Len Brown: sworn in/at

Len Brown was sworn in as Mayor of the Auckland Council on Tuesday night at the Town Hall.

Len alone. Lenny no mates.

An unamused deputy, Penny Hulse, looks on with pursed lips as Len signs up for another three years of - quite literally we know now - fucking over City Hall.  Peering down at the chain is the CEO who will have to run the code of conduct review into Len's corruption.  What a joke this all is.

NZ Herald:
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Len Brown says the career of a mayor ebbs and flows, and the wave of negative publicity that has swamped him since news of his two-year extra-marital affair broke will pass.
"I'm just wanting to get on with my job," he said.
"I choose to put those matters where they belong and that's between myself, my wife and our family. Aucklanders have basically said 'that's something you need to deal with'. They want me to lead and that's what I'm going to do."
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Aucklanders want someone to lead, and because of historical circumstances it just happens to be Len Brown.  Aucklanders' commitment to him personally is as thin as Len's hair, as thin as his credibility to set any sort of a worthy example as a leader.  A big, big joke. Len is the one subjecting his wife and kids to this exposure because he's digging in when he ought to be bailing out.  An affair carried out under the mayoral auspices utilising the office of Mayor, the limo, the meeting rooms etc. is most certainly the purview of the voter.

NZ Herald:
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Mr Brown appeared awkward and fidgety through the evening and endured shouts of "shame" from a small, but vocal group of protesters as he was being sworn in for a second term.It was the first official public appearance for Ms Inglis with Mr Brown since news of the mayor's two-year affair with a woman 25 years his junior was made public.Ms Inglis, sitting four rows back from the stage and not wearing a wedding ring was accompanied by the couple's eldest daughter, Sam and her husband Tim Colgan.
Mr Brown was wearing his wedding ring, which glistened under the stage lights of the Town Hall, where councillors, dignitaries and families gathered for the formal occasion featuring the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Auckland Choral, a violin soloist and a young Polynesian orchestra.
Mr Brown acknowledged the love and support of Shan and his family on this occasion and the love of the past three years.
Mr Brown joined councillors and guests for refreshments outside the hall chamber, while Ms Inglis left by a side door, said a few hellos, and departed.
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Pursuing his own appointed and Council-paid advisors for sex, writing out a reference for a job at the Auckland Art Gallery to the woman he was trying to bed (even though she had been fired and convicted in court the previous year for hacking into her boss's email while at the Auckland Museum) and then proceeding to root her all over the Town Hall and quite probably in rooms comp'ed by hotels because he was Mayor - and these antics went on for most of his term of office - is apparently acceptable and excusable behaviour in the minds of Auckland's political establishment - certainly amongst the ranks of the credulous, hypocritical lefties.  The corruption is right in their face and they choose, for politics and nothing more, to look the other way. 

Len may be able to buy his way out of trouble by dishing out the goodies he's entitled to as the mayor, but this cover will only get him so far.  At the moment though far from being put on notice, Len has been given carte blanche to predate on whichever staff member he wants because he has been told by his supporting councillors that there will be no consequences.

Whether he was heckled over the erection of affordable homes, or whether he was merely heckled over affording erections, either way it was a messy and undignified beginning to what promises to be a messy and undignified mayoralty.