Middle-Aged White Man Tags Hillside

Tagger Steve Fitzgerald and the hillside he vandalised

Wellington residents were shocked this morning to discover the Miramar Cutting had been defaced with the word “WELLYWOOD’ scrawled across it.

The tag is 3.5 metres high and 28 metres wide creating a massive blight on the landscape and angering local residents.

Lyall Bay local Sandra Walker said the vandalism of the hillside made her angry.  She feared large scale tagging like this would ruin Wellington’s ‘cool and sophisticated image.’  ‘On top of it all it just makes our town look trashy and ugly.’

Hataitai resident Ashok Prasad had similar fears, saying ‘with so many visitors coming to the city for the rugby world cup, this is a really bad look.  It’s embarrassing.’

Senior Sergeant Ewan Dunsmuir said tagging was essentially a ‘nuisance crime’  ‘It causes damage to private and public property which has an associated cost to clean up, but just as importantly it creates a perception of associated lameness in the area’.

The alleged perpetrator of this senseless act is Wellington Airport CEO Steve Fitzgerald.  He will appear in Wellington District Court on Monday on one count of vandalism and two counts of being a complete and utter fuckstain.

The incident has reignited the debate on tagging, an issue that can sometimes fill mainstream New Zealanders with murderous rage.  In parliament the vandalism was criticised from both sides of the House.

Labour’s Clayton Cosgrove said of the tag, ‘it can't be considered effective advertising for the city.  It is mindless scrawl that will cause great financial and emotional cost which the perpetrator seems to care nothing about."

National’s Judith Collins took an even harder line: "if we continue to treat it as a minor issue, some sort of tongue-in-cheek joke, then we will continue to see a breakdown of law and order."

Economists estimate that tagging costs the economy fifteen trillion billion dollars a year.