Nobody's (s)miling

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.

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