Dirty Dancing mayor milks the public vote

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.”

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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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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Follow the money

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

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

Both involved:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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One night in Paris

Following the startling announcement by fellow celebrity wannabe Paris Hilton that she is to voluntarily cease exercising the only skill she possesses - and the one which made her famous - for a year, Wanganui's very own celebrity Mayor, Michael Laws, has made a similar pronouncement.

"Paris managed to extend her 15 minutes of fame into a full half hour by the simple expedient of having sex with everyone imagineable," Mayor Michael told a packed press conference today, consisting of two reporters from the Chron, one who fell asleep mid-way through but returned to the office later to publish a barely-edited copy of the Mayor's press statement as his own work, and the other who could barely contain her excitement at being in the same room as someone she'd once seen on TV with Brent Todd.

"But then it got to the point where there were very few men left on the planet who hadn't had sex with Paris. I think the UN Secretary-General missed out... something to do with her getting muddled up and saying she didn't like her coffee black. But other than that, well... let's just say that Winston's recent spell in hospital wasn't unrelated, for one thing.

"The problem was, 'Paris Hilton bonks someone' is no longer a headline, even for the slothful journos at the Sunday Sensationalist," Mayor Michael said, "and they're so desperate for a headline they publish the patahlogical rantings of a rampant eugenicist. Or so I'm told. Not entirely sure who they mean... I really don't know why they even keep Frank Haden on," he muttered.

"Anyway, it's a brilliant bit of marketing. Paris has realised that not having sex with someone is the only way she can rate a headline any more. I intend taking a leaf out of her book," Mayor Michael said, before realising that Paris was extremely unlikely to have ever had a book of any description.

"Having insulted everyone from residents of Raetihi, Christchurch, Whakatane, Wellington and a host of other places large and small, racially vilified everyone from Arabs and Jews to Maori, and abused most of Wanganui personally, including those unfortunate enough to work for Council, I'm going to take a year off," he beamed. "I figure 'Mad Mayor doesn't abuse anyone' should be good for several months more publicity.

"Of course it'll mean my newspaper columns revert to endlessly boasting of my reproductive prowess. After all, how many people can say they've had kids, eh? Now there's a rare and exalted achievement for you. And my radio show... umm... well I'm not entirely sure how we'll get round that. I'm thinking I'll have Dotty as my producer, vetting calls and making sure the only people who are heard are those who agree with me. After all, she did a sterling job of that when she chaired the Code of Conduct complaints.

"That doesn't leave many people, admittedly, which is why I've drawn up this simple roster involving all councillors, Chron reporters, and Council managers, and what times they are to call.

"The TV show... well the ratings for that were worse than those for my radio program, so I think I'll give the TV away for the year, unless there's something which seriously explores the kind of isues that brought me firstly to politics and secondly, home to Wanganui. Like, say 'Dancing with the Stars on Ice while Losing Weight and learning to sing'. I'd be up for that," he announced, scanning the room for any sign of a Touchdown producer with a bag of NZ On Air cash. "Or one of those shows where you eat bugs. Yum, bugs!"

An afternoon restricted to pulling the wings off flies, burning ants with a magnifying glass and pulling faces at small children when their parents' backs were turned soon began to take its toll however, and by tea time the strain was evident as the Mayor gunned his official boy racer special up Guyton Street. Miraculously, he somehow managed to restrain himself from abusing the several elderly pedestrians he knocked down, contenting himself with reversing back over them whilst scowling wordlessly and offering a single digit greeting.

"See that?!" croaked one, believed to be connected with the local bowling club, as he was loaded into the back of an ambulance. "That's why we love Michael. Even after we'd dented his car, he still found the time to remind us that, in his mind, we're number one!"

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