Andrew Dickens: A middle finger to terror

Andrew Dickens Afternoons

So I’ve had a gorgeous 30 hours in the Wellington catching up with my youngest and enjoying the capital’s street life.
I know it wasn't your average weekend and that wasn't just the weather which was positively Mediterranean, I’ve got some classic shots on my Facebook page by the way. It was also the weekend of the Cuba Dupa festival, the celebration of Cuba Street as the thriving beating heart of the Greater Wellington community.
It was notable as this was a major event in a city outside of Christchurch that was compromised by the increased security level that is our new norm after the Christchurch Mosque attack.
Two weeks after the event the organisers and police decided that the job of protecting 100,000 people on a street in Wellington was too great and so Cuba Street was not closed and most of the musical acts were moved into inside venues.
At first, I thought that this was an over-reaction and that in changing our lives it was an example of the perpetrator winning, but I was wrong. The street may not have been closed but it was thronged. There were two outside venues I visited, Glover Park and the Heard Factory square. Yes, we were wanded and had bag checks but it didn’t kill the vibe. And the indoor shows were hot sweaty fun.
This was a glorious middle finger to terror.
But at the same time, the alleged shooter mumbled into life through the media after a Corrections source revealed he was making a complaint about his rights being denied.
Many of us including myself and the Prime Minister have promised never to say his name, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about him. So, it would be nice if Corrections could plug these sources for the victims' sake. I can’t blame the media for reporting the truth because there is a market for this junk.
I could have predicted that this would happen as the man is not stupid. So far he has been charged with only one murder. You can see why he believed that he is allowed his one private visitor a week, his legal advisor and his phone calls thinking that he has the same rights as any other charged with murder. But he's not as smart as he thinks he is, as Corrections believe they are within their rights to withhold privileges.
So nothing to see here. But because of the leak, it ended out all over our Sunday front pages. Note to the Nation: Just turn your back on him because attention is what he craves.
Now one final note on Wellington. Your traffic congestion from the airport to the city through the Mt Victoria tunnel is atrocious. Tailbacks from the tunnel to the airport roundabout all weekend long. Kent Terrace is a carpark, not a road.
It beggars belief that the capital of our nation is linked to the airport by a two-lane tunnel built in 1931. A second tunnel has been mooted and a test boring made in the 80s but somehow the money was not available.
It was ironic that the lead story in this weekend’s Wellington paper was about Save the Basin. The lobby group which helped bring down the Basin Reserve flyover proposal, preparing to stop a potential second Mt Victoria tunnel. One of their major concerns is the destruction of the character of the historical Mt Victoria suburb.
Well newsflash Save The Basin, Mt Vic’s character is already in tatters with the amount of stationary traffic clogging the tunnel's feeder roads and I say this lovingly as a former resident of the suburb. This is a job that should have happened 40 years ago.

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