Posts by James Littlewood*
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That cycle route might make it viable to get into town on my bike from Titirangi. Currently, negotiating Gt North Rd between Waterview spaghetti and Blockhouse Bay Rd is just too much of a mortality crap shoot.
Maungawhau. I was up there with my kids and their cousins from out of town. We're wandering around enjoying the weather and the view. The cousins start wandering off into the crater. Something in the back of my head goes, hmmm, is this ok? I wander after them with a watchful eye. Then a representative of Ngati Whatua (an iwi I have close personal ties with) accosts us. By which I mean, yells at us (like, REALLY YELLS), doesn't explain anything, concludes by calling me a bloody idiot and storms off muttering about me and my bloody idiocy.
Still love the place. But haven't really felt much like going back since. A truly foul experience of the place I call home.
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I differ from Labour on tax
So does Labour.
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to Joanna,
Notice how quickly this thread became men talking to other men
Yeah. I did. But because I find it so profoundly offensive, and indeed embarrassing (both as a male and a member of these doofs' greater tribe), and also because I struggle to accept that there is no solution, and that as a male I might be able to help with that solution, I felt compelled to engage, and I suspect similar applied for other men.
Lilian’s suggestion of how things could be improved
Lilian or Lilith? I agree it would be really interesting to support the artists to hold things up until the undesirables get ejected.
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to Russell Brown,
It gave both victims and abusers steps to take and information with which to take those steps.
Well, that sounds like a good approach. Clearly whoever funded Not OK could do us all a favour with another round.
I'm also thinking about another successful pro social campaign, which involved a young male protagonist "internalising a complex situation."
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to Amy Gale,
Me too. And similarly uncomfortable with anyone, male or female, enabling them.
But I'm not sure *calling out* shit behaviour is always a realistic suggestion. Peer pressure has a big role to play in this. By the time a group have coalesced around the gig, preloaded, travelled together, normalised whatever indulgences they've chosen and whipped themselves into a lather of hedonistic desires and expectation, the ability of any one of them to stand back and yell "STOP THIS" is buried deeply under ground in the far flung outlands of shameful yucky feelings.
And, should that response emerge, they risk the very thing they're looking for: belonging to the group.
Russell, I recall you were part of the "Not OK" campaign. What were the learnings from that? What worked?
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to Nick Russell,
if you are the wrong age, gender, colour or just dress wrong you will be a target for someone
I know you don't mean that a happy vibe requires a homogenous crowd. But that seems the clearest implication of your comment. Obviously, if that's true, it is precisely the problem. And I suspect that the victimiser will always find someone sufficiently different to target.
And yet there may be something in it. I can remember giggling with my mates at one of my first gigs 'cause there was an older hippy guy there dancing *weird*. We kept it to ourselves and out of his way (although in clear view of others, so no doubt we looked like dicks), but it's not hard to see my younger self getting over excited about it.
I dunno. To me, it just has to be about role modelling. The fools who do this are just that: fools. Yes, they need correction, by punishment if need be. But also guidance. "Not like that. Like this." Damn. Sounds like etiquette instructions from the 50s.
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I remember Jello Biafra stopping the DKs mid song (Too Drunk to Fuck, if I remember rightly) to remove a violent skin head from Mainstreet. Admittedly, the skinhead was directing his violence at a crowd surfing Jello. But if you were a performer, and you saw some shitty behaviour in the crowd, what do you do?
When women on shoulders were being attacked and molested, how far away were the security guards? Is it old fashioned of me to think their job is to extinguish precisely that kind of behaviour?
Photos at the gate sounds good, like petty thieves at supermarkets. But obvious practical and legal challenges.
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Bloody depressing. Are the young men the product of conservative political leadership, or is the conservative political leadership the product of a society that's becoming so conservative it's retarded. Literally, going backwards.
Lately this country feels like it did in the 1970s. Who are are the influential male gender commentators providing some kind of positive behavioural framework? Gordon McLauchlan, you there? Felix Donnelly? John Clarke?
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Someone stealing Labour's policy? Ha! Try hanging out with some Greenies for a while.
Still, I guess it makes a nice change from Labour's appropriation of the right wing agenda over the last few decades.
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Just came back from a few days digital hols at the beach & playing catch up so apologies if already covered.
Just to note that Auckland EMA boss Kim Campbell has been a constant advocate of the CRL. I would imagine he's at least one part of "our Auckland business base" Key refers to.