On top of your own contribution you'll receive an extra $2,500 from party coffers for your own personal campaign fund - that's our investment, a symbol of our belief in you, Joan!"

That's what campaign managers do.

And you'd have gone along with it. That's how Laws and other populists get by. Enough people are prepared to go along for long enough.

Joan however came to her own defence, pointing out that our anonymous commentator was somewhat naive to think that in this alone Mickey would have acted honourably.

Regardless of whether the additional funding was offered before or received after the event, however, the intent is the same - to purchase the loyalty and, perhaps, the conscience of the recipient. That's why political parties and candidates must declare any sizeable donations received from a single source. But at local body level the amounts spent are so relatively paltry that the price of a councillor's soul - at least on Mickey's abacus - is a mere $2,500.

Does it really matter, therefore, whose picture ends up appearing on diVision's electioneering material? Because every face staring back at you shares one thing in common - they're owned by Mickey.

* Resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, may not be intentional ;-)

Update (1.30pm 27 March): Much debate over Mickey's performance on TV3 last night. The interview - for those who missed it or would like to see it again - can be viewed here.

Further update (3.30 pm 27 March): The LawsWatch review of the interview would have to disagree with those commenters who thought Campbell did a good job.

The proposed gang legislation is a muddled, populist, impractical, inoperable piece of legislation and that's where the focus should have been. A few questions about enforcement would have easily tripped up Mickey, but Campbell chose to pursue a line of questioning centred on the fact that Mickey's Sunday Star Times "damn the politically correct" rantings on everthing from peanut allergies to Section 59 was utterly morally inconsistent with his stance on gangs. Well of course it is.

Mickey is the most expedient politician New Zealand has ever produced (and that's saying something). He'll say whatever suits his case at the time and if he's called on his inconsistency he'll respond with some schoolboy insult such as "Are you on drugs?". Going that route with Mickey - attempting to get him to admit he's inconsistent - was about as likely to work as trying to get Winston to admit he's grabbed his office by the baubles and isn't about to let go.

Campbell let an opportunity to grill Mickey about just how his populist flim-flam would be practically applied to everyday life in the streets of Wanganui go by. Instead he merely demonstrated - yet again - that Wanganui's Mayor is an unabashed populist with dictatorial tendencies who'll resort to personal abuse about anyone who dares disagree with him. And that's hardly news.

Comments on this post are now closed.

Nobody's (s)miling

2007-03-22T14:35:00.000+12:00

Oh alright then. Commenters have asked us why we haven't gleefully posted on the flop that was the Mayoral Mile. As we said in response, mainly because it'd be like posting about the weather - stating the obvious.

That anything established by Mickey for Mickey is inevitably set to fail, either spectacularly or - as in this case - by slowly withering. For instance: Mainstreet Mayoral office any closer to opening, Mickey?

But the Watchers have been bombarding our inbox with little gems such as the fact that woeful Winc had to race down to the riverside market on Saturday morning and make an offer he couldn't refuse to the mobile coffee guy who's always there to get him to up stakes and move to Cooks for the Mayoral Mile.

Then you have the Chron saying there were about 1,000 there for Saturday night's premiere races. True perhaps, but Watchers tell us that by around lunchtime it seemed pretty deserted. Take away the Collegiate kids ("ringies") who are pressganged into competing, plus their doting parents, aunts, uncles etc and, in the estimate of at least one Watcher, "you'd be left with bugger all real attendees".

Obviously the Chron's sports editor David Ogilvie didn't get the Maslin and MacNicol memo regarding sycophancy toward all things Mickey, because he commented:

Something has to be done, though, about the general running of the night - was it a case of too many irons in the fire? The athletics people were becoming frutstrated by the other hoo-haa and they couldn't get things down that they wanted.

There's some mediation to be done, a proper power base to be established for the running of future meetings.

And he asks how, with minor sponsor Mickey supposedly standing down, future events will be funded. Simple, says, Mickey: "We’ve put it in the annual plan for next year".

So an event which was only ever established to promote Michael Laws (otherwise, as a commenter asked, why isn't it called the Wanganui Mile?) is to be left high and dry by it's progenitor and the full cost of running future events dumped on ratepayers.

Rob Vinsen's summation of the whole disaster, posted to LawsWatch a few days ago, is worth highlighting:

...the Mayor got the Council to underwrite the event for $64,800. He put in $10,000, they hoped to get another $10,000 from ticket sales etc leaving the ratepayer funding the rest providing everything went to budget (unlike the Boxing Day Concert).

Now, I attend most athletics and cycling meetings and the plain truth is that if the competitors don't have their mums and dads watching there wouldn't be a crowd. The Mayoral Mile is not a formula for mass participation - unlike say the Round Lake Taupo Challenge which attracts 16,000 starters and as many again supporting.

Why? Because Taupo is a) a challenging event, and b) it is also a relay, attracting teams of starters. Why would anybody travel to Wanganui to jog 4 times around Cooks Gardens? Quite frankly if any promotor went to the Council with a plan to run an athletics type meet and asked for $64,800 backing they would be laughed out the door.

No economic case could be presented that would support ratepayers funds going into such an event - unlike the Masters Games for whom the Council comes up with only $40,000 each two years. I don't see that the Mayoral Mile has a future if Michael Laws is not there railroading his Vision councillors into voting for it.

Coming on the back of the Bikes disaster, the Boxing Day Concert disaster, the $60,000 wasted on containers for the Masters Games thanks to Mickey's mad Splash Centre scheme and who knows what else that hasn't come to light yet, Mickey couldn't be trusted to organise the tea trolley at a CWI meeting, let alone the proverbial fesitivities in a brewery.

