Paul McDonald
Paul McDonald

Genetically Modified Pigs

Just occasionally I enjoy a beer and a pizza and I get really annoyed when police burst into my local and threaten to shove a truncheon up my arse for doing so. First a word of warning, people : The following story contains descriptions of scenes that may offend. In other words, it details the work of the New Zealand Police Force.

Click to enlarge.
(click to enlarge)

Picture, if you will, your correspondent at the end of term one. All Dareled out, I headed for a restaurant in town to enjoy a quiet night with friends. All was well until about 1 am on Good Friday when a goon squad of pigs burst through the door. The lights in the restaurant were suddenly turned right up. I thought the cabaret had started.

We were told to skull our beers and leave the premises. I could appreciate that skulling my beer would probably lead to me vomiting on Policeman Plod's jackboots so I decided to leave the beer and walk outside. And here's where it gets really interesting.

Six of these berks in blue had donned black gloves and were guarding the entrance to the restaurant in case someone made a mad dash for a hot pizza. The paddy wagon waited. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" I asked one of the orificers. He threatened to arrest me for swearing in public. I took this to mean that he had no idea what the fuck he thought he was doing.

Apparently the restaurant had committed the heinous crime of trading on Good Friday without a special license. I'm guessing this because, as I've said, the police wouldn't give us any details. "Do not ask ze details! You vill be taken by train to ze holiday camps!"

Well, I think if someone wants to sell alcohol on their own private property and someone else wants to buy it then that is nobody's business but that of the parties concerned. I would love to know just how the government gets the right to impose on me the observation of, or respect for, a religion for which I have nothing but contempt. If you as a Christian don't want to drink on Good Friday, then don't. Go and nail yourself to a tree for all I care. But don't restrict me from having a good Friday myself.

The trouble here is that New Zealanders love to be controlled. The Christians decide that they can't be left to honour their individual religious commitments themselves because they might well choose not to honour them at all! So they get people like Shipley, Creech, Upton and Moore (S.C.U.M.) to pass laws that prevent people from having fun. And we love legislating for morality, which quickly results in students feeling rather happy at being kicked out of the "naughty restaurant" which didn't do its bit for nice old Jesus by going through the tortuous special licensing application process. Throw in an arrogant police force which knows there will be no end of such laws to uphold, provided they show the 'effectiveness' of legislating for morality by bullying citizens while they're young, and you've got a recipe for a belter of a night on the town.

Imagine what your parents would think if they were enjoying a quiet pizza and were tossed out of their restaurant in the middle of the night by a baton carrying bunch of policemen. I think they would be highly pissed off. And yet it happens to us and there's nary a whisper. The police accept that they can treat students like animals and — far, far worse — we accept that it is like animals we should be treated. The general consensus appeared to be "for Christ's sake don't upset the pigs... just do as they say and they'll leave us alone." Well next time, when they demand to identify you by your national identity card, or they insist on randomly probing your bum for marijuana, don't come crawling (tenderly) to me. I never called for a police state and I never called for state control of anything. In a truly free society we'd be genetically modifying pigs as quickly as we could.


If you enjoyed this, why not subscribe?