A Reminder - Car Conversion is a Crime

Back in about 1984 in another life in Russell, Bay of Islands, I drove a clapped out Datsun 1200 bought on hire purchase from some dodgy outfit on K Road, Auckland - Moneyforjamich Motors, or Emptyyourwalletich Motors, or something like that. Probably owned by John Yelash.

They financed me into the deal at usury interest rates but I had no choice - my partner was bankrupt, I was a poor risk and made my living waiting on tables, cooking breakfast and cleaning guest rooms (emptying adulterers' ashtrays) at the Duke of Marlborough Hotel, and taking in ironing. Plus I had three kids and another on the way. Life was sweet. No respo's.

Taking the kids to the dentist, and one who needed specialist eye care, and me to the obstetrician, meant a day trip to Whangarei. So one morning when we came out and found our car missing it was pretty damn disastrous. Fortunately for us, good mates helped out then months later my Dad died and we got his car. But as a family living on a tight budget, losing that Datsun was pretty devastating.

Additionally, I'd only been able to afford third party insurance and spent the next three years paying off the loan. The local cop (who couldn't chase a blowfly through a meatsafe) never found the old Datsun - HC5664.

Thousands of cars are stolen in New Zealand. It's a self-help mentality - if you don't own a car take your pick. And what happens when the outraged owner reports same theft to police? Two thousand "fleeing driver incidents" a year usually resulting in crashes, deaths, injuries and inevitable grief.

This weekend two of these deaths were teenagers who lived a few kilometres away from me. I know Alan Maxwell, the youth worker who tried to help these kids, but I disagree when he says it's a community problem. I also disagree with Police Minister Judith Collins who says teenagers need reminding of the "absolute stupidity" of fleeing from police officers.

Back up the truck a bit.

What about drumming into kids' heads the serious consequences of breaking the law? Stealing cars, in my book, is a major crime - taking other people's valuable property - they should realize how badly it affects an owner. Are we expected to believe cars are the first things these kids have ever stolen?

Teenagers are shits - they are programmed to be so. I was a shit. My kids were shits. If you get them through teenage years alive it's a miracle. Nobody wants to bury their kids. This is not new so why the sudden handwringing? I think of the words in that old song by Simon & Garfunkle: "The kids have no respect for the law today and blah blah blah. Save the life of my child, cried the desperate mother. Oh what's becoming of the children? People asking each other."

But pursuits going bad is not the cops' fault. Without the decision to steal a vehicle, there would be no pursuit. Police have chased criminals since Mr Plods wobbled along on bicycles blowing their whistles. The difference is today chases are faster so it's not rocket salad to work out how it's going to end.

Mrs C Did Not Go Without

It's Saturday. That means last night was Friday night, a time for relaxing on the back porch with Mr C, two long glasses, and a bottle of Champagne.

Or two.

So instead of searing commentary today I give you a handy hint from "Ask Aunt Daisy!", published by Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd (no date, unfortunately), but costing only two shillings and sixpence, containing "196 pages full of valuable hints for the housewife".

Here we go with wisdom seasonally opportune:

Sunburn - Apply methylated spirits as soon as possible, and apply till the heat goes out. Also good for burns.

2. Slice a green tomato and rub it on the sore places.

3. The white of an egg, the juice of a lemon, a teaspoon of borax. Put in a bottle, and shake well. Keep corked. Smear over burns.


Well, bugger me.

Who's Gonna Scream In Your Ear

Holy cow, two opinions in as many days. From a wife? That's what happens when she has a pile of ironing - the mind must entertain itself whilst maneuvering the collars' two sides, shoulders and across the necks, the double cuffs with fold-backs, round and round the buttons, then matching the stiffeners to the correct shirts.

For better, for worse, in sickness and health, for boxers and court attire.

How did you go on the voluntary get-someone-to-kill-you-when-you're-gaga-or-dying legislation? Sorry but it's nuts calling this Death With Dignity. Death means you're gone for ever. No dignity in that, mate. Surely they mean Dying With Dignity.

