Dr Mills and the Onerahi Brigade are doing a good thing in focusing public attention upon the levels of violence in our communities. It's a start I suppose.
Getting drunk and ornery in public with your family and getting behind the wheel of a car and putting the public at serious risk is not acceptable, whatever anyone says about the supposed health benefits of alcohol. New Zealanders are very prone to extremes, probably because of the bland existence we are expected to suffer on a daily basis and it is reinforced by a media run by goody-two-shoes patriotic idiots.
Binge drinking and even our more sedate urban pub culture has never attracted me to the extent I would allow it to control my life.
False power is accessed by sad individuals in many other ways also - gossip, political hegemony, even Anzac hysteria, although that could possibly be excused by the fact of there having been a centenary to celebrate.
Will all New Zealanders actually reach 100 years of age? There's no reason why we shouldn't, except, maybe if we continue to cosset the ticking time bomb of social unease by allowing delusionally destructive socially sanctioned processes to dominate.
