Thanks for the wonderful post. Born n bred at 464 Avonside Drive, tossing stones at agile ducks in the evening mists, paddling up Dudley Creek, siting on our front door step feeding swans swimming in the flood water - didnt get to school until the tide went out - but that was before they cut Kerrs Reach through, and have just spent some time on a bit of land we have in sunny Ohai, a few km up the hill north of Riverton. And my stars are currently so aligned as to be drawing me from my home in the Cathedral City to (!!) Auckland. So when I read of your southward migration it was not so much the change of physical location as the change of spiritual environment that led me to sigh (in the nicest possible way) "Bastards. Bastards." Peace be with you!

Oh what a glorious focus on the effect - shuffling off the blame for the cause onto the poor puzzled youth of today.

Many taggers are far too young to buy an Evo and thus are deprived of the opportunity of using the car accelerator as a means of self expression concerning their grief at the abject failure of their parents to live up to their own myths. Parents who are the pitiful spare ribs of the noble hopes of all men and women who fought two horrible wars (or was it three, four of maybe five) and endured a depression in the hope that we would be a free and self-sufficient people?

So these children watch as their parents are unable to even get out of their recliners to unseat the liars and unscrupulous law-makers (liberty takers) in the big house. No wonder they decide to express their angst in a way that expresses their individuality and their disrespect for the empty authority we have created.

And now another law - the issue remains - and while we their parents remain powerless to remove the cause of the frustration and fear of the lost generation we have bred we have no right to expect any better of them than we can give our selves.

Until we conspicuously and comprehensively regain the moral high ground how can we expect our children to behave as we would like?

The cleanout must start at the top - with clearing away the darkness of Paintergate, Drivergate, liargate, liargate liargate - and work its way down into our bowels until the purge is complete and we stand again a clean, vigorous and proud people.

Then such laws will be redundant.