Hard News: Undie Wankers
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This isn't, for me, a moral tale of privilege but of the role alcohol plays in our society's ideas of fun.
I'm not sure that that's the entire problem. I have to say that alcohol plays a big part in my idea of fun, and in that of many of my friends. In fact, if you take ALAC's purse-lipped definition, binge-drinking is my idea of lunch.
We've all done unwise things while under the influence: sing karaoke, eat a kebab, hit on a married colleague, do lines of snuff from someone's cleavage, order a round of excrutiatingly expensive cocktails, send passive-aggressive tweets at 3am (and that was just last weekend). But I've never known any of my friends, no matter how grossly intoxicated, ever, ever to be seized with the desire to throw a bottle at the police.
Perhaps we have to ask whether it's not the alcohol culture that's to blame, but a part of the culture that encourages violence, mob behaviour, "bringing back the biff", fighting for the hell of it and macho oneupmanship. Sure, alcohol plays a big role as an enabler of that behaviour, but not all drunkards are munters.
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David Eggleton had a great line in a review of a novel about Dunedin students by Carl Shuker:
Students. In the 60s they burnt US flags; in the 70s they burnt bras; and in the 90s, in Dunedin, they started burning couches. Idealism was replaced by nihilism.
This stuff in Dunedin had the appearance of protest but none of the meaning or content. I'd also suggest that were someone trying to get numbers together for a genuine march about a real issue, you wouldn't see any of these meatheads there.
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"OUSA and the Canterbury engineering students had tried to organise events, including a Feelers concert for the students, but the council had blocked them, Mr Darlow said.
"So that people, instead of being in a managed situation, would be out on the street instead, which I simply cannot comprehend"
http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/national-news/2859306/Undie-500-mayhem-rocks-Dunedin-againI think a big cheap concert would have been a brilliant idea, and could well have defused any potential shenanigans.
The trouble is, there are wankers on both sides. Students getting drunk and out of hand, cops turn up in riot gear, and of course there's a riot. -
This stuff in Dunedin had the appearance of protest but none of the meaning or content. I'd also suggest that were someone trying to get numbers together for a genuine march about a real issue, you wouldn't see any of these meatheads there.
I totally agree (and I'm really sad about it).
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"Students. In the 60s they burnt US flags; in the 70s they burnt bras; and in the 90s, in Dunedin, they started burning couches. Idealism was replaced by nihilism."
Not quite the 90's. I was there in 1986 when students were burning couches, throwing Molotov cocktails and firing sky rockets at the fire brigade and Police to "celebrate" Guy Fawkes. One women lost her eye when she was struck in the face by a firework.This kind of thin continued to be a problem for the 5 years I lived in Dunedin.
Funnily enough one of these nights made it into Bill Payne's book on gangs - Staunch. Where he talks about one Easter weekend when the greatest band in the world contest was being held in The Nerve Center. Police described the people there (me included) as "the scum of the Earth". No problems in the gig, no cops called. Yet down Castle street students taking part in the Easter Tourni were throwing bottles at the Police and overturning cars.
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The idea that you'll leer it up at the expense of the community, all will be forgiven and you'll join the establishment and wait till daddy gets you a membership at the Northern Club has never washed with me. Once a fuckwit, always a fuckwit.
Brings to mind the conviction of a tagger in the Far Eastern suburbs, who was the son of a respected company director. Yep, once a fuckwit, always one.
And there's lots in Queen Street. In the towers lining it.
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[I] did see one guy in the background holding up a sign pointing people to his TradeMe auction - if that's not entrepreneurship, I don't know what is.
Agreed. Brilliant use of the medium. A++ promoter, would be advertised to from him again.
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Arrest and charge rioters. Arrest and charge brick- and bottle-throwers. That's the job. Otherwise "getting compliance" is not.
Fair enough; I hadn't seem the quote about "compliance". And I normally take a dim view of police using force where they have other options.
But it did look so chaotic and dangerous that I'm reluctant to judge them here.
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3410,
And should we feel bad about the gap between the "pure" marketing and the grubby reality?
It blows my mind that every time there's a news story about polluted rivers or what have you, someone's there to complain about the damage being done to our green image .
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Philip - Off topic but your recent article on special education has been widely praised
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Cheers, Hilary.
One other thing I meant to say before: that Close-Up live cross to Dunedin only made me wish that -- and I never thought I'd say this -- Paul Henry was still filling in for Sainsbury. PH may be a tasteless git on Breakfast sometimes but he can be a stroppy interviewer -- if you have a minute, look at his hilarious interview on last Friday's Close-Up with a dodgy bottled-water entrepreneur from Australia.
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I would put the entire 50 cents I have in my wallet (if you don't mind it in 10 cent pieces) on there being far fewer "we've all done something we regret in the morning", "it was just kids blowing off steam", and "the police have to take some of the blame" type comments if this happened in my neighbourhood, Naenae.
I'm sure people have plenty of justifications as to why this isn't true but if they honestly believe white middle class kids get the same treatment as poor brown kids they're either ignorant or deluded.
