Just having harmless fun.

Last Saturday night a large number (by ChCh standards) of young people (they certainly were not all "boys") drove their cars around Christchurch.

As a professional driver working that night I had ample opportunity to observe these young people and their behaviour.

What I saw was people enjoying themselves, doing pretty much what young people have done since young people existed i.e. doing their best to attract others the same age as themselves for the purpose of mating.

My observations showed that they were generally law abiding and courteous to other road users.

The standard of their driving was as good as, often better than, the standard seen on an average day on Christchurch streets.

As an aside is the fact that these young people are so much better drivers overall the reason so many old farts hate them?

At times the noise levels of these vehicles was too high but that is a complaint young people have been prone to receiving since recording and playing of "music" in vehicles became prevalent - and having sat at traffic lights beside certainly not young people blasting out god-awful "classical" type crap or cowboy-bawling, not something that should be levelled at the young alone.

The slime have, of course (and we all knew they would) highlighted complaints from various groups about these young people's activities.

To the forefront of those complaints appears to be a group of Motelliers who are complaining that these young people were using the roads outside of their establishments for the purposes these roads were built.

It would never cross these motelliers' minds that they themselves are to blame for any disruption their "guests" suffered due to traffic noise, having built or purchased buildings next to a main thoroughfare that do not have sufficient sound/vibration proofing for that location.

It's always someone else's fault.

The vast majority of the young people were doing no wrong.

Let them alone.

Note: The main traffic disruption on Saturday night among these young people was caused by a gang in (more often than not) fancy painted, souped up, large engined cars adorned by pretty but blinding lights and driven by cowboys with no consideration, when driving, stopping or parking, for other, legitimate, road users.

This gang has publicly stated their aim was to harass these (mainly) harmless law-abiding young people.

That harassment by police caused a great deal of disruption for all road users.

Meanwhile the very poor driving, very drunk and very dangerous older drivers around Christchurch found their way to their destination unhindered because the police were busy trying to stop these young people having harmless fun once again.

Young peoples fun spoiled by dickhead.

On Friday night a group of young men decided to test their cars out.

I can empathise, as a young man many many moons ago I also joined others in doing the a similar thing.

To this end the men (and women, the main reason for having the cars in the first place) found a stretch of road far out in the country, making sure that the road was basically untraveled and no houses were nearby so that they would interfere with no-one.

After gathering they were accosted by a member of a gang, a jackbooted storm trooper hero who decided that being in a fast car with a fancy paint job and pretty lights made him 10' tall and bullet proof and determined that the young men should not have fun where they were disturbing no-one.

The boys reacted much the same way most of us would when some dickhead decides to ruin good, honest and harmless fun.

They drove the bastard away.

A person there at the time advised me that it didn't take much, once the bully boy realised his bullying was over in that place he scarpered quicksmart.

Now in a real world the halfwit would have been admonished by his superiors for being stupid and ignorant and taken away from any decision making position until he could prove he was capable of making good decisions.

Not so here.

The police instead went crying to the media, claiming they were incompetent (probably the first true thing coming out of that organisation's press releases for years) and demanding someone else does their job for them and NZ's police state be tightened up to allow them to work towards the joyless, regulated world they so much admire.

The cowboys in their fancy painted cars with the pretty lights meanwhile continue to pick and choose their jobs, taking easy targets every time and ignoring anything that suits them or is too hard.

A good, thinking, intelligent and considerate police force is hard to find.

NZ Police, in Christchurch anyway, has not got close.

They need to try MUCH harder.



NB The detail of Friday night's incident was told to me by one of the young men (not, he assured me one of the bottle throwers) who had gathered to try his car out.

I believed him.