How about an MP introduces a Bill called Life With Dignity? There's a novel idea.

But as our last PM, the Rt Hon Helen Clark said, when caught in a pickle, "Moving right along."

I'm baffled as to why airline people in Thailand are "struggling with" and object to their latest class of passengers, ie, life-size dolls called Luk Thep https://asiancorrespondent.com/2016/01/thai-smile-airways-look-thep/

They're also called Angel Children, which is surely an oxymoron. Children are brats, that's why these mute, immobile dolls should be welcomed aboard and given the best seats. Instead, their mewling, squealing, squawking real life doppelgangers must henceforth be put in the overhead lockers. If the owners of these Luk Thep, bless, are happy to pay for an extra ticket, and batty enough to want their dolls fed the inedible airline food, then why object?

Actually it's not children who are the problem on planes so much as their parents. Babies, one can forgive and tolerate - their ears hurt appallingly when planes ascend and descend and there isn't much one can do to help. But in today's age children and parents are equals and friends. We don't discipline we just reason with them even when they want to boot the back of the seat in front of them the entire flight, pull the hair of the passenger in that same seat then swing on the seat back. 'No' doesn't figure in the lexicon of these families. Uttering the words, 'Eat your vegetables because I'm your mother and I say so' is the equivalent of child abuse. Children should choose whatever they wish to do; want to eat because they need to grow into....[fill in the gap from 21st century psychobabble book but definitely not Spock]. 

Never mind. On Air New Zealand we've always got Nannies in the form of some of the new bright young steward. Lately they've taken it upon themselves to protect us from ourselves, inspired, no doubt, by those wretched safety videos. Instead of normal airlines like Myanmar Airways, where they  point out the exits, tell you to belt up then sit down and drink coffee, Air New Zealand insults our intelligence with a video which torturers would have crawled over ground glass to use at Abu Ghraib.

Then the staff stalk the aisles checking we're all tucked up ready for an hour's chit chat over the sound system - no chance of reading - and woe betide any passenger with buds in their ears: "What's playing on that?"

Of late they've even taking to checking how passengers drinking alcohol on a flight will be getting themselves home - are they driving themselves or will they be collected? I kid you not - after serving the booze a steward then demanded a passenger prove a taxi would be called.

If you can't afford your own private jet, you just have to suck it up.

I can just see Air New Zealand's next safety video, set to this song from The Cars:

Voluntary Euthanasia

Two things really irritate me about this debate. One will be considered frivolous: this is the multitude of journalists who can't spell euthanasia and furthermore are too lazy to look it up in the dictionary. In particular, the technicians employed by television companies to run those words across the bottoms of our screens because they assume we the viewers are all morons when in fact many of the reporters have something wrong with their jaw joints meaning their mouths won't close properly, like that girl in the Air New Zealand safety video, guaranteed to make you block your ears and squeeze your eyes tightly shut, so we can't understand a word.

The second issue is more serious.

First, just to be clear, I support Act MP David Seymour's bill because it doesn't  allow for an advanced directive and puts the individual clearly responsible for his or her own body, not shoving the responsibility for their death on someone else in the future.

But confusing the debate is this issue of pain.

Why do we suddenly want death to be completely free of pain? Life is not pain free. Birth is not without pain. You can't turn on the television of an evening without the dreadful screaming and yelling of a mother popping out another one (Lord knows why anyone wants to watch this birth-porn) and if it's agonizing for the mother (I've had seven babies, it's like pooing a pumpkin) it must hurt the child being squeezed out like toothpaste.

Then there's a whole life to endure with accompanying vaccinations, headaches, broken limbs, severe diarrhoea where death would be a welcome relief, period pains, and not to forget that worst affliction of all time - MAN FLU!

So on what page, which sentence, in the book of life does it promise us that we have the right to die with no pain?

Sissies.