When you’re 18 you are legally an adult and you can do all the cool adulty things like vote, drink acohol (legally), be tried as an adult for the crimes you commit and so forth.
Yet in this country it seems like there are adults and then there are real adults. In the recent budget cuts were made to jobseeker’s benefit, dependent on your age:
The rate of jobseekers benefit and supplementary welfare allowance for those aged 20 and 21 years of age who have no dependent children is being reduced to €100 per week. For those aged between 22 and 24 years, allowances will fall to €150 per week.
At the time I wondered how you could discrimate against somebody like that based on their age. After all, they pay the same taxes, prsi etc. Why shouldn’t they get the same benefit.
And now we have more of the same from the Gay Byrne led cuntvention that is the RSA. They propose that any newly qualified driver aged between 17 and 24 would be prevented from carrying passengers for 6-12 months after they get their licence.
Which seems like a load of old bollocks to me. An inexperienced driver is an inexperienced driver, no matter age they get their licence. And then there’s the whole issue of the provisional rules which state a driver has to be accompanied by somebody who holds a full licence. Under the new rule as soon as they get their licence they’re not allowed carry even that person in the car with them. How does that work?
Surely the driving test should be the be all and end all. If you get through the theory and the practical and are granted your full driving licence then you are qualified to drive a car the same as anyone else. Telling people of a certain age that their licence, which is exactly the same as anyone else’s, comes with conditions is surely discrimination.
The RSA, if they had their way, would reduce speed limits on all roads to 30kmh, make us all wear crash helmets and stop us driving at night because it’s darker than in the day. There’s absolutely a place for a safety authority but it has to be run with common sense and not nanny-state stupidity by a fuckwitted former chat show host.
Doesn’t make sense.
I’m sure if this was challenged in Brussels there’s a fair chance it would be seen as discriminatory.
It all part of their plan to get all people over 18 and under 25 to leave the country..
Its the only way the cunts have any chane of gettin a few seats in the next election..
You become an adult when you stop wanking every five hours and start wanking every five days.
The RSA should start teaching kids to drive when they’re 15 as part of the school curriculum so that they are competent controlling a car before they drive on a road. Then give them a learners permit at age 16 so they are well used to driving by 18.
A fucking ten year old can drive a car if there legs are long enough.
Wouldn’t this measure discriminate against the <24-year olds in the job market?
If you can't collect your customers at the airport or drop the lads off at the building site or share the driving duties in a delivery van, it would put you at a serious disadvantage in an interview. And all because of a stupid and totally unnecessary 12-month delay. I thought we were supposed to be promoting jobs for the young Irish, not sticking idiotic obstacles in their way.
It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that 40% of road deaths in 2009 were aged 25 and younger?
Or that people between 18 and 20 and 21 and 24 have the highest casualty rates per 1,000 of population in road accidents (5.6 and 3.8 respectively; see table 23 in the doc below).
Source:
http://www.rsa.ie/Documents/Road%20Safety/Crash%20Stats/RCF20083-2-2010.pdf
And if the driving licence is the be all and end all – why do insurance companies charge bigger premiums for younger drivers? The answer is not just because they’re cunts. They are cunts, but cunts whose livelihood depends on knowing who is more likely to wrap their car around a tree.
I’m not saying this RSA thing is the right response to the problem. I’m just saying that there is a problem and it’s not just Gay Byrne pulling daft ideas out his arse for jollies.
What shocks me the most is that Gay Byrne was appointed to such a position, how is the man remotely qualified for it? If he had his own companies etc going on the side during his tv career you might say ok, he has managerial skills at least. As far as I can tell you should need more qualifications then wearing wooley jumpers and frowning on things that may upset the good catholics of the nation.
Did they forget the bit about not allowing them to drive on roads with other cars or pedestrians on them? So they are not allowed the freedom to injure or kill someone within they’re own vehicle but can have a bash at someone in another one. No sense in that law at all. I have seen 60 and 70 year olds drive dangerously because of age or illness but there are no guidelines in place for this, totally ridiculous.
Woesinger – if 40% of road deaths were 25 or younger it means 60% were from those who are not discrimated against.
I recognise there’s an issue with young male drivers, but it’s because they’re young and male.