Comments on this post are now closed.

The worm's turn

2007-03-19T18:11:00.000+12:00

When even the Chron takes notice of something which doesn't paint Mickey in the most positive light, it's a sure sign something is up. So even John Maslin couldn't resist noting that whilst Mickey was having yet another hissy fit at the MRI in a blatant and ultimately futile attempt to justify his earlier criticism, he was shot down not only by Muzza Hughes (who actually represents Wanganui on the MRI and thus might know a little more than Mickey about what went on) but by Dotty.

"The Wanganui District Council is not the only player in this and, Michael, we know you have your view on this" said Dotty. Translation: you've embarrassed us enough with other territorial local authorities Mickey, now be a good boy and belt up.

This sudden show of bravery might actually be admirable if it wasn't purely motivated by Dotty's now desperate need to distance herself from the handbasket headed for Hell which is diVision. Even the likes of Randhir Dahya, Don McGregor and Rangi Wills have occasionally choked on the garbage they've been fed. But Mickey has always been able to rely on his dumpy chorus line of Don McGregor and Nicki Higgie, with Sue Pepperell in the backline from Wellington and Phillipa Baker-Hogan trying to sing solo from the wings so as to keep her distance from the melee on stage.

No matter what the provocation - be it abuse of female Council staff, failing to attend civic functions and expecting her to fill in, or insisting she be a human shield during the Code of Conduct hearings - Dotty has stood by her man.

Only now, when he's made it abundantly clear that he won't be standing by her; that the three years of abject humiliation have all been for nothing, has the worm realised she won't be getting her turn at the Mayoralty after all.

It's pique and political expediency which have led to this independent frame of mind, nothing more. Dotty has been used and cast aside, yet she was a willing participant the entire time - no doubt laying back and thinking of the Mayoralty. To expect admiration for her "independence" now underestimates the intelligence of the electorate - and there's no better illustration of that than the fact that even the pro-Mickey commenters here are following the lead of their idol and consigning Dotty to the scrap heap.

And so ends another political career of someone foolish enough to align themselves with Michael Laws...

Comments on this post are now closed.

Bad news bares all

2007-03-11T20:24:00.000+13:00

Watchers thinking of attending tomorrow's Strategy Committee meeting had best take along hearing aids, ear trumpets and perhaps request the Council flash subtitles on a TV monitor because it'll be very difficult to hear, such will be the deafening flapping of pigeons coming home to roost.

Before we get to the meaty parts of the agenda (or the gristly bits, from Michael Laws' perspective) it's worth noting that the document highlights the functional illiteracy of one of Mickey's hand-picked flunkies, Senior Policy Advisor Stu Hylton.

Not only is there reference to "the amount of 'events'" but also this little gem: "The council’s officers who are currently trying the 'reign back' the types and frequency of events"...

Isn’t it cute, the way he puts quotes around his grammatical clangers? We wonder if he puts in hours colouring in title pages for the original reports, like some Watchers used to do in the hope that their teacher wouldn't notice the fact they couldn't spell. Or form a coherent recommendation. But then we went on to graduate from primary school...

Anyway, aside from lamenting just how hard it is to find good help nowadays, Mickey must be fuming at the performance of those other hand-picked lackeys, WINC.

Right there in what should be an innocuous introduction, Chairman Ron Janes drops a clanger:

This report will discuss the activities of Wanganui Inc (WINC) for the 17 weeks since my last report to the Strategy Committee dated 3 November 2006…

Seventeen weeks?! At the time of WINC’s "birth" concerns from Councillor Westwood et al that it would lack accountability were met with an assurance that it was perfectly accountable because it would report six weekly. And my what a lot of dirty smelly water has stagnated under the bridge in the last 17 weeks.

Of course the "discussion" isn't meant to include the mugs in the public gallery who actually pay for the Michael Laws Memorial Events Orgy. The proposal is to kick the public out at the end of the meeting but to let Ron stay to discuss "Wanganui Inc structure: Staff and commercial matters" which no doubt is about Mickey deciding to yank his bastard offspring back into the Vision family.

The remainder of the report is riddled with some quotes from Razor Gang Ron which we'll bet won't see the light of day in the Chronic (unless Mickey decides to turn on WINC and blame them for his shortcomings, in which case of course they will be published, well marinated in Guyton Street Spin Potion):

WINC continues working with a low year-end profit expectation but stable cashflow. The year-end predicted profit/loss is $5,000 profit versus a budget of $20,000 profit.

WINC has met with a number of the top 30 companies in Wanganui … feedback from companies has included: ...A view that events are getting all the attention and local business growth is being overlooked.

Yikes Ron, that sounds spookily like what John Martin said when he launched his campaign. Positioning to keep your nose in the trough under a new administration, are we?

But the comedy of errors doesn't end there Watchers. Ron goes on to say:

Branding: A successful launch of the new ... branding ... comment has been very positive and the brand family provides excellent leverage for Wanganui.

Of course the fact is, this is a joke. There have been numerous letters to the Chronic saying it’s dated, boring, stupid etc., and much derision around town, including from visitors. And most notably from mad Rana Waitai, who thought he was leaping in to help Mickey attack the tourism MRI but muddled it up with WINC's Mickey-inspired "branding" and called it a "wet dish cloth".

But wait, as the best snake oil salesmen say (and Razor Ron has sold his fair share of that particular ungent in his time), there's more:

BOXING DAY CONCERT:

Income $123,069; expenditure $220,321; loss $97,251... Facility costs – less due to some efficiency gains and a favourable rate from Cooks.

