It is any wonder that I have such a high level of contempt for the United Nations.
Right now the situation in Gaza is getting worse, Lebanon have joined in, firing on Israel and Israel have fired back, although exactly what Lebanon’s interest is in the matter remains unclear…all that we really know right now is that they have just made the situation a lot more dangerous, and a lot more volatitle, and a lot harder to end. Ending a war between two parties is one thing, but between three is a whole new kettle of fish, and a problem that we really didn’t need.
Earlier in the week, the UN tried to work out what to say about the war in the Middle-East. It was fairly widely expected that they would make one of their usual “we condemn the war, please stop it” type statements…but they couldn’t decide exactly what words to use, so they just decided to say nothing.
Admittedly if they had said something, it would have just been hot air…but at least it would have been a statement on behalf of the UN’s member nations.
Today the UN have made a decision…it’s too dangerous in Gaza, so they’re withdrawing their humanitarian support.
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency claim that four of their people have been killed since the conflict began about two weeks ago, the latest death apparently occurred when the Israeli forces fired directly on them…Israel denies any knowledge of the incident, saying that Hamas militants sometimes target U.N. aid trucks to take food.
The UN and the Israeli government are working on investigating the incident.
Here’s the bit that I don’t get though. War, by it’s very nature, is dangerous, and without the UN, a lot of innocent people who are caught in the middle of the conflict will have no chance of receiving aid. Despite this, the UN say that they won’t go back unless Israel can guarantee their safety.
If I can draw a comparison here, we are currently involved in a war in Iraq…we have lost a number of our soldiers there, but there are people there who still need us, so we’re staying. Admittedly, the UN humanitarian workers aren’t soldiers, and perhaps they need support from external troops such as our troops, or the Americans or the British to help protect them, but turning around and running away isn’t going to help anyone, least of all the innocent people who are caught in the middle of this war…the very people that the UN should be helping.
I also find it interesting that the Red Cross, despite also claiming to have been fired on, are not leaving…they’re staying.
It all makes me wonder why we, as a nation, waste so much money on the UN. Their ability to actually provide a useful outcome seems to diminish every year despite the larger amount of money that we give to them.
The story which seems to have captured the imagination of the newspapers this morning is this story from the US about president-elect Barack Obama and his family being forced to stay in a hotel rather than Blair House, the massive mansion-esque guest house across the road from the White House, in mid-January because the place is already booked.
Apparently The Obamas wanted to move into the 119-room mansion across the street from the White House so that their daughters could start school in Washington, but when they were informed that it was booked, they took a suite at the exclusive Hay-Adams hotel instead.
So, why is the Obama family being forced in to a luxury hotel instead of a luxury guest house…it’s because our former prime minister John Howard and his wife are booked in to the guest house, for the night before Mr. Howard, along with former British prime minister Tony Blair and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe are to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by outgoing US President George Bush.
It could be my imagination, but the last time I checked, neither John Howard and his family, or Barack Obama and his family, take up 119 rooms on their own, or come close to it, so it’s interesting that they’re not able to share the guest house.
That said, it doesn’t matter where the Obamas stay, they’re going to have to move in to the White House a couple days later anyway.
As far as I can see, normal protocol has been followed. Barack Obama will not be president at that time, and the Howards are the guest of the president. Whilst the newspapers might not like it, there really isn’t a problem here…so can they please get back tocovering some real news?
Around this time on Friday I mentioned that the Australian government was considering taking in detainees from Guantanamo Bay, and I mentioned the concerns that I had about the issue.
My concerns about it, for the most part, revolved around the issues with placing the detainees in facilities here. Do we have a central camp? Or do we mix them in with the general prison population.
I was also concerned about Who would pay for them. Logic would say that the US Government would have to pay, but the history of the whacky world of politics says that we, the Australian taxpayers, would end up footing the bill.
There were also issues about the legality, under Australian law, of us detaining the Guantanamo inmates.
In the end I concluded that, in my view, it would be easier and better for US President-elect Obama to take an interest in either improving the conditions at Guantanamo, or finding better accomodation for the detainees at other US facilities.
Well, there has been some movement on this story, and quite frankly I feel used.
Let’s take a look at the timeline shall we?
Friday morning, front page of The Australian, there’s a big story about how Australia might be taking the detainees, and the story quoted a spokespoerson for acting prime minister Julia Gillard.. Understandably, it becomes THE story of the day. It leads most of the news bulletins, various “experts” and politicians make statements about it, people like me editorialise about it, and talkback radio goes in to meltdown mode with people flooding the phone lines with their views on it.
The general concencus seems to be that taking in the detainees in some mass influx wouldn’t be a wise political decision as a lot of the voices in the media, be they political commentators, so-called “experts” or the general public, seem to be against the move.
By the time the Friday night television news bulletins had rolled around, acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard has almost made a decision, telling the country that Australia is unlikely to take the detainees.