And if Gaybo is worried that passengers cause distraction to young drivers, that they might show off etc, aren’t they going to be just the same when they’re granted the novelty of being able to drive with their mates? Whether that happens after a year of having a licence or not is irrelevant.
i still wank every day – i’ll never get my licence at this stage…
Should be allowed to drive until they are over 21 IMO.
It’s ironic considering that old fart probably walked into the post office and bought a full licence to drive everything from mopeds to buses , for a punt.
I don’t know what system is in place now but when I began to drive about 8 years ago the provisional licence was given to everyone who was willing to pay 15 quid and present a few passport photos. And with that you could drive and for all intents and purposes it was legal. Then I failed the practical test and after I got the bad news I hopped back into me old 205 and tore away home with the same reckless abandon for yield signs, pedestrian crossings and traffic lights which I had had up to five minutes before the test. And it was legal. No-where else can you fail a driving test and then legally drive yourself home after it.
I am intrigued by the ‘here, we fucked up the economy so you can’t get a job, and by the way we are cutting your benefit so you go and look harder for something that doesn’t exist’ mentality.
Here’s a little story. The inquest is a ways off but this is what’s doing the rounds.
Pillar of the community of retiree age was indulging in alcoholic legal highs at his favourite local establishment. He arrived there at approx 10pm of a Saturday evening having been off at a match for much of the day. He was, it is said, ‘socialising’ on the premises until about 2.45am. He then set off for home, on foot, a distance of about 500m. He walked under the street lights for as far as they went, and then, reportedly, took to the white line in the centre of the road as it curved out into the countryside. It was there he was hit by a sober young driver as he rounded the bend, alone in his car. The incident team clearly marked the spot in the centre of the road.
So, we have campaigns against ‘legal highs’. We have campaigns against young drivers. But we have no-one, and I mean NO ONE, picketing outside pubs for irresponsible dealing. Nor closing down pubs for breaching their license terms, leading to death at 3am. Nor campaigning for legislation to prevent ‘mature’ drinkers from becoming traffic hazards for responsible young drivers.
I’d have killed that old boy myself if he’d staggered home just 20 minutes earlier. I suspect I could have dealt with it better than the young fella who’s now a stat to bolster RSA idiocy.
SoS – I wish I could explain that to you but one factor is certainly what Fill alludes to up above. The more difficult it is for young people the more likely they are to go elsewhere. Emigration = slower (eventual declining) rate of unemployment.
Conan, interesting perspective. The power of the vintners is much underestimated.
In my experience very few younger drivers drive while drunk these days. It’s usually men who are 50 up who take a few pints and drive home.
The younger drives do speed though and that remains a problem.
Twenty, I might have added that this is said to have been the dead man’s standard Saturday night – the booze, then the 500m walk home. The odds eventually shortened to nothing.
I wonder how the RSA feel about middle-aged drivers and older drivers who, because of the backlog in driving tests in the 80′s were simply posted out their full license as long as they’d had tow provisionals?
I know a number of older people who got their full license that way without any test at all.
And quite frankly some of them would never pass a test.
So while we the RSA are banging on about young drivers perhaps they should be suggesting repeat tests every five or ten years?
The odds eventually shortened to nothing.
Short odds anyway if you’re using the white line in the middle of the road to guide you home.
Cap’n – don’t give them any more stupid ideas! Although that’ll probably be next. That said, can you imagine the unholy row there’d be if they introduced it for just the over 60s?
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/i-drank-and-drove-home-from-late-late-says-gay-1801757.html
Ah, the good auld days with ‘uncle’ Gaybo.
introduction over 60′s driving tests would finish FF for ever..the’d be reduced to near socialist workers levels of support without the old fart vote.
It was great gas when they went mad with the European money and FF builders with local authority contracts were putting roundabouts on roundabouts.
The Douglas roundabout in Cork was a good laugh- the ma picked me up from the airport and when we got to the roundabout she said ‘watch your man there and see what he does’.
Sure enough this car which instinct and 8 tons of cowshit all round the car told me it was from down the county somewhere.
The driver spotted a mate and stopped on the roundabout to let his mate out- thereby causing a backlog right around every entry to the roundabout and sudden stops all over the place.
Grand fun.
