Is there an echo in Dotty's head?

In the unlikely event anyone out there might have thought, even for one moment, that Deputy Dotty isn't capable of an original thought beyond advising readers of the throwaway press on how to make the most of the current weather, here’s incontrovertible proof.

The blue quotes from Deputy Duh! are from the glossy diVision junk report that has just landed in long-suffering ratepayers’ letter boxes. The red quotes that follow are from a wee gem of a news release by Mayor Mickey with the catchy title "Mayor welcomes decision on riverfront walkway - 14/06/06".
Spot the difference, or spot the puppet strings that open and shut Dotty’s jaw:

Enhancing the riverfront walkway is great news for Wanganui and a real shot in the arm for this city’s recreation and tourism facilities, says Deputy Mayor Dot McKinnon.

Mayor Michael Laws today hailed last night's Finance and Administration Committee decision on the riverfront walkway as great news for Wanganui and a real shot in the arm for this city's recreation and tourism facilities.

"For generations Wanganui has turned its back on our river," Cr McKinnon said.

"For generations Wanganui has turned its back on our river," Mayor Laws said.

"This decision marks a defining point in the city’s development. It embraces our river as a dynamic part of our everyday existence, provides a superior recreational area for our citizens, and links brilliantly with both the existing facilities of the Waimarie and the marina on the other side of the Town Bridge."

"This decision marks a defining point in the city's development. It embraces our river as a dynamic part of our everyday existence, provides a superior recreational area for our citizens, and links brilliantly with both the existing facilities of the Waimarie and the marina on the other side of the Town Bridge."

Cr McKinnon also wants to acknowledge the generous support for this project from Wanganui Gas who have offered to provide gas flares to light up the area at night.

"I also want to acknowledge the generous support for this project from Wanganui Gas who have offered to provide gas flares which will light up the area at night."

Is this why the job of replacing the Spin Fairy wasn't advertised? Perhaps they've just seconded someone from the Council's rubbish recycling operation instead.

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Did you hear the one about the dead babies?

Our thanks to an alert Watcher who pointed out this transcript (or a link to video of the original incident) on Damien Christie's section of the Public Address blog, in which Wanganui's Civic Leader makes a joke on Out of the Question about the tragic deaths of the Kahui twins.

Christie sarcastically suggests, somewhat unkindly, that possessing such sentiments makes Laws "an ideal candidate, not only as Mayor of Wanganui, but as a human being". Unkind to Wanganui, that is, as we're sure the majority of residents find nothing funny in the deaths of children. But that's what you get when you elect a self-promoting narcissist as Mayor - tarred with the same brush.

As Christie also notes, such callous flippancy is at odds with the "tough love" approach taken in his Sunday Star Times column on the topic. But then Mickey has no real principles - he simply writes or says whatever he thinks will play best to the audience he's addressing at the time.

Comments on this post are now closed. Do feel free to address your further comments to Ms Spears' attorneys, though :-D

What does Rangitikei know that Wanganui doesn't?

Plans to reduce councillor numbers and merge wards to allow Bob "The Basher" Buchanan to exercise a Mickey-like command of neighbouring Rangitikei have met with resounding opposition from local residents, who all seem to have woken up to the fact that not only will it reduce the level of representation they receive, but that it won't in fact save them so much as a single cent.

But aside from a querellous column from Randhir Dhaya and a few mutterings from Don McGregor, it seems Wanganui's councillors are getting their rubber stamps ready to once again endorse a Mayoral brainwave, allowing themselves to be bullied against acting according to their own conscience (which is, after all, what they were elected to exercise) by raucous insistence that this is "the will of the people" - overlooking the fact that said people were hoodwinked by being led to believe they were voting to cut expenditure.

Perhaps our elected representatives might care to ponder Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC) who wrote in Politics that:

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.

In other words, the more people who participate in government, the better it is likely to be. But then that's just Aristotle... we have the word of Michael Laws, self-styled star of "good TV".

Meanwhile commenters debating the role of Councils in health might find a useful perspective presented in Core Business in Local Authorities: Three case studies by Graham B Sewell. That study concludes that while Council are charged with public health - sewerage, water and the like - their role in provision of medical-type health is usually limited purely to advocacy. Unless they take a decision to invest in establishing or improving local health facilities.

