This morn­ing it was announced that the World of Wear­able Arts has signed a con­tract with Welling­ton for the next nine years. That’s great news.

WOW might not be your cup of tea, but it’s a big boost to our hos­pi­tal­i­ty and retail sec­tors (worth more than $15.1 mil­lion, appar­ent­ly). Sure, friends who work in venues near the TSB Are­na com­plain about the num­ber of cae­sar sal­ads ordered, but those busy weeks help pay the bills for the rest of the year. And while one let­ter writer com­plained about WOW cougars, every­one I know still feels safe and secure walk­ing the streets free of harass­ment, unlike dur­ing the Sev­ens.

WOW’s also great for peo­ple who work in the Arts, who can be assured of at least one steady pay cheque per year. I just hope that the cre­ative direc­tors realise that gol­li­wogs are nev­er ever okay. The use of one this year in the chil­dren’s sequence was utter­ly despi­ca­ble and total­ly unnec­es­sary, giv­en that a shirt­less male dancer with plas­tic Ken hair would have appealed even more to the tar­get demo­graph­ic any­way…