AFTER THE QUAKE - A RATES INCREASE!

With the assistance of The Press, Sideshow Bob is still on his ludicrous PR drive to portray himself as something that he has repeatedly demonstrated that he isn't - a 'People's Mayor'.

So in another awful article in The Press today Bob is portrayed as the 'caring and sharing' mayor. The newspaper, once again forgetting that PR isn't journalism, informs us that its noses to the grindstone in the Parker household:

'While most Christchurch dwellers have been kept relatively sheltered since the earthquake, locked out of the destruction in the CBD, Mr Parker and wife Jo Nicholls-Parker have immersed themselves in the recovery work.

Running on adrenaline, the couple have gone to the earthquake headquarters at 5.30am daily since the quake, only returning home after dark.'

His wife, taking time off from another visit to the hairdresser, tells the reader that her husband's duty is to lift the city's morale.

'He lives and breathes this job and always has. And this place just has to keep going.'

Apparently lifting the city's morale also means lifting the rates.

Bob and his faithful right hand man , CEO Tony Marryatt, want the government to push through emergency laws that will allow the Christchurch City Council to implement a planned 5.32 per cent rates rise without public consultation.

Such an increase would mean Sideshow breaking his election promise that any rates increase would be under 4 percent

Marryatt was at the Beehive yesterday.

Much of this rates increase - an estimated 2.67 percent - would go to covering the debts incurred by the redevelopment of the AMI Stadium.

Four years ago former Mayor Garry Moore pledged to the good people of Christchurch that they would not have to pay for the $60 million upgrade of AMI Stadium . He assured ratepayers that the stadium upgrade would not any financial impact on them - 'none whatsoever'.

Now it looks like the Christchurch ratepayer , already under considerable financial pressure, is going to be forced to foot a $45 million debt blowout by the city council-owned stadium operator Vbase

Garry Moore publicly supported Sideshow Bob's bid for the mayoralty and has since been employed by the city council on a 'freelance' basis.

Shortly before the quake hit Deputy-Mayor Ngaire Button defended the looming stadium bailout on the grounds that the Rugby World Cup games, scheduled to be played at the AMI Stadium, would be ' a real benefit' to the city.

This was a flimsy argument at the time but since the AMI stadium is now unlikely to host any games Button's argument has effectively been rendered redundant.

It'll be interesting to see how Bob - 'the People's Mayor' - attempts to justify this rates increase to ratepayers in the eastern suburbs who have been going without power, sewerage and water for much of the time since the quake.

A rates boycott may well be looming on the horizon.

Of course some people will defend Sideshow Bob to the bitter end and one such person is Councillor Sue Wells, who harbours ambitions for the mayoralty herself and is also a supporter of the National Party. She has described Sideshow's so-called 'leadership' as 'constructive' and 'positive'.

And if you believe that you will believe just about anything.