Yep, $97,251 of ratepayers' cash down the failing sewer and that's despite Mickey’s other tame lackeys at Cooks Gardens giving them mate’s rates so the venue cost came in at $16,640.89 versus a budgeted $25,000. If it wasn't for that, losses from that one event would have topped the $105,000 mark.

They even managed to drop a set of speakers during set-up which "likely will be covered by the crane’s insurer". And on it goes:

Security – $18,113 cf budget $10,000 – More due to WINC initially assessing we could make efficiencies with this but subsequently deciding in conjunction with the police and facility management that robust and quality security was important.

Attendance/sales: 2100 paying attendees, plus corporate box holders at approximately 200, and comps of 200.

So the ratepayer subsidy for each paying person was $46.31.

And it looks like Antoinette Beck was called in to survey the bikers at the cemetery circuit (what can she have been up to?!):

There was a 93% awareness of the concert at Bikes. Of those at the Bikes 28% 'needed to get home or were tired'. 14% thought 'it was too expensive'. 7% said 'the performers didn’t appeal'.

So what did Antoinette do with the other 51 percent we ask, and did it have anything to do with all those hay bales?

Never fear though, Watchers. This wasn't an example of yet more gross wastage of public money in the name of Making Michael Laws Look Good. Because we can all benefit from what Antoinnete calls "learnings". (We presume this is something she learned from Borat (renowned author of "Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan") during the time Mickey sent her into exile.

The learning from this includes:
An international act should be sought if cost structured in this manner.
A lack of exclusivity likely had a negative impact.
The Bike racing does not necessarily bring a crowd that attends a concert and accommodation is already stretched.

Gee, who'd have thunk it. But now we've spent all that money on proving what good common sense ought to have told us in the first place, the bad news for Mickey must surely be over, right?

Wrong.

A year ago there was a ludicrous spin job done on the BERL report on Wanganui’s economic performance wherein the Chron helpfully confused absolute and relative rankings, to the benefit of Mickey of course.

The Wanganui district economy has come third on the BERL (Business and Economic Research Limited) local authority rankings in 2005, skyrocketing from just 56th place the previous year... Mayor Michael Laws said the result was a stunning achievement for the district.

Now BERL (in the person of Jiani Wu and Dr Ganesh Nana) are delivering the unvarnished bad news. And even John Quisling... sorry, Maslin and Kirsty Macnicol won't be able to spin this as something it's not, though we're sure they'll try:

Executive summary

All Key Performance Indicators except business units growth, had negative growth in 2006. It includes resident population growth, real value added growth, GDP per capita growth, employment growth, productivity growth and business size growth.

GDP decreased by 3.2 percent compared to a 2.2 percent increase nationally and employment growth, at -0.1 percent compared to a 2.2 percent increase nationally... These outcomes resulted in the decrease of GDP per capita at the rate of 3.2 percent. Productivity growth, at -3.9 percent, was still worse below the national decline of 1.0 percent.

Absolute rankings

Overall rank 2005: 28; 2006: 57. All indicators are down (Ed: they even use a filled-in black downward pointing arrow, just so the Chron don't try to substitute another phrase like, say, "up") except for resident population growth.

Nero had his fiddle... Mickey has his cha cha.

Meanwhile, the proposed Gang Bill has been mugged again, this time by the editorial writers in Mickey's old stamping ground. Hawkes Bay Today (sister paper of the Chron) asks:

...more importantly what practical benefit will it bring? The "patch" is a manifestation of tribal, gang behaviour. It's not the other way around. It will be simple enough to circumvent such a ban using other common symbols, from hairstyles to body piercing and tattoos. And if they are to be banned, who is to choose what skin adornments or haircuts are acceptable?

It would be tempting to put any such law to a simple, if expensive, test: If Mongrel Mob members were identified by their Gucci loafers (as members of Britain's hoodlum "Chav" subculture are by their beige-checked Burberry caps) then luxury designer footwear would have to be barred from treading inner-city streets.

Such a ban is little more than a gesture. It satisfies the need to be seen to be doing something but is unlikely to curb boorish and criminal behaviour, which ought to be the real targets

A gesture? Ah yes, of course. That's one of the few things Mickey's good at.

Comments on this post are now closed.

A bad day for LawsWatch, a worse one for Mickey

2007-03-09T13:59:00.000+13:00

As regular readers will know, Watchers usually devote considerable time to creating pictorial flights of fancy which, we'll admit, have as their primary aim making Mickey look faintly ridiculous.

While not always worthy of a place in the Sarjeant, there have been a number of illustrations of which we've been rather proud. They have, we've felt, perfectly captured the underlying vanity and slight unhingedness of Wanganui's Mayor. But we've been outdone. Our almost two years of effort have been magnificently eclipsed by none other than Mickey himself, with this effort.

It's his official "Dancing with the Stars" pic. Nothing which we could possibly do to it could improve it. The satin. The plunging neckline. The chest hair. The look which suggests he didn't have to be tied down and forcibly made to dress this way but in fact thinks he looks quite spiffy. Never in our wildest imaginings (or perhaps worst morning-after visions) could we have created such an image.

And what's more, we've been trounced in our ability to predict Mickey's next move by none other than the DomPost's TV reviewer, Jane Bowron, who presciently writes:

Dollars for donuts mayor Michael Laws will make a beeline for the costume department and opt for the one-piece dancing suits male ballroom dancers favour and will make sure his top half is open right down to the waist.

