Into their own hands

The 'authorities' tell Bay of Plenty people not to go on the beaches and try to clean up the oil deposited there by the leaking Rena. You won't do it properly, they say; leave it to us, the experts, to do it in our own way in our own time.

Yet dozens of citizens are still going onto the beaches and scooping up blobs and globules of oil themselves. I link this repudiation of authority to Pike River and even to the Christchurch earthquake. Since the mine disaster, especially, the credibility of the 'authorities' has collapsed. They said there that they would do things their own way in their own time, and that they had the expertise and the knowhow. Yeah right. No wonder the people of Tauranga and Papamoa are taking matters into (literally) their own hands.

In a wider context, one might also consider the view taken of authority by the peoples of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria—not to mention those currently occupying the streets of New York's financial district.