Canadian Mounted, baby; Police force at work

The train station? No problem, we'll be there in no time. Notice how the reins double up as harp-strings so you can play Hindemith's Harp Sonata as we travel. German technology, you gotta love it.

A and B? That'll be some community policing in action.
Which reminds me, did you read about the Smith-Voorkamp case in the paper? Some guy with Aspergers goes wandering around the ruins after the big quake, doing Aspie things, and when the police pick him up they decide he is a looter so they administer a bit of biffo in the cells.

That inspires that douchenozzle Michael Lhaws* to direct his Sunday-rag column at Smith-Voorkamp's appearance, with added ridicule for Aspergers Syndrome as apparently something invented by liberal bleaters to avoid blaming people for badness, plus generally defending the idea that a night in police custody should entail a few bruises and a black eye and "He fell down the stairs, Your Honour".

Of course Lhaws' columns are always defending someone in power -- or looking for new minorities to hate, the more powerless the better (because having no social clout is a form of weakness so another good reason to despise them) -- or both. If I were a pop psychologist instead of a taxi driver I would marvel how much he must loath himself, for him to put so much effort into locating targets for scorn whose inadequacies make himself look better in comparison.**

We have two basic attitudes in New Zealand. The people at the bottom of the heap are all ACAB, and accept that falling into the hands of the constabulary will probably mean a beating. And the people at the top expect the police to beat up dodgy suspects as part of their job description, because you can't trust the bleeding-heart judges and the politically-correct juries with their insistence on "innocence" and "justice" to do the right thing. No, three basic attitudes -- sandwiched between there's a middle-class stratum who insist that a belief in the integrity of the police is a vital part of the duct-tape that holds society together. The worst thing is for people with black eyes to accuse the constables of violence, but then fail to follow through with a formal complaint, because this erodes the fragile shared convention. No, really.

Here we are, mate. That'll be $15.70. No need for a tip, but the peacock will certainly appreciate any crumbs you might have in your pocket.

Memo to self: Keep using the Peccatum taxi service in the future. It's amazing how much the driver agrees so well with all the things I was thinking and looking for a way to say.

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* One of our larger-souled readers once pointed out the better sides of Michael's character and his capacity to rise above himself, and invited us to recognise his potential to become less of an arsehole. We promised to lay off until he became an arsehole again.

** Case in point: Having left Parliament against his will under a cloud of forged signatures, Laws wrote two books depicting all other politicians as scheming, back-stabbing, low-life despicable bastriges.


Michael Laws has an invitingly bare chest but we do not stoop to providing drag-&-drop spiders for the readers to festoon him with.