We admit, we read that and scoffed. No surely, we thought, even Mickey - especially at his age - would go for something elegant and stylish, like the tux we portrayed him wearing in our last post. But we couldn't have been more wrong, or Bowron more right. She also highlights the fact that many of the "Stars" this season have resumes which contain a lot of prefixes like "used to be" or "former":

TVNZ's announcement that this year's DWTS lineup includes Treasure Island has-beens such as Greer Robson, Suzanne Paul, April Ieremia and Michael Laws proves that the network has no money in the coffers to hire any real talent and has to rely on its stable of trained mice to peddle the wheel of its most profitable show.

Having the current crop of DWTS leering from the covers of the women's magazines as they tell the breathless story of their new found passion for the paso doble and show off their amazing weight loss for eight long weeks is too depressing for words.

Someone should start up a campaign similar to recent suggestions to have cigarettes placed out of sight at shop counters, and magazines bearing the heavy cargo of shameless self- promotion from these come-back kids should follow suit.

Meanwhile his latest would-be headline-grabber, the gang law being promoted by Mickey's sock puppet Chester Borrows, is dead in the water - at least according to Local Government NZ who say it's "unlikely to succeed".

Then there's Tuesday's Strategy Committee meeting, which looks to be packed with items potentially as painful for the Mayor as getting a short hair caught in the V of a plunging neckline. We'll post on that in a day or two.

Comments on this post are now closed.

Turning the tables

2007-03-06T12:26:00.000+13:00

Mickey just loves his referenda. Careful manipulation of the facts and an electorate where around half the people are too disinterested or disillusioned to bother casting a vote make it easy to derive the outcome you want. And if that fails, you can always throw away the votes and cook up the result yourself (c.f. The Demon Profession, re the NZ First list).

Of course he doesn't describe it that way. The diVision "democracy policy" says, grandly:

Vision Wanganui will, literally, give power to the people. A real and direct influence upon all issues of local significance and a more effective input into Council decision-making. We will also pioneer the concept of ‘direct democracy’ and ensure that Wanganui leads the rest of the country in its decision-making processes. We will create a genuine partnership between the Council and its ratepayers and residents.

Etc etc... but buried beneath the rhetoric is this:

1.2 Citizens themselves may institute a district-wide referendum if 10% or over of those enrolled on the Wanganui District Council electoral roll gather the requisite signatures. Any subsequent referendum held would be binding upon the council (provided that the outcome did not breach any government legislation or legal guidelines).

Hold that thought, Watchers, and turn your attention to the latest piece of Mickery... sorry, trickery, from the Mayor who promised "nil rates increases": a rates increase. Of 1.8 percent, no less, on top of a 3 percent increase in 2006/07, for a grand total of 4.8 percent over three years.

And that's if you accept that 2005/06 actually brought forth a nil rates rise, which ~~slobbering lapdog~~ "senior reporter" John Maslin inevitably does. That of course was Michael Laws-speak for "some people will get screwed while some will benefit, for a median rise of nil". But who's counting, right? Certainly not Mas, who was editor at the time.

We could pause at this point to recite (somewhat predictably, we admit) our usual mantra: that this additional impost on ratepayers wouldn't be necessary (and Michael Laws would be our "Person of the Year" rather than Midweak's) if it weren't for the construction of monuments to Mickey's reign (e.g. the Splash Centre) and his personality (an enormous, and growing, legal bill).

But we're often asked whether we have alternative solutions to Wanganui's problems. In this case, we do.

A quick trawl through Wikipedia reminds us of California Proposition 13 (1978):

Proposition 13, officially titled the "People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation," was a ballot initiative to amend the constitution of the state of California. The initiative was enacted by the voters of California on June 6, 1978. It would eventually be upheld as constitutional by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U.S. 1 (1992). Proposition 13 is embodied in Article 13A of the California Constitution.

The most significant portion of the act is the first paragraph, which capped real estate taxes:

SECTION 1. (a) The maximum amount of any ad valorem tax on real property shall not exceed One percent (1%) of the full cash value of such property. The one percent (1%) tax to be collected by the counties and apportioned according to law to the districts within the counties.
Its passage resulted in a cap on property tax rates in the state, reducing them by an average of 57%. In addition to lowering property taxes, the initiative also contained language requiring a two-thirds majority in both legislative houses for future increases in all state tax rates or amounts of revenue collected, including income tax rates. Proposition 13 received an enormous amount of publicity, not only in California, but throughout the United States. Passage of the initiative presaged a "taxpayer revolt" throughout the country that is thought to have contributed to the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980.

In fact Massachusetts, Oregon, Colorado and Florida all went on to copy key provisions of the Proposition 13, while voters in 18 other states passed nearly 40 statewide tax-limiting measures. And bear in mind, Watchers, that in the US local councils not only fund the more prosaic stuff like sewage and water but also pay for police, fire brigades etc. So when Proposition 13 was advanced the naysayers predicted anarchy. Of course it never happened, and in fact the state grew faster than ever.

The measure is not perfectly drafted. For one thing, it had the unexpected result of capping rates from commercial properties and thus shifting the overall burden toward homeowners. The share of state revenue from residential property taxes has steadily increased, while the proportion from commercial properties has steadily declined. But having been enacted in the US for over quarter of a century, it's easy to see where Proposition 13 succeeds (stopping Councils raising rates to pay for their own follies) and where it fails, and to draft something better.

So here's our solution. Getting ten percent of voters - stung by an average 4.8% increase to cover Mickey's profligacy over the past three years - to sign a citizens-initiated referendum imposing a rates cap similar to Proposition 13 ought not to be hard.

