Find out what occupies Angela's time living in New Zealand.
Our wonderful annual Nelson Arts Festival always opens with a masked parade where schools and community groups are involved, creating masks to celebrate the 10 days of art to come. It's always a great night with live bands, food carts, eating outdoors, and street closures for full pedestrian freedom.
And then there's this lovely annoying youth story.
Saturday Oct 17, 2009 (EDITED FOR BREVITY)
Nine teenagers were arrested following Nelson's annual Masked Parade last night.
The youths, aged between 14 and 18, were arrested for disorderly behaviour in the Upper Trafalgar Street and Selwyn Place area. The offences all involved alcohol use.
At one stage a single police officer, arresting an offender for disorderly behaviour, faced a crowd of around 20 hostile youths for several minutes until back up arrived.
[PAY ATTENTION HERE...AR]
One of the youths arrested was a 14 year old female who used a knife to damage a car in the Buxton Car Park. She had also been arrested earlier in the night in relation to a theft from The Warehouse and was released to her parent's custody but offended again within three hours.
Geez, are those the best of parents, your kid gets arrested for shoplifting at a local store and then THREE HOURS LATER she's arrested again. Your 14 YEAR OLD CHILD. That girl's a winner.
An end of exams blowout organised by senior students from St Peter’s College in the small Southland town of Waimumu resulted in its community hall being trashed by drunken teens.
Bizarrely the party was funded by money left over from the ‘Students Against Drunk Driving’ (SADD) charity.
SADD National Chairman Mike noon said: “There was a very poor decision made that a hundred dollars of that was then used by one of the students to hire a hall for this basically unauthorised party.”
The uncontrolled party turned ugly, with fights breaking out outside the community hall and drunk partygoers throwing beer bottles at passing cars. The students also punched, bashed and kicked holes in the walls causing thousands of dollars worth of damage.
The hall chairman Duncan Falconer said he wasn not sure whether SADD’s message had got through to its young ambassadors. “I would think that if they’re students against drunk driving and they’re trying to make a stand versus drunk driving, the same rules would apply for the treatment of other people’s property,” he said. Mr Falconer is encouraging those responsible to be honest and come forward, hopefully with some of the cash to fix the damage.
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This is really beyond annoying. A few weeks ago a visitor from Foxton was badly beaten up in a violent assault in Nelson near the church steps by two Nelson youths, aged 14 and 17. The visitor was in Nelson on a stag weekend with a group of friends. The two kids were charged jointly with aggravated robbery and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. That's because a few days after the attack the poor bloke ended up losing his right eye while he was still in the hospital.
I love how this sounds in the papers. You come to Nelson, you hang out with friends then walk home to your hotel around 1pm - not really late considering it was a stag do. Then you get jumped and whoosh, you're undergoing surgery, having suffered a broken wrist, cut hand, and a serious facial injury resulting in the loss of your eye. Stupid freaking annoying youth. It's really irritating.
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One of the negatives in New Zealand: the alcohol issue. Drinking is a problem here, from the perspective of many immigrants and kiwis. I could give you a dozen examples per weekend, but this one is pretty astonishing--both annoying and sad.
Teen driver seven times over alcohol legal limit
Friday April 04, 2008 [Edited for brevity]
A teenager has been jailed for driving with seven times the legal limit of alcohol - his third such conviction in 12 months.
Ahere Scott, 19, of Haumoana, Hastings, was stopped by police driving after driving without headlights past a police patrol at 3.30am two days after Christmas. He blew 1118mcg - the legal limit for a person under 20 is 150mcg.
It was third time during 2007 that Scott had been stopped for driving with excess breath alcohol, something Judge Richard Watson said he never previously encountered. "I've never had a person in 18 years as a district court judge that had appeared in court three times in one year on drink driving charges," he told Hastings District Court.
On the two other occasions last year, Scott blew 968mcg in March, six times over the legal limit, and 661mcg in May.
A probation report suggested Scott should receive a sentence of home detention.
However, Judge Watson said he was reluctant to send him home. "I have concerns about the address as one occupant who lives there has had a drink driving conviction and the other has had six drink driving convictions."
He jailed Scott for three months and disqualified him from driving indefinitely.