More speculation and debate occurred on the Saturday, the newspapers had their say, and the general view still seemed to be that we shouldn’t take the detainees. By Saturday night, Ms. Gillard had completely ruled out the influx of detainees. Here’s the main bit of the speech that she read to the media at a press conference.
Ms. Gillard did go on to say that future requests for individuals to be resettled would be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Now, I’m glad to see that sense won out here and that we’re not going to make outselves responsible for fixing a problem which belongs to the United States, but there is something slightly odd about this.
Friday, the day after New Year’s day, a day which would otherwise have been a very quiet news day, a story which has been bubbling away in the background for a while suddenly becomes the biggest story in the country thanks to a statement from a “spokesperson” for Julia Gillard.
And then, that night, this slow, calculating, federal government, has suddenly made a decision, or almost made a decision. It was received warmly by the public, so by the next day, it was policy.
For a government which loves to take time to make decisions by referring them off to committees, this was an extremely fast decision with some interesting international relations consequences.
I suppose that I should be happy that the government followed the wishes (or the apparent wishes) of the people, but I do feel used, and I’ll tell you why.
The old “flood the media with a controversial decision and then announce whatever the public reaction says to announce” trick is one which the Howard government used quite often. It’s a trick which, whilst useful to a certain extent, is subject to manipulation by the media, who may very well have their own agenda to push.
It’s a trick which was roundly criticised by the media, the public, and the then federal-Labor opposition…and yet here it is, in January 2009, making a come back.
I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised…the content never seems to change in politics, just the people making the statements. And on this occasion it seems that, whilst we’re not taking terror suspects in today, Ms. Gillard has the key in the door, ready to open it when she finds a terror suspect which she likes.
Ah yes, that other wonderful trick of politics. It sounds like a decision, but it’s actually a case-by-case basis.
Police catch Summernats founder speeding
January 2, 2009 - 1:05PM
The public face of the Summernats car festival - organiser Chic Henry - has been chastised by police for speeding through a Canberra street on day one of the event.
Police issued Mr Henry with a formal warning after he was clocked doing 77km/h in a 40km/h zone outside the Summernats venue, AAP has learned.
Police let Mr Henry off with a warning because the street - Flemington Road in Mitchell - is usually an 80km/h zone.
It has been temporarily reduced to 40km/h for the annual event, which kicked off on Thursday.
Mr Henry was not fined and will have no points deducted from his licence.
It could just be me, but isn’t being aware of your surroundings and changes to road conditions part of driving? And wouldn’t the Summernats organiser be aware that the road just outside the event is having its speed limit reduced for Summernats?
It’s unfortunate that Mr. Henry was speeding as he does generally try to set a good example for the attendees of the event…unfortunately the Police, despite their public bleating to the contrary, have just set an example of “ignorance is an acceptable excuse for bad behaviour”.
I can’t wait to see the number of people who see Chic Henry getting away with speeding and decide that they can get away with it as well.
There’s an interesting story in the news this morning.
According to the Australian Newspaper, Australia is planning to rehouse Guantanamo Bay detainees in Australian prison facilities when US President Elect Barack Obama shuts down Guantanamo Bay at some stage in the next two years.
US authorities have approached Australia and Britain about resettling detainees of the notorious prison.
The Times of London reported on Thursday that Britain was preparing to take Guantanamo Bay detainees to allow the Obama administration to shut down the prison.
The Rudd government is now considering quietly accepting detainees, the Australian newspaper reported on Friday.
A spokesman for Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard told The Australian that detainees could be accepted in Australia under strict conditions, but that there would be no wholesale intake of former detainees.”
Well, let’s face it, we can’t just let them go. The people who are being detained at Guantanamo are suspected of being the worst of the worst of the worst. If they weren’t, then they wouldn’t be being held there.
The issue that I see here is that there have been a lot of complaints about the conditions at Guantanamo Bay…rehousing them is fine and would probably improve conditions, but can it really be done secretly in the way that seems to be planned?
Government’s may be concerned about the security implcations of publicising the location of the detainees if they were take them…but we all know where Guantanamo Bay is.
That said, you would think that, if we’re going to avoid the alleged human rights violations which occurred at Guantanamo Bay, then perhaps we can’t have large central camps for these people, perhaps we would have to put them in our maximum security prisons…so who pays for them? They’re United States prisoners, surely the United States would have to pay for them, but undoubtedly we’ll end up footing part of the bill.
Federal Opposition Leader malcolm Turnbull raised yet another concern…acording to him, “There does not appear to be any legal basis under which Australia could hold the Guantanamo Bay detainees in custody,”
To me, this looks like an impossible logistical and legislative nightmare. Guantanamo Bay might not be perfect, but at least it’s a known quantity. We know what we’re dealing with, and in my opinion, rather than closing the place down, President-Elect Obama should take a personal interest in ensuring that the prison meets human rights guidelines. Surely that would be a better and easier solution all round.