Once the thing is signed, march on Guyton Street and deliver it to Michael Laws (cameras in tow, of course, so he and Antoinette Back can't lose a few reams of it between the front steps and his office). Then sit back and watch the fun, and start thinking of what you'll spend your extra money on once Mad Mickey's Expenditure Tango trips over its own shoelaces.

More on Proposition 13 (and well worth a read) from the Cato Institute, Cal-Tax Research, PBS, and the full text of the law is here.

Comments on this post are now closed.

Follow the money

2007-02-27T20:34:00.000+13:00

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.

Comments on this post are now closed.

Prophet at the margins

2007-02-22T17:33:00.000+13:00

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

2007-02-18T14:26:00.000+13:00

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.

Comments on this post are now closed.

In hot water

2007-02-15T13:19:00.000+13:00

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:

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.

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.

Comments on this post are now closed.

The geyser erupts

2007-02-13T19:20:00.000+13:00

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:

Did the Board receive, as Mr Laws alleges, legal advice suggesting that the logo provided by Velocity infringed the trademark of any other body?

From whom was such advice received?

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?)

If such advice was received, what action did the Board take in this regard?

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?

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.

Comments on this post are now closed.

Containing expenses

2007-02-08T21:38:00.000+13:00

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:

Hardly anything
Not much at all
$60,000 (yes, that's right, $60,000)
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.

Comments on this post are now closed.

Art for publicity's sake

2007-02-03T16:27:00.000+13:00

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.

Comments on this post are now closed.

So is "fat brown poof" okay then?

2007-01-29T16:51:00.000+13:00

The Broadcasting Standards Authority cost NZ taxpayers $1,254,208 in 2005/06.

It considers that Mickey calling someone a "fat brown slug" or, for that matter, an RNZ commenter referring to "a poof" on radio is okay because "a high level of invective is necessary for the authority to conclude that a broadcast encourages denigration" and that when it comes to talkback "commentary on current issues and topics is consistently challenging and provocative in this environment".

In the latest batch of decisions, in fact, only one complaint in 11 was upheld.

Of 153 complaints received in 2005/06 the BSA upheld (all or in part) 19, or 12.4% and refused to uphold 83% (1.44 Mb pdf file).

Even if it finds the grossest possible breach of good taste and decency has occurred, the maximum penalty it can impose is a fine of $5,000. Canwest made $24.3 million in the first quarter of this financial year.

Thus the BSA is costing us $8,197 per complaint received and a staggering $66,011 per complaint upheld.

BSA chief executive Jane Wrightson claims the low upholding rate is because "broadcasters were very clear on the rules and in most cases followed them".

So if it's open slather for Mickey and the other ratings-challenged radio hosts to abuse all and sundry in their quest for "popularity", and the largest penalty their bosses can receive amounts to 0.2% of a quarter of one year's profits, our "challenging and provocative" response to the BSA is:

Comments on this post are now closed.

A spray from the vomit geyser

2007-01-25T15:33:00.000+13:00

anon misguidely comments: 122,000 listeners. That is pretty bloody good - no wonder the mayor gets the big bucks.

This refrain of Mickey's supposed radio potency is becoming as tired as... well, as tired as his predictable right wing rants to a dwindling audience. So let's take a closer look at this assertion, shall we?

Radio ratings are calculated by monitoring the audience for those stations who pay to have their names included. That means smaller niche stations such as Auckland's bFM get lumped under "other". And most importantly for our purposes it means listeners to National Radio are simply taken out of the equation altogether. However, according to NBR in 2005, National Radio had 517,400 listeners aged 15 years and over.

So, bear in mind that the share of the pie accredited to any station is the share of those who listen to commercial radio. In some markets, particularly Wellington, it's likely that National Radio's audience exceeds that of the top commercial talk station, as was explained by Russell Brown on Mediawatch. In the days when National Radio used to be included, it would often be number one in the Wellington market and one of the top-rating stations in most of the large city markets.

The ratings are also a little unfair to talk radio, in that it's unlikely a dedicated listener to say, Mai FM will be induced to switch to John Banks or Michael Laws or Leighton Smith.

So what we've done below is calculate a percentage based on the total audience for commercial talk radio (Newstalk ZB, Radio Live, Radio Pacific, Radio Sport) only in an attempt to fairly measure of how well the competing talk stations are doing amongst those pre-disposed to listen, and against one another rather than against the entire spectrum.

The numbers in brackets are the stations' position in the market (excluding of course National Radio), out of all stations surveyed.

AUCKLAND
Newstalk 195,600 (1st)
Radio Sport 56,700 (14th)
Radio Live 46,900 (16th)
Radio Pacific 30,700 (20th & last)
Total 329,900 of which Mickey's mob have 14% and Newstalk have 59%.

DUNEDIN
Newstalk 13,900 (6th)
Radio Sport 8,300 (8th)
Radio Live 5,500 (11th)
Radio Pacific 3,200 (14th & last)
Total 30,900 - Mickey 17%, Newstalk 45%.

