(02-08-2025, 06:56 AM)Oh_hunnihunni Wrote: The thing about gangs is they exist because they fill a need. In order to do so they find ways to fund their operations and provide for their members, just like any other human community. If the government really wanted to 'smash' them, it could eliminate those needs by providing adequate affordable housing, accessible and appropriate education, parenting support, and jobs. But making their unique clothing illegal is easier, policing is easier, and throwing illiterate, poorly supported, socially maladjusted young people in jail is easier. Easier because our government doesn't have to exercise imagination or work to solve the problem permanently. You know, the way they each promise they will do every election time.

Yup. Smashing it, guys...

(02-08-2025, 11:19 AM)Lilith7 Wrote:

(02-08-2025, 06:56 AM)Oh_hunnihunni Wrote: The thing about gangs is they exist because they fill a need. In order to do so they find ways to fund their operations and provide for their members, just like any other human community. If the government really wanted to 'smash' them, it could eliminate those needs by providing adequate affordable housing, accessible and appropriate education, parenting support, and jobs. But making their unique clothing illegal is easier, policing is easier, and throwing illiterate, poorly supported, socially maladjusted young people in jail is easier. Easier because our government doesn't have to exercise imagination or work to solve the problem permanently. You know, the way they each promise they will do every election time.

Yup. Smashing it, guys...

Yeah, but those things make sense. AND deprive govts of that ever so handy target...every damned election (& in between times) its always the gangs & the criminals thy're going to 'get tough' on - remember Judith Collins being called 'Crusher Collins" because she was going to smash the boy racer's cars years ago. I think one did get crushed eventually.

Fixing things to have a fairer society is apparently far too hard...

And on the subject of those illegal clothes - somewhere, I suspect thast some bright spark is even now busily designing a not gang insignia which looks very, very like a gang insignia...

(02-08-2025, 01:16 PM)zqwerty Wrote: Trump is too busy juggling nuclear submarines to be whispering sweet nothings in Luxon's ears that will be Thiel doing the mischief making with the National Party.

It's funny to see Bulawayo mentioned here.  I spent two years there doing my GCE "A" levels at Sixth Form College.  It has very wide main streets in the CBD, wide enough that an ox cart with full yoke of oxen can do a "u" turn.  It's a lovely spread out city with Matopos Hills, Cecil Rhode's Burial Place, not far away.

I was there during the time that Southern Rhodesia declared U.D.I. (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) under Ian Smith.

Between the age of 16 to 18 years old I boarded with a family whose father was the man in charge of Beyer-Garratt Locomotive maintenance from Mafeking in South Africa to Livingstone by Victoria Falls.

I had one of the most memorable days of my life on an unofficial day trip with other school friends to Matopos Hills.

http://www.bulawayomemories.com/SCHOOLS/college_6thform.html

It's an interesting city with lots of history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulawayo

(02-08-2025, 02:44 PM)Oh_hunnihunni Wrote:

(02-08-2025, 11:19 AM)Lilith7 Wrote: Yeah, but those things make sense. AND deprive govts of that ever so handy target...every damned election (& in between times) its always the gangs & the criminals thy're going to 'get tough' on - remember Judith Collins being called 'Crusher Collins" because she was going to smash the boy racer's cars years ago. I think one did get crushed eventually.

Fixing things to have a fairer society is apparently far too hard...

And on the subject of those illegal clothes - somewhere, I suspect thast some bright spark is even now busily designing a not gang insignia which looks very, very like a gang insignia...

Like an old lady doing a bit of political embroidery on the back of her denim cutoff jacket?  Must say I enjoy it when the underlying message gets read by a passing pair of eyes...

I'd quite like to be arrested wearing it too.