‘Shoe fail’, you may have heard Jim Courier say it on Friday night as
Andy Murray lost his footing during a rally with Roger Federer. My
marketing mind immediately pictured how the other major footwear brand
that Roger was wearing could capitalise on these 2 words. Recreating
the ‘slipping’ scene with same ankle guards, coloured court and shoes
with the distinctive logo, the words ‘shoe fail’ appearing on screen
followed by a sure footed Roger doing a fist pump as the camera panned
down to his shoes (logo), then its slogan appearing. I doubt though
we’ll ever see such commercial as Andy went on to win in 5 sets. I find
parallels to the de-amalgamation debate. ‘Amalgamation failure’ or
words similar are bandied around with examples of how it supposedly
has. Are those making the statements too quick to judge? The total
package our region offers with land, water, lifestyle, opportunity,
diversity, population, location, affordability will with good
leadership make our future much brighter than many other parts of
Australia. Splitting this package will only make this more difficult to
achieve. A co-ordinated effort with less bureaucracy is surely more
productive than having 2 councils. Amalgamation was forced on us; but
there were reasons why the then State Government made this knowingly
vote loser of a decision, these reasons remain. Amalgamation was never
going to be an easy transition, that doesn’t mean you give up on it.
The slips and falls are part of the learning experience, you get up
make some changes, work harder to achieve the goal and persist because
you know united the region has more to offer and chance in attracting
new industry and the jobs that come with it along with people to live
here. It’s too early to call ’amalgamation failure’, just like if you
thought seeing Murray’s ‘shoe fail’ indicated he was going to lose.
It’s time though we demanded more from our leaders to work towards the
reason they were elected and in my mind it was for the betterment of the
entire region and all the people within it, not one-tenth of it. If
the majority of Councillors are in favour of staying amalgamated get
rid of divisions and stop this ‘them and us’ argument by being
accountable to the entire region.
Shoe Fail
http://aspirecq.com/?p=108