WAIKATO
Newstalk 24,900 (6th)
Radio Sport 13,000 (10th)
Radio Pacific 6,000 (11th)
Radio Live 4,900 (12th & last)
Total 48,800 - Mickey 10%, Newstalk 51%

CHRISTCHURCH
Newstalk ZB 52,700 (5th)
Radio Sport 30,200 (9th)
Radio Live 22,600 (11th)
Radio Pacific 10,000 (14th)
Total 115,500 - Mickey 20%, Newstalk 46%

WELLINGTON
Newstalk 36,900 (3rd)
Radio Sport 18,400 (9th)
Pacific 7,600 (12th)
Radio Live 6,300 (14th & last)
Total 69,200 - Mickey 9%, Newstalk 53%

NORTHLAND
Newstalk 13,300 (4th)
Radio Sport 4,200 (9th)
Radio Live 4,100 (10th)
Radio Pacific 4,100 (11th & last)
Total 25,700 - Mickey 16%, Newstalk 52%

ROTORUA
Newstalk 4,200 (8th)
Radio Live 2,500 (10th)
Radio Pacific 2,400 (11th)
Radio Sport 2,100 (13th & last)
Total 11,200 - Mickey 22%, Newstalk 37%

HAWKES BAY
Newstalk 13,200 (5th)
Radio Sport 7,300 (11th)
Radio Live 5,300 (13th)
Pacific 4,000 (14th & last)
Total 29,800 - Mickey 18%, Newstalk 44%

TAURANGA
Newstalk ZB 17,500 (5th)
Radio Sport 8,200 (10th)
Radio Live 7,200 (11th)
Pacific 4,100 (13th & last)
Total 37,000 - Mickey 20%, Newstalk 47%

TARANAKI
Newstalk 11,600 (5th)
Radio Sport 4,600 (10th)
Pacific 3,600 (11th)
Radio Live 3,200 (12th & last)
Total 23,000 - Mickey 14%, Newstalk 50%

MANAWATU
Newstalk 9,900 (7th)
Radio Sport 7,000 (9th)
Radio Live 6,500 (11th)
Radio Pacific 4,300 (12th & last)
Total 27,700 - Mickey 23%, Newstalk 36%

NELSON
Newstalk 6,300 (6th)
Radio Sport 3,900 (7th)
Radio Live 2,400 (9th)
Radio Pacific 2,000 (10th)
Total 14,600 - Mickey 16%, Newstalk 43%

SOUTHLAND
Newstalk 7,000 (9th)
Radio Live 4,400 (11th)
Radio Pacific 3,500 (12th)
Radio Sport 3,200 (13th & last)
Total 18,100 - Mickey 24%, Newstalk 39%

NETWORK MORNING SHOWS (NATIONAL)
Newstalk ZB 285 200
Radio Sport 67 700
Radio Live 59 900
Radio Pacific 34 400
Total 447,200 - Mickey 8%, Newstalk 64%

Source: The October Research International Radios 2006 survey, the latest data available.

We're not quite where the various anons get their 122,000 figure from - we presume by adding together the above area figures for Radio Live to reach 121,400, then rounding up n(rather generously).

Well here's some other figures for you:

Radio Live is either at the bottom of the market (of all station, not just talk) or saved from being bottom by the equally poor performance of its sister station Pacific, in six out of 13 markets.

Radio Live's best position is 9th (Nelson). It sits at 10th in two other markets (Northland and Rotorua) and beneath that position in every other market.

The picture in the big cities is even worse: 16th in Auckland compared to Newstalk's 1st; 14th and last in Wellington whilst Newstalk is 3rd; 14th in Christchurch compared to Newstalk's 5th; 11th in Dunedin compared to Newstalk's 6th place.

Other Radioworks stations set up specifically to target TRN stations - The Breeze into Auckland to take on Coast and The Rock competitor to Hauraki - have performed much better, with the latter actually overtaking its rival.

Only in Rotorua, Manawatu and Southland does Radio Live come close to having an audience half the size of Newstalk ZB.

Given that Radio Live's stated aim was to compete with Newstalk ZB, it's not performing at all well. And it's not just the quantitative reviews, either. You'd be hard-pressed to find a kind word for Mickey's performance or that of his Canadian employers. A random selection from a quick search:

"Michael Laws' talkback is so desperate to be provocative that is weirdly compelling." - Graham Read on Public Address.

"I find Mr Laws to be the worst of a rotten lot... I actually thought that talkback presenters were there to facilitate discussion. But nowdays, instead of Radio Live talkback, with Michael Laws, (which is what it once was), we have The Michael Laws Show, on Radio Live. IMO that is where it is going wrong." - mauggie, commenting at zillion.co.nz.

"I miss good intelligent debate... I miss people taking me on on some issue of the day... it's a sad day when I rely on Michael Laws and Steven Joyce on Radio Live for my intelligent conversation" - Megan, writing on Tim and Megan.

"I found Radio Live on the AM, but Michael Laws was saying nothing to me about my life." - Russell Brown on Hard News.

"...listening to Laws’ programme is like watching from space as the issues of the day circle majestically in orbit around the huge, gaseous planet of Laws’ ego" - Ryan Brown-Haysom on Critic.

"...some radio broadcasters (in particular Michael Laws) weren't satisfied with these solutions and instead put forward their own - solutions based on blatent falsities." - Mirage Media.

"...Yep, as always Mr Laws is spot on. :roll: We're so lucky to have such top quality media people in this place. :laugh:" - George M, commenting on the EmigrateNZ forum.

"The Mayor of Wanganui, Michael Laws, says it's because the late Tongan king was a despot and "a big brown slug" who ruled a corrupt country. Nice." - Jacqueline Maley and Alexa Moses in The Sydney Morning Herald.

"I didn't ring up and challenge Laws-unto-himself with the fact that he is a fear mongering f***wit who trades in race baiting because the power had come back on and thankfully I could do more important things like cleaning the dishes..." Martyn Bradbury on Tumeke.

"I really hope that this is just over the top redneck thought babble aimed at saving Radio Live from another abysmal ratings book – but the glee he seems to take in justifying the sterilization of ‘undesirables’ makes for truly offensive reading." - Bradbury again.

"Michael Laws was quite abusive to people who didn't agree with him." - Judy Standeven commenting at The Briefing Room.

