A Modest Proposal

No Longer Bored

New Zealand is awash with criminal gangs.  Here is a media account of a couple of gangs in action (against each other).  

Mongrel Mob prospect Hayden Wallace clutched a loaded rifle inside one of three cars approaching the home of Black Power rival Josh Te Tua.

It was after dark on May 5, 2007 and the vehicle Wallace was in had turned off its lights. An hour earlier, amid a day of escalating tensions between the two gangs, three carloads of Mongrel Mob members and associates had driven past the Whanganui house and been pelted with bottles, bricks and other missiles. They were back for revenge.

During the earlier altercation, a brick smashed the windscreen of patched mobster Karl Check's four-wheel-drive.  Unhappy, Check handed a .303 rifle to Wallace and was overheard telling him to "shoot him in the head".

Outside Te Tua's home, about 20 Black Power members and supporters had gathered on the lawn.  As the vehicles carrying the Mongrel Mob members passed the property three gunshots rang out. The Black Power members dived for cover and escaped injury.  One of the bullets went through a window and ripped through the chest of Te Tua's two-year-old daughter, Jhia, who was asleep on the couch.

Wallace, Check and Ranji Forbes, the driver of the car Wallace was in, were later found guilty of murder in one of the few cases in the past two decades where an innocent bystander has become a victim of warring gangs.  [NZ Herald]

Intra-gang warfare has become a kind of entertainment.  We can tolerate it, except for when things go too far--which they did in the case of the murder of two year old, Jhia. 

It's around about at this point that we find our minds and memories drifting back to the Roman Empire.
  It seems that the Empire was able to deal with these kinds of "events" in a much more civilised manner than we are capable of. 

The Roman Colosseum was a doozy of a stadium.  It was used for mock battles where fighters (usually slaves) took to each other until there were winners--i.e. survivors.  It was not just in Rome that this kind of circus played.  Relics of similar, numerous stadia have been found throughout the ancient Empire. 



Given that sports are now largely relegated to the mantelpiece, due to the depredations of  COVID-19, it could be an ideal time to bring back a modern version of the ancient Colosseum for our entertainment.  It seems we have plenty of willing players, what with criminal gang numbers soaring.  Why clog up the court system when hundreds of gang members would be delighted to step out into an arena, appropriately armed, and fixated on rendering utu upon rival gang members?  It would be an honour, bro.

Moreover, watching the spectacle would relieve the enforced boredom of thousands of men and women presently left twiddling their thumbs in government enforced idleness.