Bye Bye Dickhead

Finally Aaron Gilmore has stuck his sword upside down in the ground, run up and jumped on it. There is a slew of lessons to be learned from this sad, sad episode. Let's start with the soon to be former list MP:

• It would be rather trite to remind him not to be so rude to serving staff when being a public figure. I say public figure, he didn't really have much of a public profile before this. There was an immediate outpouring of public sympathy for the poor bastard who Gilmore threatened to have sacked, but knowing bar and restaurant staff as I do it is likely our man in the Heritage wasn't entirely innocent. However, I wasn't there and cannot speculate as to his behaviour, but I know what I would have done and it involves dragging the Hon member out the back of the hotel and giving him a bloody good hiding with a cricket stump.
• That chasing publicity and taking every opportunity to remind people that you're an MP is spectacularly unedifying. This piece of advice is way too late as he'll be gone after his valedictory speech tomorrow, never to return. Chances are, he won't crop up on the local council again either.
• If you're going to get on the tiles and make a tit of yourself, apologise once and apologise properly or don't apologise at all. If Aaron Gilmore had fronted the following morning, looking tired, tense but dignified and said "I was a bit of an arse last night. I'm sorry troops." he wouldn't be facing the boot from a job he was obviously proud to do. But no, it was "my group" and "we" and more amazingly when he released that he was quitting he made the main reason the stress he had inflicted upon his family rather than the fact he had made his own position untenable with the Prime Minister. Let's not forget that he is not being given the boot because he called a waiter a dickhead but because the version of events he gave His Keyness did not stack up against a set of text messages that ended up in the media. 
• Further, on the subject of apologise once or not at all: Gilmore took to facebook to give his spurious apology on behalf of his group as well as a media release. Just the once should have done the trick. It gives you a chance to cut and run and then get on with your job. What would have been refreshing was if Gilmore had fronted the media and actually said "Last night while at dinner, I got a bit plastered and got cut off by a waiter. I called him a dickhead and I do not apologise. I might have been pissed and behaving like a cock, but it happens sometimes. In the cold light of day, I am also not certain that the waiter wasn't a dickhead either." I would have voted for him next year if he'd said this.
• Treat every social media device as loaded. Any text message, facebook update and twitter can end up in the hands of someone who will use it to damage you. This is why his apology to the PM had to contain the facts, not some doctored version of them. If you're going to your boss about a balls-up you're responsible for, it is best to give an unadulterated, factual and preferably chronological recount of events. Trust me, I have had to do this before a few times. Any public figure should not be surprised when social media or text messages come back to bite them. This is why I will never run for public office - I have written the words midget pornography too many times.
• When Brendan Horan is coming out in support of you becoming an independent MP when you're booted from your own party, it must be time to go. At least ACT's David Garrett had the good sense to leave quietly, and he was a world class stupid bastard.

A significant contributor to Gilmore's downfall was The Media and while it made for a wonderful circus, there are a few points that the media could learn from as well:

"Mr Gilmore, we spoke to your mother this morning.
Well, not so much spoke as saw her in the shower."

• Accord some credit to the public for its intelligence. We did not need to be given a rehash of the story in every single article. I got as sick of hearing what happened in the hotel as I did of seeing Gilmore's stupid face in the headlines. It was like watching American reality television, which has to recount every single thing with added sound effects for the moronic viewing public who can not remember what had happened prior to the ad break. If someone was interested in this story they would have followed it from the very beginning and not needed to skim over half the article waiting for some new piece of information.
• The rapacious pursuit of Aaron Gilmore did not do much for the appearance of the press in this country. This was hounding on a British Red Top scale. It was just a few steps short of hacking his phone. It was always going to be likely that some hack was going to dig into his past  and find a few things, that while weren't illegal, did not make him look angelic. Ditto finding people who didn't like him as a person. Gilmore prided himself on being a controversial character so he was always going to have ruffled a few feathers somewhere along the way. The real story was that he bullshitted the PM when the PM was relying on his integrity, not that he bullshitted some bloke in a pub about how he was the Energy Minister in waiting.

The Prime Minister will have a well thought to-do list arising out of this too. I suspect that on it will be:

Armed with a taser, His Keyness looks forward to
Gilmore's valedictory speech.

• Electoral law reform prior to the next election to streamline giving recalcitrant list MP's the arse. While Aaron Gilmore has finally realised it is time to go, Brendan Horan still sits in the debating chamber around six months after being fired by NZ First for allegedly dipping into his sick mother's savings. True or not, this sort of allegation is not a good look for the party come election time. Winston is seething that he has to see the back of the former weatherman's fat stupid head* walking down the corridors of power like he owns the place. 



"Have you two ever thought about having a tilt
at parliament?"

• There may be a radical overhaul of candidate choice by the party in future. His Keyness has not been ably served by certain back benchers, lower list holders and electorate candidates in the past: remember Bob 'the builder' Clarkson? Melissa Lee, who missed a cracking opportunity to steal the barely cold Helen Clark's Mt Albert seat? It has been rightly pointed out that there is a dearth of suitable candidates and while certain character traits should be overlooked (Darren Hughes, a capable MP but a bit of a perv), being a cock isn't one of them.

So we say goodbye dickhead, but I wait in anticipation of a snorting valedictory speech to the house tomorrow. There is trepidation that Gilmore is going to leave with a few parting shots to his party, but it is unlikely that any personal comments will cause too much damage. It is the factual parting shots that should have them worrying. I can't wait.

*As a TV weatherman, Horan was wooden, unlikable and I used to want to throw rocks at him even then. When he burst into song in the debating chamber I nearly broke my glasses with the strength of my facepalm.