My name is Michael; my karma is bad!

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.

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Sold to the lowest bidder

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.

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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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The worm's turn

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...

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Bad news bares all

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.

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A bad day for LawsWatch, a worse one for Mickey

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.

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Turning the tables

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.

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