It's rare that they do so, but the relatively tiny Hurunui District Council evidently decided to do exactly that:

Paddy Clifford (General Manager) advised, "... we take up advocacy on all sorts of things, not least of which was our CHE’s thinking of pulling out of the medical facility in Cheviot. We got really involved in that and coincidently perhaps the government at the time (about 15 months ago) introduced a community funding scheme so that some urban health demands could be transferred to community trusts or in this case Council on suspensory loan."

The HDC Strategic Plan, under the heading 'Community Health', included the goal, "To encourage the provision of health services to meet the needs of District residents." The desired outcome was "Adequate provision of health services in the District."

The HDC and the local authorities which preceded the 1989 amalgamation have been involved with the provision of local community medical centres and attracting doctors to practice in them. Mayor Chaffey noted that in his recollection no one had ever raised the issue of whether the Council should be involved in this way with health services to the community.

Mayor Chaffey advised, "Local government here has been involved with the provision of health services since the 1930’s. It is nothing unusual to this district. It might be unusual for New Zealand but not to us. It is done for the same reason now as it was back then, because of the scarcity of rural doctors and the difficulties of retaining them."

In other words, Hurunui saw a problem and took action to address it. They didn't just write a column and pass onto to the next issue du jour. So, we'll ask here what we've already asked in comments, without receiving a coherent response from the Mayor or his supporters: Does the latest headline-grabbing statement on Wanganui's struggling health services signal Michael Laws' intention to stop squandering on swimming pools and begin investing in health? Or was it merely hollow grandstanding?

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An idea born of desperation

Fresh from failing to turn up to berate other Councils for not following his lead and turning everything over to populist volkpolitik, Mickey decides to regain some precious column centimetres in the Chron by talking about something which isn't the province of Councils at all. Still, no one ever fell afoul of the voters by calling for more doctors, nurses, firemen or policemen.

But while in other countries the provision of some level of health infrastructure is the business of local councils, here in New Zealand it's none of Mickey's business at all. But that's never stopped him before, Watchers, and certainly won't stop him now.

While we're all for more midwives we can't help wondering just what on earth Nicki Higgie's Community Development Committee will do with their Mayoral mandate to tackle the problem.

Of course there's nothing to prevent a local Council from setting a precedent and contributing towards local healthcare. Except that Wanganui's Council is simultaneously cash-strapped and spendthrift.

But then we figured it out, Watchers. Yes, it's a brilliant plan, even by Michael Laws' standards. Clearly Nicki's job is to organise the new signage.

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Conspiracy theory

Once upon a time in an editor's office not too far away, the phone rang.

Powerful Voice From On High: What the hell are you doing, Maslin?!

Quavering Editor (quickly putting away his Bumper Book of Sudoku and pretending to edit the newspaper): Who Sir? Me Sir? Errr... I was just... you know... doing editing... stuff.

PVFOH: That'd be a first. No, I'm talking about Mickey's latest column!

QE: Ohhh... ummm... that. But he just does the usual thing; Bangs on about all his critics being whingers whiners wallies and so forth, and rips into former councillors and staff members. Apart from that cunning intro announcing his new-found common cause with old Chas won't fool anyone, it's no different to the all the other columns he's ever written, Sir.

PVFOH: Well can it. Immediately.

QE: But Sir, I thought our plan was to get Mickey re-elected? Remember, it was on your meeting agenda right between discussing how to raise the price of petrol even further and how to get your hands on TVNZ now Ralston has completely knackered it as planned.

PVFOH: That's just the point, Maslin! By giving Mickey an outlet for his inane ramblings and abusive vitriol, you're helping demonstrate just how much of a one-note fruit loop he is! How many times must we explain it?! The plan is to get your minions to write flattering stories about him, quoting selectively from press releases only those sentences which make a modicum of sense and which don't totally contradict something he said the day before. It's one thing if he puts it on that damned website nobody visits, but when it gets in the Chron it frightens the natives, understand?

QE: Yes Sir, sorry Sir.

