Brian Holden: Money-grabbing not worth the guilt

CASH DROP: An armoured van came to grief on Christmas Eve, spilling cash notes on to a Hong Kong highway. What would you have done?

Hey, guess what Santa gave me for Christmas! A few million bucks, all in nice convenient packs of Hong Kong $500 notes. This was the tune that many Chinese motorists were singing when an armoured van spilled three containers of mint moolah on to the westbound lane of a busy Hong Kong road on Christmas Eve, bringing traffic to a halt. Drivers leapt from their cars and grovelled to scoop up money, thinking that all their Christmases had come at once.

The story goes that the containers slid out of the van through the rear door, which wasn't properly closed and split open. The scene was a chaotic fiscal lolly scramble, with people casting their normally good behaviour and moral values aside and scooping up as much of the paper stuff as they could find.

But alas for them, the police materialised instantly, as they do on such occasions and sealed off the affected lanes of the highway to retrieve the loose cash.

Because of the lengths that scavengers are prepared to go when confronted with such windfalls, officers armed with rifles and wearing bulletproof vests were right there on the scene to guard the containers - and rightly so.

You can't keep what ain't yours, and the authorities are calling on people who recovered any of the lost cash to fess up and return it to the police; otherwise, they could face prosecution for theft.

So what would you do if you saw money falling from the heavens in such copious quantities? Would you simply adopt a "not my problem" attitude and drive on through, or stop and gather it up, returning it in fists full to the van driver? Would you not be tempted to pocket just a few teensy thousand dollars, considering it to be a "tip" for your honesty?

Knowing that the compact bricks of notes you are holding could solve all your money worries and change your lifestyle forever, could you be tempted into thinking "oh what the heck?" and discreetly stuff them down your jacket? But then how would you feel, stumbling your way back to your car, dropping a few thou' or two as you go? Would your conscience start to kick in with the realisation that you're little better than a bank robber and that the money was never yours in the first place?

The sight of money - big money, can make one literally drop to their knees, as was the case with this Hong Kong motorway incident. The prospect of instant wealth does strange things to people. Watch the behaviour of those lucky so-and-sos who win even just $1000 on the TV game shows.

They whoop and dance around in uninhibited ecstasy, like a child does when a butterfly flies into the room. Lovely stuff, money, but I bet those motorists who stole - yes, stole - all those spilled bank notes from the motorway will be tossing and turning in their lumpy beds right now, with it stuffed under their mattresses. Best to phone the authorities right now and arrange for its return. All of it, including the extra couple of $500 bills "honesty tip" that you considered slipping into the bookshelf. Do the decent thing because, if you do get caught, you'll be in big trouble.

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Got a Christmas gift that you didn't really want, like a ghastly tablecloth that doesn't match your decor, or a tin of car wax, even though your newish car may not need that sort of care any more? Well Trade Me is offering to offload all those "Stink Christmas Gifts" for you.

On Boxing Day, the banner "Not loving your Xmas gifts - find someone who does - sell it now" graced my screen. Great idea? Well no. I think it's gross. Chances are in most cases that a friend or family member put a lot of thought into choosing that gift especially for you. Okay, so occasionally someone gets it wrong, almost to cringe proportions. But for a reputable organisation like Trade Me to come up with such an insensitive motto is pretty stink, in my opinion.

-Brian Holden has lived in Rotorua for most of his life and has been writing his weekly column for 11 years.