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OUSA and the Canterbury engineering students had tried to organise events, including a Feelers concert for the students, but the council had blocked them, Mr Darlow said.
I think I'd rather be pepper sprayed
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But it did look so chaotic and dangerous that I'm reluctant to judge them here.
As am I. I think most of us would have a different perspective on police work if we spent a week on night shift with frontline police officers - and a whole lot more respect for them.
Regardless of the rights or wrongs of police officers' actions, these students are learning a very important life lesson: Do not take on the cops. You will always come off second best.
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It blows my mind that every time there's a news story about polluted rivers or what have you, someone's there to complain about the damage being done to our green image .
Oh God, this, a thousand times over.
Brings to mind the current Listener editorial, in part arguing that conservation land that noone sees doesn't really count.
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If this had occurred in South Auckland and the kids involved were first-time offenders they probably would get diversion. I find it ironic that people seem to think these Otago students should be punished because they're white and middle class.
I think that is a fair point. Then again, the diversion scheme is about prosecutorial discretion. I think in these circumstances it would be fair, legal and rational to not exercise that discretion especially if it is to discourage the collective idiocy that Russell has described.
On the compliance point, has Greg O'Connor been summoned yet to argue that the riots are another reason that the police need Taser guns? Someone start an egg timer...
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And on the point about police going OTT, didn't some of these students get done for sedition a while back before that offence was repealed?
The cops don't have a good track record of disinterested law enforcement here.
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Do we really need to make criminals of these people?
Um, I rather got the impression that they were making criminals of themselves.
and we did promise we'd behave ourselves after last year
The Undie 500 was not officially run last year but Otago students still managed to create mayhem. Wikipedia tells me that in 2008 an unofficial run was made to Dunedin and the subsequent partying resulted in 30 arrests, most from Otago Uni, or non-students.
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The whole South Auckland thing is a red herring. If this had occurred in South Auckland and the kids involved were first-time offenders they probably would get diversion. I find it ironic that people seem to think these Otago students should be punished because they're white and middle class.
I'm agnostic on punishment, and it wouldn't really trouble me if . I just have no sympathy for these fuckwits feeling sorry for themselves after the fact, and no patience whatsoever for the idea that this is all mere exuberance on the way to a white-collar job.
But South Auckland is not a red herring when you bear in mind the leeway that's been shown here over the years. There are a lot of kids who endure police attention for a lot less than two nights of deliberate and dangerous rioting. I guess I'm somewhat influenced by the fact that the South Auckland kids I've met this year have been polite, organised and ambitious, and they don't have the advantages these fools at Otago have.
Thinking back even to the Aotea Square riot, where I was a bystander, that certainly cut both ways -- the policing was inept and deliberately provocative then, and the cops learned a long-term lesson about crowd control. But these little fuckers turned up two nights in a row.
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From what was being said in the ODT etc prior to the weekend it seems to me that neither side is entirely blameless.
The local police had been talking tough prior to the weekend and possibly overreacted.
However being a student does not give you licence to break the law. If they were protesting something I could at least sympathise with them but all this is just alcohol fuelled stupidity (sigh).
I have lived in Dunners for the last 20 years and love the place. It makes me sad that the only time we get on the news is bollocks like this.
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It blows my mind that every time there's a news story about polluted rivers or what have you, someone's there to complain about the damage being done to our green image .
I think it's because image has a common currency. I know many business- and enterprise- oriented people who don't share my values but do understand the business advantage of arguing to preserve the "green image" of New Zealand.
Working to maintain the "clean green" image can also work to the genuine advantage of the environment.
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Who are these students? I'd love to know who they are? Backgrounds, attitudes, etc. It's an amazing longterm bad joke that dunedin seems to be the backdrop to basic drunken idiocy that I couldn't imagine being part off, even in my wild youth days. Taking the police on in an Auckland street would be fucking disasterous for your health.
I use to hear some weird stories from students living down there in the 90's. The onethat stuck was a now prominent happy go lucky tv presenter who used to think it was his divine right to go into other peoples flats late at night when he was drunk and help themselves to their food.
He would have been knifed if he did that in some places here.
There's something about that place, the student housing and the smallness of the town that seems to almost encourage alevel of idiocy through drinking that is unbelievable.
These peolpe aren't indicative of students , but who the fuck are they? How can you be so arrogantly bullish year after year?
It's hard not to get fucked off with this. Any fucker lights a couch in my street , we'll probably put him on it.
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John Vavasour de Quentin Jones
Was very fond of throwing stones
At horses, people, passing trains. And
Especially at window panes.Like many of the upper class
He liked the sound of broken glass*.
It bucked him up and made him gay
It was his favourite form of play*(A line I stole with subtle daring
From Wing-Commander Maurice Baring.)"When I get home I'll dig up my copy of Cautionary Tales and find the rest.
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3410,
Working to maintain the "clean green" image can also work to the genuine advantage of the environment.
But it can also lead to a desire to hide the actual problems from sight in order to preserve a good image .
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Any fucker lights a couch in my street , we'll probably put him on it.
actually that's wrong, I mean someone would put it out and put it on trade me.
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