"Michael Laws... can anyone say 'tired' and 'witless'" - Peter Cresswell on Not PC.

"I swear the Laws guy needs to just shut the **** up. I hated him the first time I ever saw him when he was on a Radio Live television ad. He's standing there with a black background and he's spouting opinion after opinion like a vomit geyser." - Jonas on the NZ Games forum.

"Devlin and Laws are well past their audio use by dates." - mediahax commenting at Tumeke.

"As Radio Live, the talkback stablemate of Radio Pacific, pulls out all the stops to drag up a viable audience for prospective advertisers, it seems to be pinning its hopes of success on stirring up redneck New Zealand." - feature article on GayNZ.com.

"There are countless media dickheads who make futile attempts at becoming prophets. Today it's the Wanganui Wanker a.k.a Michael Laws." - Don Murray, a racing astrologer (no, really) on Thoroughbred Net.

Bad reviews on everything from "Not PC" to "Gay NZ"? Does anyone like poor Mickey? And before some anon replies that 122,000 people do, let's not forget that that's the cumulative audience for the entire station (as are the other figures quoted above). What portion of the 121,400 (to be precise) Mickey gets, RadioWorks aren't saying.

RadioWorks' 70% owner, Canadian company CanWest, has hired investment bank Citigroup to consider the future of its Australasian assets and is seen as a likely seller this year. While Brent Impey valiantly struggles to portray his recklessly hurling buckets of money at a pet project that's going nowhere as being "in it for the long haul" we can't see the new owners being quite so bullish about propping up this deceased donkey.

We wonder whether CanWest have bothered asking Impey why, when New Zealand already had two conservative-oriented talk networks in the form of Newstalk ZB and Pacific slugging it out for a small audience, he didn't have the foresight to introduce something different, and instead populated Radio Live with more tired, predictable fogeys like Laws and Paul Henry, thus ensuring its demise. We might just be tempted to buy some shares so we have the right to inquire.

Fortunately for Mickey, he got Impey to sign his "big bucks" contract before the sale, so whoever takes out Canwest's trash will no doubt have to buy him out to be rid of him.

Comments on this post are now closed.

Lies, damned lies and transcripts

2007-01-22T14:53:00.000+13:00

LawsWatch has a very open comments policy, accepting all sorts of opinion both in support of and against the actions and utterances of the Mayor. Mostly we let these pass without comment, as any innaccuracy is quickly seized upon by other commenters and corrected. But we were particularly intrigued by a comment added to the last post regarding the "Morning Report" item this morning looking at reaction to Michael Laws' comments on River Road:

Anonymous said...
Not even available on RNZ's website. i heard it too: he didn't get "roasted". He repeated the comments and said that they were accurate as did the Wanganui Chronicle in its editorial. there is some very subjective wish fulfilment fantasy going on in this blog. sad that no-one would have been listening given that its Wellington Anniversary Day.
2:05 PM, January 22, 2007

The blunt statement that the piece wasn't available on RNZ's website was quickly corrected. However, as that RSS link is likely to change tomorrow when new stories are added, here is the link direct to RNZ's mp3 file (2.6Mb).

Eventually though, that will disappear too. But as part of our role as archivists of Mickey's lunatic outbursts, we've preserved a copy for posterity here. So if the direct link stops working, use that one.

So having dispensed with the first lie (or inadvertent inaccuracy, if you want to be charitable) let's look at the more subjective, but much more insidious, claim: that Mickey "didn't get roasted".

Of course you can listen and decide for yourselves using the links above, but we've had a Watcher transcribe pertinent parts of the item. While by no means every word spoken is reproduced below, we have not excluded anyone from the transcript.

We should also add that names were transcribed as they sounded and were sometimes a little hard to hear. We apologise to anyone whose name is misspelled and will happily correct it if you let us know in comments or by emailing us (use the link on the right - "send us your scuttlebutt"). Actual quotes from the RNZ item are in blue; summarisation is in black. Emphasis is ours.

Rory Smith has been chair or deputy of the district's tourism organisation for a decade, but can't make sense of comments like this by Mayor Michael Laws.

(Mickey raves about River Road being like a "3rd world country")

Rory Smith says that's not the river he knows.

(Mickey rants about crime)

Tour operator Rory Smith is again mystified. "There's no targeting of tourists up the river, I can say that quite categorically..."

Len and Gillian Moorhouse (operators of a farm lodge on the road): "We never hear any bad words about it (from international tourists)".

The Moorhouses say Mr Laws seems misinformed about the River Road Community of 300 and what its visitors want.

Jula Teke (Ngati Pamoana): "They (tourists) want to see the people. They want to see Maoris".

Jula Teke says the Mayor is irrelevant. "I don't really like to give him much of anything... of any recognition because when people talk like that about a whole lot of people... what do they deserve? Nothing".

Mickey denies it's about race. "I'll say this one more time, slowly, so you can understand...")

The head of Jerusalem's Sisters of Compassion, Sue Cosgrove, says the Mayor's words offer nothing to her mostly Maori neighbours. "Sure, a lot of people are on benefits, but it only diminishes people to have such statements made without real knowledge of the people. And just to see a headline like that in a way it just sort of speaks of the Mayor".

Not counting the reporter, who seemed to like what he saw on his journey up the road, the entire cast of this short drama were critical of Mickey, including three tourist operators, a Maori spokesperson and a nun.

Roasted? Stick a fork in Mickey, he's done.

Update (6.30pm): Meanwhile in other news, the Mayor of a small town has been assassinated. The entire population are being treated as suspects. "He was an unpleasant man who ran this place like his personal kingdom. He made life difficult for most of us but for a select few he made life impossible," one resident said.

