Message from Great White Telephone: The pong is over, but the malady lingers on
Topic is Environment, Health, Humour, Law and order, Society by David Armstrong | Print it |
Imagined solution to the problems of a push-button society... Picture from Dreamstime.com
One of the distinctive differences between men and women is the lovable and enduring failure of males to raise or lower the toilet seat before or after they have completed their business. But this ancient issue has morphed into a new and more malodorous bellyache that threatens to further divide the sexes.
A 51-year-old Wairoa woman (old enough to know better, and whose name has been suppressed) called 111 and asked the cops to sort out her husband (whose name has also been suppressed) because he failed to use the air freshener after expressing a mightily agricultural dump in the couple’s bog. Sergeant Aubrey Ormond (age suppressed) later reported that the couple had been placated and that no charges were laid.
What charges could have been laid? Perhaps something explosive, but certainly nothing criminal – although there’s a slim chance that hubby (50) could have been nicked for gross air pollution by Hawke’s Bay Regional Council. Sadly, HBRC personnel were all on holiday at the time of the incident and got not a whiff of it.
Wairoa is a quiet town, nestling near the bowels of the Earth, where even traditional anally-retentive gang violence between it and neighbouring Frasertown seems to have eased. The only recent anti-social acts in Wairoa have been to do with drug-related horticultural pursuits, the fatal poisoning of a pohutakawa tree beside the town’s tranquil riverbank (it was obstructing an easily identified culprit’s view) and this latest ding-dong over two fleeting farts and a transient pong.
Hello? Police say people must use common sense to avoid needless 111 calls. They've obviously lost touch with society and reality
Every year, hundreds of thousands of twits around the world call the cops and waste everyone else’s precious time and money by complaining that they don’t know what time it is, or that McDonalds has run out of McNuggets or they have run out of pre-paid cellphone time and just want the police to provide sexual services or a ride to their favourite bar, or that their husband refuses to stop watching porn on TV, or will not eat his dinner. Or that the cat “is doing my head in because it keeps playing with string.”
For example: http://nosheep.net/story/ridiculous-911-call-lady-wants-burger-done-right/
If our Wairoa wife lived in less tolerant places such as Los Angeles, or Vladivostok, or Beijing, she could have been hauled out on the street, pinned to a police car, strip-searched and then sent to an institution for that much-needed lobotomy. Hubby would have been strip-searched and properly scrubbed.
Oh, how we wish… But here in NZ, hey-ho, yeah-no, it’s cool to be a complete fool.
The other problem with village idiots in New Zealand is that they always have their names suppressed. This being a small country, the rest of us probably have something to do with them or their rellies. We want them identified, so that we can know who is wasting our tax dollars and publicly ridicule them.
So here’s a piece of advice for Whaleoil blogger Cameron Slater (whose unpleasant and scruffy image has been suppressed on this site). He is rightly facing charges for breaking the law governing the suppression of accused celebrities’ names, as part of his self-appointed and self-righteous cause that allegedly has something to do with freedom of information and law reform.
Dear Cameron, the law may be an ass, but so are you, and breaking it in the way you may have is journalistically unprofessional and deeply unhelpful to law reformers and your fellow writers. Instead, plead guilty to all charges, pay for wasting police time and seek forgiveness for the offence of Acting Like A Prat – and then get back to the backstreets. There are lots of other naughty, ordinary, daft people out there, doing really stupid things – such as calling the emergency services for no good reason, or misusing the blogosphere.
We want to know their names, and you’re the man to do it.
Hint: Try to avoid Wairoa.
Tagged as Cameron Slater, seat of the toilet, Toilet seat, Wairoa
January 16th, 2010 at 10:07 pm
“Dear Cameron, the law may be an ass, but so are you, and breaking it in the way you may have is journalistically unprofessional and deeply unhelpful to law reformers and your fellow writers. Instead, plead guilty to all charges, pay for wasting police time and seek forgiveness for the offence of Acting Like A Prat – and then get back to the backstreets. There are lots of other naughty, ordinary, daft people out there, doing really stupid things – such as calling the emergency services for no good reason, or misusing the blogosphere.
We want to know their names, and you’re the man to do it. ”
ok so you think I’m an ass for breaking the law and now you want me to find someone else. Do your own dirty work.
And as for comparing me to repeaters and journalists and writers, puuuuuhlease….I do what I do purely for my own entertainment, if you don’t like it then go to another site or turn the TV off, otherwise get used to it because you are going to see a lot more of me and that is for sure.
The police wasted their own time.
January 19th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
You are indeed a supremely qualified self-entertainer. I respectfully suggest (and the courts will probably confirm) that breaking the law is not usually the best way to reform it. Seekers of good prose will be let down by your site. I have been there twice and found it disappointing. I’m sure you will fulfil your ambition to become world-famous in New Zealand.
February 9th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
I’ve changed my mind about Cameron Slater. Not about his original action, which was daft but well-intentioned, but because a court in Palmerston North has abused its powers by suppressing the name of a prominent citizen who has been convicted for downloading 300,000 pornographic images. The judge said that no local children had been harmed by this, and the culprit was too important and respected to have his reputation besmirched by publication of his name. He got off with secrecy and a few hours of home detention.
This is not acceptable.
The guilty man has harmed people far beyond our shores. The verdict took no account of what is happening to foreign victims of sexual abuse – and by his action, the judge implied that it is OK to abuse foreigners.
At the risk of being in contempt of court, I’d like to know the name of this scumbag, and perhaps put his name right up there for public view.
We might all end up being accused of contempt of court and banged into jail.
The problem is that the courts appear to hold the public in contempt. It is time for a radical review of the name-suppression rules.
February 17th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
One of the more preposterous examples is when someone is arraigned on charges A and B and is named in the press when it happens. He is then arraigned on a related charge C and given name suppression. The person’s identity is bleeding obvious to everyone who has been listening to the news, so what’s the point?