None of this happened in NZ over the New Year's Eve celebrations. Nor are they likely to. Hell, we don't have any snakes, let alone serious ideological cleavages, serial killers and spindly killer fish. Yet TV3 sees fit to lead with the hysterical headline of Police endure chaotic NYE at Whangamata. What a load.
Virtually all the "chaos" was police arresting people for breaching the local body busybody liquor bans and public drunkeness. You'd think that the Law Commission recommendation for making being drunk in public illegal is already here, for all the cop presence. No murders, no rapes, no robberies, no riots, no vandalism, only a few assaults. Only a control freak could describe that as chaos.
The road toll for the week old holiday period stands at 6, less than one a day. One of those deaths was due to a man trying to evade a police checkpoint. Earlier in the lead-up to Xmas, a police checkpoint in the Manawatu-Wanganui stopped 3000 drivers without finding a single drunk driver.
This was part of a trans-Tasman effort by police to clamp down on the moral panic of rampant drunk driving:
More than 1100 police hit the streets over the weekend. They found 47 licensing breaches, 139 liquor infringement notices issued, 115 assaults and 369 arrests for alcohol-related offending on Friday and Saturday nights.
They also stopped 35,690 vehicles and found 291 drivers over the limit.
By alcohol related offending, they mean breaching liquor bans. No-one has done anything more serious than breaking a local bylaw. You don't get cops arresting people for parking on an expired meter, but for some reason, central government has agreed to pay the bill for enforcing this petty misdemeanour. Easy stats to put in their reports, I suppose. But what is the bill?
The fact of the matter is that NZ is a very quiet, boring place. Nothing much can go wrong here. Yeah, we like to drink, but that goes with the territory, and we drink a hell of a lot less than our trading partners (apart from Americans, who drink like pussies).
Lacking anything to get too wound up about, our control freaks tend to micromanage. Lacking any meat to their stories, the MSM pump up trivialities as the latest end of civilisation moment. A good example is this Manawatu Standard story on the NYE celebrations that lead to complaints of swearing:
One Palmerston North mother said people had been approaching security guards with their concerns about, in particular, the band's use of the f-word during their performance. The women asked not to be named. Deaf Lemon lead singer Pip Hansen had been getting kids to sing along to the words "my s...", she said. Event organiser Karen Heaphy said she had gone backstage to speak to the band about their swearing. "We asked them not to. It's a family event, [Pip Hansen's] been spoken to. That's all I can say really."
I love this country but for fuck's sake NZ, lighten up. And while I'm griping, why can't we bring back the traditional beachside bonfire? Oh, that's right. We're too stupid not to set the sand dunes on fire.
New Zealand; 100% puritan.