Thats ridiculous. Its not surprising. the campaign adds say all there is to say about the RSA.. “could you live with the shame”, an organisation with the understanding and emotional age of a 3 year old!
divneymathers hit nail on the head, hopefully someone will challenge then on it.
I’m no fan of Auntie Gaybo, but you have to admit that the RSA have done a good job of reducing the shocking number of deaths on the road. The problem is that, to continue doing this, they have to seek out measures that are more and more obtuse. Conan, your argument equating alcohol (highly regulated) to headshops (not regulated at all) is ludicrous.
Also, if there is an asshole tailgating you and driving aggressively, you can be sure it will be a young lad in a souped up Civic, complete with baseball cap.
Cap’n:
The driver spotted a mate and stopped on the roundabout to let his mate out…
???
Also, if there is an asshole tailgating you and driving aggressively, you can be sure it will be a young lad in a souped up Civic, complete with baseball cap.
Not so. More likely to be a 30/40 something businessman.
not in my experience – had 2 of them on the way to tallaght last night for footie…
Hi Git- sorry, didn’t explain very well. This farmer (and he wasn’t the only one by all accounts) didn’t realise that you don’t sit on a roundabout waving your mates out of a side road onto it ahead of your car.
If you are stopped on a roundabout waving people on to it you are causing a tailback not only on the roundabout but basically providing ideal shunt conditions because people on other roads into the roundabout are checking right and then moving ut only to have to hit the brakes because some gobshite doesn’t know how roundabouts work.
I did like the defence one Cork farmer gave when he was up in court for reversing out of a farm gate at speed onto a road in a bloody tractor and a American tourist whacked straight into him.
When asked about it the farmer said in his own defence ” Sure everybody knows I’m coming out of that that time of the day”.
Seriously.
Cunts is BMW’s and Audi A6′s are more likely to tailgate in my experiences..
Is the A6 the girly sports car?
el cuno – “Conan, your argument equating alcohol (highly regulated) to headshops (not regulated at all) is ludicrous.”
All I can tell you, for a fact, is that there is a huge local campaign against an unregulated head shop selling ‘legal highs’ that have yet to have been proven to have killed anyone hereabouts.
Meanwhile, supposedly ‘regulated’ pubs sell a regulated drug, without any ethical responsibility, which IS a proven killer of people hereabouts. But there’s no picket outside the pubs.
No thats the TT..
The A6 is a lovely car driven by cunts..
I should get one then
Completely off subject.I wish face aids on that cunt in the costcutter radio ad..
Nah:Twenty you should really get a TT..
heh
Round here it’s kids who are a bloody nuisance doughnutting at 2 AM.
John Waters on with Derek Mooney, the cretinous fucking cunt(s).
Conan – I admit I have absolutely no experience of headshops or their contents. However, if I go into a pub and order a pint, I know what I am getting myself into. If they test, regulate and tax headshop products, great. Ditto for marijuana…
The debate about making Heroin available on the NHS has surfaced again – I say yes.
http://www.rcn.org.uk/newsevents/news/article/eastern_stories/eastern_region_leading_the_debate
thinking of starting a campaign to make cars more dangerous for people inside them and less dangerous for the poor cunts they plough into. came way too close to losing my left leg from the knee down four years ago when half asleep fucker plughed me off my motorbike. drivers care less and less about their driving as cars get safer – suv drivers particularly. airbags on the outside and crumple zones inside would, after a short darwinian period of culling the truly incompetent drivers, make our roads a lot safer. article from wired on same: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2007/11/is-safety-techn/
failing that, going to buy one of these and everyone can fuck off
http://www.tanksforsale.co.uk/T72_tanks_for_sale_page.htm
I’m very quiet these days.
I’m very quiet these days.
I thought you were dead. How is life ?
I am. Now in the afterlife. Grand, not a bother, thanks for asking.
Weird, no Protestants or Catholics up here, only Atheists and Buddhists. Hooda thunkit, huh?
Porridge you have a very good point there I think. An old traffic cop asked me once what was the difference between a male driver and a female driver?
His answer was that from his years of experience when a crash was imminent men will generally try to steer around it or away from it somehow whereas a woman will scream and let go of the wheel.
Might have been a misogynist I suppose but it was an intriguing comment. But the point you make about drivers being hypnotised into carelessness by the comfort and quietness of modern cars is a good one.
