Alan Duff: Best stand up to life's thugs

This newspaper had a photo of one Wiremu Perry holding up a huge fist with the meanest scowl on his fat-swollen face. Photo / Facebook

Heavies like Wiremu Perry strike a nerve when they walk all over their fellow humans.

This newspaper had a photo of one Wiremu Perry holding up a huge fist with the meanest scowl on his fat-swollen face, a neck like he's got goitre, with one eye partly closed to add to the mean look. He's been jailed for menacing a Perth restaurateur after being hired as a debt collector and is likely to be deported to New Zealand after his sentence.

Wiremu, usually big blimps like you are friendly types that make people laugh as you don't have much else to offer. I wonder how an obese guy, slow and lumbering, would even throw that fist, let alone scare anyone. I bet not a club rugby player in his erstwhile country would shake in his boots. Even this old guy wouldn't.

Of course these thugs have had a bad upbringing, thus violent videos and movies are what they are drawn to and emulate in real life. We can be sure Perry's type don't read books, and newspaper court pages are their only printed interest. This guy probably knows every KFC outlet in Perth, along with every seedy bar to hustle a deal or just get drunk and kinghit someone. And you can bet he feels a pretty damn cool, mean-as dude.

This beached whale is the father of two human beings? How? Yep, he's struck a nerve. Donald Trump talked about wanting to punch someone in the face; what I'd like to do to this bloke. Of course we don't know the history behind the restaurateur's alleged debt, and the person who hired Perry is just as guilty.

Any restaurant owner will tell you, there's not much money in the game, even in high foot-traffic locations rent alone can kill them, if it isn't wages, power, GST, etc. Do they need a big heavy like Perry in their busy, stressed lives?

A restaurant outside our bedroom window here in Bayonne is open seven days a week, the owners work from around 10am to at least 11pm and later on a Friday and Saturday. We look out and often see it empty or with just a handful of diners at the outside tables and a few inside. One night we witnessed an obviously over-tired and stressed proprietor going off his head at one of our upstairs neighbours. It put us off him a bit but we understood how easily he could be triggered.

Contrast this with Fatboy waddling into the Perth restaurant and slapping the owner around. Perry is a gang member who probably hasn't worked for years. You can guess by now I back the person who works, and despise thuggish debt collectors.

Now, let me weigh in on the pitbull dog debate as it wouldn't surprise if Perry has one. They go together. Pitbulls are bred to attack. Period. That is their genetic makeup, it's hard-wired. Sure, individual pitbulls raised - well, lovingly, I guess - don't often attack humans. But look at the statistics and they dominate, with children too often the unhappy victims.

Go into any low-income state-housing area to see a pitbull at every other property. And definitely not raised "lovingly". They're there to reflect their owner's own aggression, his seige mentality against a world he perceives as having done him no favours. He didn't acquire the pitbull to be a family pet. It's a status symbol of the owner's violent outlook.

I wrote some time ago of a mate with a pretty aggressive pitbull that he found amusing when it thrust its snout in a visitor's crotch and growled menacingly. Human smarts won the day when I pulled out a dog biscuit.

I was scared of dogs for years and years. One of our neighbours had quite vicious pig dogs which they used to scare us kids as a joke - to them. It took two-thirds of a lifetime to get over this fear when I realised it had the better of me. It's gone now, leaving just a residue of caution whenever I see a pitbull or a similar breed.

I have a pathological reaction to bullies like Perry. Of all thugs, whether in gang regalia, a bureaucrat abusing the power of office, or a robo-cop in police uniform over-reacting to a situation. You have to stand up to them or they'll run right over you.

Debate on this article is now closed.