While boy racers are a minor nuisance throughout the developed world, they've started reaching plague proportions in some of New Zealand's provincial cities.
Recently a documentary was shown on German T.V, which revealed the extent of the boy racer problem in Christchurch, much to the annoyance of the local tourist industry that portrays the moderately sized city as a relaxing, "English" influenced lifestyle destination (the inner city's English appearance is debatable, given that it's rapidly being overtaken by Asian noodles bars, junk shops and 7-11s, but that's another story).
Christchurch businesses have been complaining about the incessant late night noise of young bogans (Australasian for chavs) in the inner suburbs for some years now, and the problem doesn't seem to be getting any better.
This sharp rise in "white trash" behaviour is troubling for a country which has traditionally regarded itself as more civilised and understated than the U.S or Australia.
Echoing the planned settlement vision of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who failed to take into account the then undiscovered reality of regression to the mean, former NZ Prime Minister Rob Muldoon famously stated that when New Zealanders immigrated to Australia they raised the IQ level on both sides of the Tasman.
Given the genetic level-playing field between Aussie and Kiwi Caucasian youth, the sharp rise in boy racer culture in NZ must be due to social or economic differences (gosh, I'm beginning to sound like a socialist here!)
The most obvious difference is the easy availability of imported second-hand Japanese cars in New Zealand, which the Australian's restrict to protect their domestic car industry. Naturally with so many dirt cheap 'rice rockets' on the market, the streets are filled with the sound of ill-tuned rotary engines, over-blown exhausts and bowel-dropping car stereos.
Helping this proto- Mad Max behaviour is liberal policing - in particular, the modern police preference for revenue gathering over punishment.
A straightforward way of containing these young hoons, would be to take their cars off them and put them in a crusher. Not only would this take a lot of old sports cars off the streets, but, coupled with proposed restrictions on the age on Japanese imports, would increase the cost of old high performance cars so fewer boy racers could afford them.
Unfortunately, such a straight forward and illiberal approach is frowned upon - why deprive boy racers of their cars when we can fine them instead, thus providing more jobs for police, lawyers and car dealers. Subsequently, our streets (and court rooms) are filled with boy racers that everyone complains about, but no one really wants to deal with.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Just bring in flogging. That will sort it all out in no time. Like in Singapore.
Given the genetic level-playing field between Aussie and Kiwi Caucasian youth the sharp rise in boy racer culture in NZ must be due to social or economic differences (gosh, I'm beginning to sound like a socialist here!)
While people of English descent have historically been the largest European ethnic group in both Australia and New Zealand since the colonial period, Australia, if I recall correctly, also had a large Irish Catholic component in its pre-WWII population. New Zealand's European population, in contrast, contained a significant Scottish admixture.
Given that Scotland is estimated by Richard Lynn and others to have a slightly higher national average IQ than Ireland, one could speculate that 19th- and early 20th Century New Zealand had a slight edge in IQ over Australia due to the slight differences in the ethnic compositions of the two countries' founding European populations.
Of course, this is pure speculation. We don't know if an IQ gap existed between the European populations of these two countries, despite Mr. Muldoon's claims to the contrary! Nor would it be possible to test my Irish-Scottish gap hypothesis, given that Australia's white population absorbed a large number of European immigrants following WWII, meaning that the average white Australian today is just as likely to have a German or an Italian ancestor as they are an Irish one.
We have a similar problem of racing vehicles here in Canada and legislation was passed about a year ago (50 km over), making for a mandatory license suspension and having the vehicle impounded, both for 7 days, plus the heavy fine for speeding -- that I believe is a minimum of $2000.
Here in the province of Ontario -- a police officer was just caught speeding while on duty in her police cruiser!
As the "racing" law requires, she had her driver's license suspended for seven days, and her police vehicle impounded for seven days by another officer of the same (O.P.P.) Ontario Provincial Police force.
The newspaper article can be read HERE.
On another Note:
"(The inner city's English appearance is debatable given that it's rapidly being overtaken by Asian noodles bars, junk shops and 7-11s, but that's another story)"
I've visited New Zealand three times within a span of 20 years, and in my last 6-month visit in 2003, there was a very noticeable increase in Christchurch's Asian population. The large swimming pool located next to the Avon river could attest to that fact, as it was always packed with about 40% Asian. For that reason alone, I began using the smaller pool/sauna located near Ricartton (sic) Mall.
"Multi-culti" is changing our own major city's demographics too, but we are more spread out than N.Z. which could easily be absorbed in another generation, if 3rd world immigration is not halted soon.
Post a Comment