PVFOH: Look, we've got our work cut out making sure Winston stays out of the country opening craft shows in Bora Bora and whatnot without having to worry whether Mickey's stuff is getting out there before someone else reads and edits it. At this rate the town will be sobbing into their hankies in sympathy with that ex-council staffer he's been busy slagging off. I mean for heaven's sake, when the woman signed on with Mickey what did she think she was in for?! A supportive working environment, being treated with respect and being spoken to, and about, in a reasonable manner?! This is Mickey, for chrissakes!

QE: Errrr... righto Sir I'll get straight onto it.

PVFOH: No more bloody columns, right? And have a word to that Bryan woman, will you? Has she forgotten the agenda?

QE: You mean the Hidden Agenda, Sir? The one where you get complete idiots put in charge of important assets and let them run them into the ground, then step in and take them over for next-to-nothing? Thank goodness that doesn't apply to the Chronicle!

PVFOH (sighs): Yes, Maslin, that one. The one we've been through several times already. Are you sure you wouldn't prefer a job editing the Coromandel Semi-Weekly Depending On If We Can Be Bothered? It's a great little paper, and the weather's much better...

QE: Oh no Sir, I have an important job to do here.

PVFOH (sighing even more deeply): Thank goodness we still have the River City Press. Now there's a newspaper which knows how to stick to the agenda.

*click*

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Let us eat cake

According to some superstitions, if you burn a white candle in the shape of a particular person, you will engender "peace & tranquility, fidelity, honesty" in them. So we've been whittling away at a large white candle, creating an effigy of Mickey to place atop LawsWatch's first birthday cake.

Yes Watchers, today is the anniversary of the first-ever post to LawsWatch - 1 July 2005 - when we quoted from the Human Rights Commission's little book on freedom of speech. The same little book waved about by one Michael Laws as his defence at the Code of Conduct hearings.

Already, signs of what was to come were evident, with hyperbole from both sides of the debate apparent in the reaction to our appearance on the scene:

The presence of a micro-nazi like Laws in any elected position is anathema to democracy. Lying to Parliament is Treason and should be prosecuted accordingly. By this measure Laws already deserves the death penaly, or life imprisonment, or perhaps a pat on the back and a celebrity career.

...and...

Go away all you commie drongos. What a nasty pack of smearing, lying, dishonest pack of losers you are. Disgusted.

It only took a couple of weeks for the Chron to notice, and the blog shot to prominence with a ringing endorsement from none other than Michael B Laws, Mayor of Wanganui, on 14 July 2005, under the banner headline "Mugged Mayor says he loves the humour":

Mayor Michael Laws (labeled the "Diva of the Ditch" by the creators of lawswatch.blogspot.com and the merchandise) thinks the Laws Watch range is hilarious. The blog is selling t-shirts, hats, tote bags, coffee cups, calendars, postcards and boxer shorts emblazoned with the words Laws Watch, along with the mayor’s face, at www.cafepress.com/lawswatch...

"I love it and I think it is fantastic," Mr Laws said. "It has a sense of humour which has been missing from the COC (Concerned Ordinary Citizens) people forever. Both me and my secretary will definitely be getting a couple of mugs..."

"I think it’s hilarious and funny. It’s the kind of thing which has been missing for art activists in Wanganui. So I’ll definitely get a mug and I need another running T-shirt and one of those ones would be great," Mr Laws said.

Of course, like so many public statements uttered by Mickey, that was entirely false. While several hundred dollars worth of merchandise has sold, none of it has been charged to credit cards bearing the name of Laws or his secretary.

Alas it took less than six months for the love to fade and for Mayor Hyde to be replaced by Mayor Jekyll (to steal an analogy from a recent commenter), with a clearly tetchy Laws launching a vitriolic personal attack on those he thought were responsible for the blog. The blistering effectiveness of this attack in exposing nothing other than the fact that Mayor Hyde is simply a role played occasionally by the "real" mayor - Mayor Jekyll - is evident in the fact that another six months have elapsed and LawsWatch is still here.

Watchers may wish to celebrate by purchasing a pair of underpants adorned with the Diva's physiognomy, available along with a variety of caps, bags, buttons, sticker and even a doggy t-shirt, at the LawsWatch store. We'll be clustered round a bonfire of remaindered copies of "The Demon Profession" and "Dancing with Beelzebub", having a wee dram or two.

To mark this auspicious occasion we present a "Best of LawsWatch Art" retrospective. Thanks for making it this far with us.

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