Tanks a lot

I woke this morning to some good news. First, that I was indeed safely back in Kerikeri after one of the most gruelling road trips I have ever made. The second, and more serious, was that police, with the public’s help, had identified the four perpetrators of the horrific and cowardly attack on a young shop attendant working in a Pakuranga liquor store. The four, believed to be aged from 14 to 16, are being hunted down now.

Violence is commonplace. But that doesn’t mean to say that it doesn’t have the capacity to horrify us, particularly when carried out to the length and viciousness of this particular attack. Fortunately the victim has, as far as is known, suffered no permanent injuries and has bravely returned to work. Yet it could so easily be different and perhaps the true horror is that these four men/boys, seemed totally oblivious to that fact—they could have killed this man, given the ferocity of the punches, the kicks and the smashing of a bottle over a head. Did they care? From the video, it seems not. Let them rot.

Yet there have been other recorded cases of violence this week. And most of us have taken a different view of those.  There was the case of Brian Lake’s choking of Drew Petrie during an AFL match last Friday. I suggested that most of us who saw it did so with mild amusement, and it has gone viral (over a million views) on You Tube. Then there is the so-called violence of the World Cup. So called because in reality much of it is either extravagated in an attempt to secure a penalty or didn’t exist at all. It is a blight on the game and years of calls to have “Hollywoods” penalised have gone largely unheard. We look upon this affected violence with benign indifference or mild annoyance.

Our approach to big picture violence is different again. We all see the pictures of the carnage in the Middle East. But mercifully we are detached from that. It is happening “over there”, to “them”. And it is not new. Probably deep down and if we were honest it even makes us feel superior.

But overseas events do give us a perspective and we should be thankful for that. Despite the storm now lashing the Far North and the Pakuranga attack—despite all—we live in a great country. A glorious country.  If my greatest worry this morning is the Far North District Council’s storm-suggestion that I should go out in the rain to check my septic tank I have much to be thankful for.