Looking back over the past weeks and to the weeks ahead – to rate the noteworthy, the cringeworthy, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the truly amazing.
Sterling effort from firefighters battling Port Hills blazes
Only seven years ago the Port Hills in Christchurch were ablaze and in the past week fires have spread in the same area, leaving destruction and destroyed homes. In the summer the hills become a tinder box and it is a huge and dangerous undertaking to bring fires under control.
Again, it is firefighters tasked with taming wildfires that deserve huge credit. The work is demanding, dirty, harrowing, and I imagine, incredibly frustrating. The work involves not only dousing fires but stamping out hotspots and quelling further outbreaks
5 stars – where would we be without first responders keeping us safe?
Retail workers deserve further protection
A fews day ago I was walking into my local supermarket and I noticed a security guard and one of the staff watching as a ‘customer’ walked away from them with his arms filled with groceries. He was yelling out expletive fuelled nonsense and it became clear that he was stealing stuff and strolling away. All the supermarket staff could do was get on the phone to the police, who, if and when they arrived, would be tool apprehend the thief.
As I was paying for my groceries I spoke with the staff member I had earlier seen outside and she said that thefts like that were a daily occurrence and there was nothing they could do but make sure they themselves were safe. It was a conversation I’ve had with other local retailers, one of which has installed security gates, to protect his business from smash and grabbers. I know this is the case all over the country – retailers at the mercy of thieves, with little or no recourse.
It got me thinking of that oft claimed notion of ‘citizen’s arrest’ that I grew up with. I now know that it’s a fallacy and nobody but the police can physically apprehend or restrain an ‘alleged’ perpetrator. To do so would be assault.
So what do we do? Is the current status quo that works completely to the benefit of criminals the only solution? Will more and more shops be gated and secured with bollards?
I feel for people working retails jobs. The pay is at or around minimum or living wage and they are at the mercy of thieves as part of their working experience. It isn’t good enough.
0 stars – going to work shouldn’t involve the potential of physical harm.
Tooth fairy payouts becoming more extravagant
When we were kids the tooth fairy, aka my dad, was a kindly sort who encouraged good eating habits as well as small monetary reward. By good eating habits, I meant that the ‘tooth fairy’ would leave a vegetable under our pillows that would then be used in cooking that day’s evening meal. Like most kids, who left a tooth under their pillow at night, I would hope for enough money to get a twenty cent mixture but in reality I’d get ten cents and an onion. Thinking back on it, my brothers and I now cherish the progressive thinking of our very own tooth fairy.
So, I read with some amusement what some kids around the ‘developed’ world are given by their own particular tooth fairy in exchange for a redundant tooth.
“The US national average for a tooth fairy gift has risen from under $2 in 2001 to more than $6 in 2023, according to polling by Delta Dental.
“Mark Burhenne, a former dentist who runs the AsktheDentist.com website, said that some children receive ‘cash, a video game, sometimes an iPhone’ which he puts down to parents competing with each other. Chidera Nig, who is from the UK, gave her daughter £60, a letter, a silver fairy necklace and a Louis Vuitton bracelet.” (Source: “Tooth fairy gifts children $100 bills and designer jewellery,” by Niamh Lynch, 15 February, www.news.sky.com).
5 stars – to my own particular tooth fairy for thinking outside the box. thanks dad.
