This nonsense of car-hating
David Slack wonders why the people trying to ease congestion are the target of road rage.
This is a true statement: ‘‘Middlemore Hospital buildings are full of rot and mould and even leaking sewage.’’
So is this: ‘‘Scientists have confirmed the hybridisation of two of the world’s major pest species, into a new and improved mega-pest.’’
But even though it was said by someone who is paid a lot of money to say things to the radio listeners of our nation, this is not true: ‘‘This Government clearly hates people in cars.’’
When I was 12, an old woman told me something that was probably not true, but it stayed with me, and I have never stopped telling the story.
There was a a corrugated iron fence on my walk from school to the bus stop. I would run my hand along it as I went, not to annoy anyone, but because I enjoyed the sound it made.
A woman lived behind that fence and she did not enjoy the sound it made. She was about 120.
One day, as I came to the end of the fence, I was met by an angry face An end is finally in sight to prolonged repairs on New Brighton’s landmark pier. First the pillars required strengthening after the Christchurch earthquakes, and then heavy seas during Cyclone Gita in February damaged the scaffolding. The $9 million project began in February 2017, and contractor Fulton Hogan expects to finish next month.
IAIN MCGREGOR/STUFF caked in powder. ‘‘Boy,’’ she said, what are you doing?’’ I didn’t know what she meant. ‘‘Nothing.’’ I said. ‘‘So you weren’t just making a dreadful noise on my fence?’’ she asked. ‘‘Oh, yeah, that was me,’’ I said.
She said ‘‘I see.’’ She looked me up and down. ‘‘You know, it’s a funny thing, but I find it’s always the ugly ones who do it.’’
She would tell you it worked. I would tell you that was a twisted thing for an adult to say to a child.
Whenever I tell that story I add: ‘‘She’s dead now.’’ I was an ordinary kid, not good-looking, not homely, just ordinary. But of course I believed her, even as I disbelieved her. We can be manipulated by untruth. We can be undermined. We can be misled by an untruth that sounds like it just might be true, or ought to be.
If you are the sort of person with a microphone who is at ease with the flip, pat conclusion, if you have never been in danger of drowning in the swimming pool of knowledge, if you’re at ease with exaggeration and distortion, you will find it the easiest thing in the world to say, in your affected world-weary way: ‘‘This Government clearly hates people in cars’’.
It’s catchy, but it’s also nonsense on stilts.
Jacinda Ardern once gave me a ride from Hamilton to Auckland after a function. She took the wheel like someone who hated neither cars nor the people driving them, although she may have liked me a bit less by the fourth comfort stop.
She waited patiently through the Friday night crawl, but there was never a moment when she quietly growled: ‘‘One day I’ll have these bastards. You, in the Maserati, I see you. You’re day’s coming, pal.’’
But you could see that she saw what every driver on the Auckland Southern Motorway could see: hopeless congestion. She says, and her Government says, that the more alternatives people have to cars, the better off we’ll all be. An extra bus or train seat is not an expression of hatred for you and your car, it’s a solution to a problem.
No matter how fast you build more roads for cars, they never stop filling up and congesting. Bikes and buses and trains free us all. The ministers responsible for this, Julie Anne Genter and Phil Twyford, get excited talking about what can be done to make things better, but there is no cold hatred in their eyes as they talk about evil motorists. And of course there isn’t because, with the exception of psychopaths and some of the people
Jacinda Ardern took the wheel like someone who hated neither cars nor the people driving them, although she may have liked me a bit less by the fourth comfort stop.
who write online comments, most people don’t step out into the street each morning boiling with hate.
In my neighbourhood, there is resentment that the maunga authority has barred most cars from our volcanic cone. Walking up there now is far more pleasant. People who arrive there tend to sit and stay longer where once they might stayed in the car playing tunes and draining cans of V before driving off again. I don’t hate them or their cars, but when I take in the happier, more tranquil, experience everyone is having there, I wonder why people grip their steering wheels so hard.
@DavidSlack
Idon’t know, but I think we need a men’s liberation movement. An honest to God movement that liberates folks – Western men specifically – from the crushing lie that they can’t and mustn’t dance.
Maybe I’ve been too hooked into the upcoming season of Dancing With The Stars, but it struck me as sad that of the three blokes announced so far, two have made a great show of denying they’re much chop on the dance floor.
I don’t just mean they’ve demurred or been modest. I mean they’ve straight-up mocked themselves and their ability to strut.
First David Seymour said he was ‘‘accused of dancing once, but I was just trying to get to the bar.’’ I’m not buying that at all, Seymour.
Then on Friday morning former cricketer Chris Harris appeared on The AM Show to claim his ‘‘two left feet’’ will make learning to dance a bit of a challenge. He even refused to show off his moves.
His fellow new recruit, former Maori Party coleader Marama Fox, had no such qualms, busting out a move she called the ‘‘inverted dance twerk’’.
Harris is brave as for signing up for the show, but he won’t get away with hiding his footwork under a bushel for long.
It’s not just Kiwi blokes who aren’t too big on dancing, though.
A couple of years ago The New Yorker thought the phenomenon so ubiquitous they ran a – slightly culturally insensitive – sketch in which a Chief chooses running off into the wild, over saving his entire tribe from certain death by dancing in front of them.
Articles and think pieces about breaking the male stigma around dance, questioning why men don’t dance and examining the ‘‘complicated relationship between men and dancing’’, abound.
They all say something similar: In other cultures it’s considered macho for guys to throw some shapes. Blokes are good at dancing, if only they’d let themselves.
See, it didn’t use to be like this, lads. Once upon a time being able to dance was a pre-requisite for being a gentleman.
Social dancing was how folks checked they were physically compatible, without actually getting, you know, physically compatible.
Also, it was straight up fun, connecting joy and music with the good feeling that comes from using our bodies. Don’t pretty much all of us remember clambering up on mum or dad’s feet and twirling around the room?
But somewhere along the line, Kiwi blokes lost the beat. I don’t know why, but it’s time we helped them get it back.
Liberation from the foolish idea that doing something fun will somehow make you a laughing stock is nigh.
May I have the first dance?