And I don’t even want to think about those bastard women who drive and put on make-up using the rear-view mirror while driving.
I think we’ll get to the stage soon where cars will be confiscated from dangerous drivers.
Too many people are lulled by the warmth and comfort and by psychologically assuming that what they see through the windscreen is like something on the telly that you can switch off with a remote.
i’d like every driver to have to spend a month or two every few years on a bicycle, motorbike or scooter. really is an eye opener and might shake people out of their complacency towards the safety of other road users. girlfriend has been on the bike a good bit with me and has made her a better driver.
as for going around cars in future, not going to bother. going to aim for the driver’s window, cos if i’m going to hospital, they’re coming too. maybe in a separate ambulance if the emts can prise my hands from around the driver’s neck.
I’ve seen people driving while doing crosswords and sudoku and using laptops. And with the onslaught on iPhones, people are not only texting but e-mailing while driving.
Instead of taking the passengers out of their cars could the RSA not take out the massive fecking bass amps? And restrict their music to stop whatever shite they play at full volume as they parade their puntos up and down the road at 3am? Mandatory country and western music for drivers under 25.
The problem is, St Brian Lendahand is a slimey cunt.
Gay’s right!I have 100% confidence in drivers over the age of 60 with cataracts in their eyes, who are senile and think downing 7 pints and driving home is grand ‘sure haven’t I be doing it all my life!’
Heh- and tune in tommorrow when an 84 year old male virgin is going to advise us on matters sexual. Its all go!
I’m pretty sure SG drives an A6. Is that right SG? heh
Guess who tailgated me from Aungier Street to Malahide, and I mean all the way for 10 miles? A fucking malahide pig. I forgot about that one.
“Heh- and tune in tommorrow when an 84 year old male virgin is going to advise us on matters sexual. Its all go!”
Ah now. Gay Byrne wouldn’t do that.
In Kevin Street about 20 years ago, the knackers from the flats robbed one of the Sierras from the station and swapped the doors and boot and bonnet with another robbed Sierra and then left it back. So they had to drive around in a patchwork quilt looking for the other car.
Another time, there was a cooker dropped from a few floors up onto a Garda van.
Well, in fairness, the recipe did call for that. Darina Allen – bleedin psychopath.
I “think” I’ve just wangled tickets. You know the way atheists have a smug superior attitude to people who believe in angels and shit because thoses types of people are flakier than Jim Corr? Well, this gig is going to be full of smug shoe-gazers. This crowd invented lo-fi shoe-gazing shuffling. I’m very excited. Excited as a shoe-gazer can be in a shoe-gazing way. I hope to fuck these tickets materialise, I saw them on their last tour in 96′ish…
buy their records.
http://www.pod.ie/index.php?s=2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrM4UjaQmY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY91hVZqhHY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPWzf2wKbvg&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoMdkyeZOqE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBcyuUy-l84&feature=related
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavement_(band)
right beside harcourt pig-pen too; must remember to bring a cream-cake. My neighbours have been hearing 3 albums on loop for the last 2 days, Brighten the Corners album and videos moved everything musically and visually to a new level of creativity. In my not so humble opinion.
Women, there’s far too many of them out there, on the road, in their cars. A ban would not just help reduce fatalities, but would also allow children to walk to school. A wahabi style ban might also reduce the second hand values of Audi TTs and force Nissan and a large number of car body repairshops into bankruptcy.
What’s the difference between a male driver and a female driver?
Oh for fuck’s sake…
By the way, is anyone investigating unsolved hit and runs between Donnybrook and Howth from ’69 to ’99?
Women, there’s far too many of them out there, on the road, in their cars.
Attaboy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39qdhbkTko4
A4
I’m not reading all the other responses cause I’m in a hurry.
I hope someone already made the point that at 18, you’ve paid little (probably no) tax?
Yes, I appreciate that liars off the boat also have paid no tax and yet avail of our supergenerous social welfare.
That’s the EU – nowt we can do about that.
But kids haven’t contributed in, so I don’t see any unfairness in capping what they take out in order to incentivise them to go and find work, or go and learn more.
Funny how these things only become an issue in a recession.
It seems discriminatory but i can see a sense of practicality about this.
how many people 30 plus have i seen attempting donuts on the ongar road?
very fucking few.