Comments on this post are now closed.

Peace in our time

2007-01-19T22:39:00.000+13:00

Anonymous said...
From the RadioNZ website:
Wanganui District mayor Michael Laws says New Zealand needs some national decision making on rural roading before some back country roads are abandoned by councils.
HE DOES NOT INTEND TO CLOSE ANY RURAL ROADS AT PRESENT.
Where does this power crazed idiot get off?
5:06 PM, January 18, 2007

Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws, speaking today from the mountain top retreat, the Lawsgaden, where he spends the weekends with longtime companion 'Leo' Braun and ObergruppenMayor 'Dotty' Himmler, has reassured his subjects that, at this time, he has no plans to annexe rural roads.

"Of course, the expansion of the LawsReich is paramount," he said, while lighting a cigarette in a long holder and stroking the head of a slavering, snarling Rottweiler. "But at this point we have negotiated a truce with those schweinhunds in Raetihi and other places whose names it sickens me to utter".

Twirling his moustache - which oddly seemed to have been waxed at the tips - the would-be Ruler of All He Surveys spread out a map atop what first appeared to be an intricately carved coffee table.

"Mein Gott!" he suddenly expostulated, kicking out viciously at the table with his highly polished jackboot. "Keep a straight back, Rangi! How many times must I tell you?!"

"Sorry, Mein Fuhrer," replied Cr Wills (for it was he), "but my knees are getting sore. I've been crawling all week." Ignoring the pleas of his underling, the Father of the Fatherland seemed to take particular delight in sticking a pin in the map, eliciting a muted shriek from beneath it.

"Here," he said, pointing to Wanganui, "is to be the centre of the LawsReich. But there are white skinned, blue eyed people living in these filthy, decadent little towns all around. It is their destiny to be part of the Reich. Of course we hope that their councils will see the historical inevitability of this and simply surrender. Or that the League of Nations... sorry, Representation Commission... will simply cede the entire area to me.

"But if we have to annexe them by closing their roads then we shall do so. Those who meet the genetic standards of the Reich will be welcomed with open arms. Dr "Phillippa" Mengele will be on hand to test their physical fitness. Those who fail because they are found wanting - say, through an unfortunate skin pigmentation - will be... ummm... what is the word, Dotty?"

"Relocated, Mein Fuhrer!" responded Dotty, attempting to click her heels together and salute at the same time, and thus poking herself in the eye and falling over. "You know, on the trains, to the big holiday camps, like on the secret plans in the..." The rest of her exposition was muffled as the Rottweiler, which seemed to have accidentally slipped it's Master's leash, began trying to swallow her head.

"Yes... re-lo-cated," said the Mayor, for some reason sounding out every syllable. From somewhere just inside the castle doors, three ominous, resonate notes sounded.

"Sorry, boss, sat on the piano accordion again," said Field Marshall "Hermann" Warburton, stumbling onto the balcony. "Ahhh Warburton," said the Mayor, ignoring the fact that Warburton appeared to have tripped over a dog which had choked on an unusually large and misshapen head, "how goes it at headquarters?"

"Well, Mein Fuhrer," said Warburton, collapsing into a chair and putting his feet up on a nearby Ottoman, which turned out to be Cr Hughes, who'd curled up in the sun and gone to sleep as usual. "Sorry Muzza," said Warburton. "Oh, don't mind me," replied Hughes cheerfully, "I'm used to being walked all over, aren't I Fuhrer?"

"The headquarters?" snapped Laws, becoming ever more impatient with the incompetents with whom he'd chosen to surround himself. "Blind obedience comes at a price", he thought to himself ruefully.

"Ah yes, well..." replied Warburton, wondering how to tell his boss that they hadn't been able to cover up the fact that "Sue" Quisling had finally deserted to Wellington. Deciding that he'd better get the bad news out of the way first (especially since there was no good news) he outlined the latest strategic failure.

"Unfortunately, sir, that 'Mayoral survey' of 'central city violence' that we'd planned to use as an excuse to introduce more brownshirts..." Catching the Fuhrer's look, he quickly corrected himself. "Sorry, Mein Fuhrer, 'citizens patrols'... well it didn't quite turn out as we planned."

"Gott in Himmel!" screamed the Mayor, smashing a riding crop which he always kept handy for such occasions down on the table, provoking it to say "Thank you teacher" before blushing profusely.

"It seems the good burghers of Wanganui aren't quite as stupid as we'd assumed," said Field Marshall Warburton. "They said there wasn't any violence."

"Oh they did, did they?" asked the Mayor, rhetorically. "Eva, hand me that empty wine bottle!" he snapped, ducking expertly as it came flying across the room. "Ach! It isn't a fax machine you know," he joked, his wry smile not quite hiding the dark look that crossed his features. Rangi would suffer that night, after the sun set and the servants were asleep.

"Higgie!" he snapped at a soldier who seemed to have her hat on backwards, and had got round this problem by drilling two eye-holes in it rather than turning it round. "I have a job for you. You have proven your worth as the greatest suck-up on my staff. Take this bottle and this hose, go down to my car and fill it with gasoline."

"Yes Mein Fuhrer!" said Higgie, beaming with glee. "Shall I also soak my clothing and strike a match to prove my unthinking dedication to the Reich, Mein Fuhrer?!"

"Some other time, perhaps," Laws replied, pausing a moment or two to savour the mental picture. "When it's full, get me Oberlieutenant Morgs on the phone. Tell him I have some real work experience for him and his Laws Youth".

Comments on this post are now closed.