Road block
On Saturday my wife and I attended the UB40 concert at Omaka Airfield. This was a worldclass event and a credit to Blenheim. Thousands attended, and many people had come from out of the area.
The music and atmosphere were fantastic, the location was fabulous, and I have never met such courteous and helpful security personnel.
The whole evening was the most enjoyable experience, except for one thing.
At the end of the evening the police decided to put up a road block to test the drivers leaving for excessive alcohol use. This meant that all of the people leaving were stuck in a queue of slowly moving, and often stationary, cars for more than an hour.
Whilst I applaud any steps the police take to ensure that our roads are safe and that people are not driving whilst drunk, I do not believe that is acceptable to delay people for such a long time whilst leaving a major entertainment event, and it does not encourage people to attend future such events in Blenheim.
We had booked a hotel for the night, but some people would have had a long drive home and would have be driving whilst tired. Others would have had baby sitters to go home to.
Very quickly the word was passed back to the waiting cars that the police had a road block and were testing people for alcohol. Any one who thought they were over the limit would have asked someone else to drive, or not driven through the road block.
A much more effective way of preventing people from driving whilst over the limit would have been for the police to have asked the organisers to announce that the police would be present after the concert and would be testing people. This would have meant that people would have taken care to ensure that they were not over the limit in the first place, rather than just trying to catch a few who had drunk too much. that it will affect them every time they take a trip in their inflatable tender. Even if it is only 30 metres o the beach or another boat, and flat calm, they will all have to wear life jackets. Probably they won’t, but will be fined $300 if the watersafety law enforcers appear round the headland unexpectedly.
We shouldn’t be led by controlfreak policymakers and a bureaucratic urge to control everything, and I hope that harbour master Luke Grogan will take a considered approach to this question.
Boating accident drowning figures are very low in Marlborough despite hundreds of thousands of recreational boat trips every year. Less than one drowning a year on average over the last 10 years, and any law change will not alter that statistic. More people drowned in their bath one year! friends call me. Is it an American custom to call people by their christian name?’’
He snapped back, ‘‘I don’t know, I’m English.’’
This was surprising to me as in England it would be unheard of to be so familiar to someone unknown, and never likely to be known, at that time. (But, alas, this may have changed.)
At any rate, from then on he called me ‘madam’ (repeatedly).
I questioned this with one of the charities and – amazingly – all the other charities after that addressed me as ‘‘Mrs’’. Are they all in league?