Ryan Bridge: Kindness has its limits

Kiwis are known around the world for their kindness. We open doors, we say please and thank you, we help out our neighbour. We leap in to help when help is needed. It’s one of the traits we’re most proud of. But one thing we hate more than anything else is when that kindness is taken for granted - then it’s no more Mr Nice Guy. We say this with kids stealing from dairies and ram-raiding poor old hard-working dairy owners. The minute they started destroying livelihoods and beating people with screw drivers and hammers, sympathy evaporated. Sure, some of these kids may have had hard upbringings, but there are plenty of kids with tough upbringings who choose not to drive a Nissan Gidda through a four-square window at 3am. So, we voted for boot camps. We reversed our ‘no chase’ police pursuit policy. We cracked down. Kindness has its limits. A long time ago, for those who frequent the city, we crossed the same line with beggars and rough sleepers. We care about them. We donate our time and money to the City Mission. We pay our taxes knowing they should be going to help in some way, improve their lives. But there are also a bunch of idiots taking advantage with squirted bottles at traffic lights. They can be aggressive and dangerous. Same goes for the rough sleepers on the footpaths in some of our big cities. It’s costing businesses. It’s destroying the reputation of entire swathes of city shops. These shops provide jobs for the rest of us. Especially in our biggest city, where foreign tourists first impressions should not be a punch up between two roughies on the footpath. So, while the headlines about this ‘’move on” policy, like the crackdown on ram-raiders before it, or the hardline on Kainga Ora tenants before it, will scream cruel and mean. They’re out of step with the reality people are facing in their own lives. The good grace cup hath runnith empty.