Richard Moore: On bullying and Murray Guy

Just what the heck is going on at our schools at the moment?
We've got kids being attacked in school grounds and even in their classrooms.
Just weeks on from a schoolyard assault - where a former pupil went up to a girl at Mount College, asked her to identify herself and then bashed her - we had a case at Tauranga Girls' where seven teens burst into a classroom and attacked another girl.
The attack was payback for a lunchtime incident in which a ball was thrown at the victim and her friends. The victim said she did nothing to provoke the other group.
Now you can just picture this group of girls can't you?
There wouldn't be a budding engineer or intellectual among them. Hell, they'll probably have to get tutoring to study how to write their names before they can sign on to the Domestic Purposes Benefit as soon as they leave school.
They will belong to the dregs of society and have no more place at a school than I have in a Catholic church.
All the victim and her friends may have done is look as if they were happy, or may have given them a strange look, or may have not thrown a ball back.
That's all it would have taken for this group of teenage bullies to rampage into a classroom, push a teacher out of the way and assault the girl and two others who went to help as she was being choked and punched on the floor.
One rescuer was punched in the face and a third was thrown off her seat, smashed into the table and then repeatedly punched. She suffered bruising, a headache and vomiting that night.
As the attack ended and the scum left the classroom, the victim says one of them said: "I'm going to kill you."
So, what is Tauranga Girls' College doing about the assaults and threatening to kill?
Well one girl has been excluded from school, two girls are suspended, two stood down and family meetings were called for two of the others.
Ummmm ... that's it?
No police? No charges? No courts?
No, for a gang assault on girls in a classroom, principal Pauline Cowens is reported to be satisfied with how the school is dealing with the incident.
And how is that?
Well, an apology would be given to the victims, Ms Cowens said, as that was part of the condition of the other girls returning to school.
Big deal headmistress. That is laughable.
Mind you there's more.
"I'm satisfied that the mediation was offered to the Year 13 girls, that's still on the table for them," Mrs Cowens said. "I think mediation would be desirable; a sensible step that would clear the air on both sides."
OMG, let's just sit down and chat about the issues we have. Are you serious?
There were brutal assaults in your school, Ms Cowens, and you are legally bound to protect your children - and staff - from lowlives who want to harm them.
That doesn't mean telling off the vicious brutes, or some other airy-fairy, sooky, new wave way of letting them get off scot free.
An assault is an assault and should automatically be referred to police and charges laid. Have that happen a few times and even mental midgets like the ones involved in this disgraceful incident will be deterred from beating people up just because they don't like them.
***
Good old Councillor Murray Guy. I may have had my digs at the veteran representative over the years, but he calls a spade a spade and I like that.
He is also happy to blow the whistle on council nonsense.
This week Cr Guy has come out and said council's "savings" are smoke and mirrors rather than real changes to the way Tauranga City operates.
He has poo-pooed claims that councillors have been hacking back spending in order to reduce rate levels from an increase of 17 per cent to only 11.4 per cent. He says it's mischievous and misleading.
And it wasn't hard work - it only took five minutes, he reckons.
Cr Guy says the "savings" only come down to not repaying $6.2 million in debt.
And I must congratulate the good councillor on a comment he made after a jibe from the Chairman of the Mauao Steering Committee, Cr Wayne Moultrie, over Guy's criticising the cost of repairing the base track around our iconic mount. Guy had questioned why $650,000 was spent doing it and Moultrie said if he had attended a meeting the week before he would have been told.
Only Cr Guy wasn't on that committee and didn't need to attend it. So, now Cr Guy has branded Cr Moultrie as Chairman Mauao. You gotta love it.