We salute you, Mickey!

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.