Good morning Canberra, Samuel Gordon-Stewart back from Deniliquin and with you again…and it looks like I scared the news team away…I’ll try to coax them back in for tomorrow morning.
According to the calendar, today is part of a different year to yesterday…so how did you spend New Year’s Eve? How did you sleep? Have you slept?
I was up at about 4:30 yesterday morning to prepare the news at 2QN in Deniliquin, and I stayed there until 1pm, at which time I drove to Echuca and caught up with the staff at the 2QN and Classic Rock Echuca outpost, before driving home via the scenic route through Albury.
I got home at some stage around 10pm and, understandably, wanted to go to bed, which I did not long after.
When it comes down to it, I don’t care much about the new year. For me, and this may seem a tad selfish, I celebrate a new year on the second of June, when my birthday rolls around. It has more meaning to me than an arbitrary day on which the calendar starts all over again.
My plan was always to be in bed by midnight, the theory being that, if I got to sleep, I could sleep right through the fireworks and be ready to wake up nice and refreshed at 4:30 this morning. No such luck unfortunately.
For some reason, people kept sending me text messages all night. I was asleep by 11 o’clock, but I was woken by the arrival of a text message at 11:58, which meant that I couldn’t get back to sleep before the fireworks started, which meant I was stuck lieing there waiting for the noise to stop. I was tired so I think I partially drifted off to sleep despite the noise, and considering that I live only a short distance from the fireworks, that’s no mean feat.
I was then woken again at about 2am, and again at 4:28, a mere two minutes before my alarm went off. That last text message was from a friend who was attending the “Sensation” dance event in Melbourne which has been the news a bit this week…and whilst it could be argued that he didn’t know what time it was, it prompted a mildly annoyed response from me, sarcastically thanking him for waking me two minutes before I employ an alarm clock to do so.
You might be wondering why I didn’t just silence my phone…well it’s my failsafe alarm clock. My main alarm clock beeps, and my phone has an annoying voice saying that it’s time to get up and constantly rambling about what time it is. If mobile phones were allowed in the studio I’d give you a demonstration.
I had an awful night of sleep, and I fully expect to collapse back in to bed when I get home this morning.
I’m glad that people enjoy themself on New Year’s Eve, it’s just a pity that they forget that not everyone cares what they’re doing…and I’m not the only one who likes to sleep.
All that said, I hope that you have a good new year.
This was the script for my morning editorial this morning on 1WAY FM, although I did deviate from, and expand on, it a bit while I was reading it. I think it works quite well as a blog post, so here it is.
I re-used my blog-based editorial about the new punishment for using fake IDs in New South Wales as my other radio editorial for the morning. The re-use of editorials is a wonderful thing.
I certainly hope it’s a December version of April Fools Day, because this story which I heard on the 5am 2UE news, seemingly from The Daily Telegraph, is just bizarre.
TEENAGERS caught with fake identification will be forced to spend an extra six months on their P-plates.
The move comes as police warn of a thriving blackmarket in fraudulent IDs, with students paying up to $80 for professional-quality altered driver’s licences.
To be introduced early next year, police will pass on offenders’ details to the Roads and Traffic Authority and those already on their provisional plates will have the additional six months automatically added.
It will take their minimum time spent on P-plates to 3½ years.
Uh huh, and what about those who don’t have a licence?
Gaming and Racing Minister Kevin Greene said the penalties would be retrospective, meaning youngsters caught and who are unlicensed will still be forced to spend the extra time on their provisional licences.
Apparently it removes the burden from parents…apparently being responsible for people under the age adulthood is a bad thing.
It is also in response to parents bailing out their children by paying the existing $620 fine on their behalf.
“We’re introducing this sanction because P-platers to be punished for using fake IDs risking your driver’s licence strikes a chord with young people,” Mr Greene said.
“Imposing a fine which might cause some fleeting pain - or even none at all if parents are paying it - but having to stay on your P-plates well after all your mates are on their full licence might just get the message through.”
If they’re so serious about making sure that parents aren’t inconvenienced, why not just make it illegal for parents to pay the fine, with some awful penalty if they are proven to have done so.
I’m not sure that referreing to the great deterrent of our legal system, the fine, as “fleeting pain” was such a good idea either.
All that said, it looks like people who never get a licence, and quite possibly those who move interstate, will never have to deal with the extra half a year of a provisional licence. Could this be a novel approach to curing Sydney’s traffic problems?
There’s a bit of a hullabaloo going on in the media today about a supposed lack of security guards at a New Year’s Eve dance event in Melbourne.
The event in question is called “Sensation” and until now, I’d never heard of it. Well, actually, I had seen the name, but didn’t really bother finding out what it was…which was probably a good thing as it’s not really my cup of tea (and it could be argued that it wouldn’t suit people who measure events in terms of cups of tea anyway). It does occur to me now that the myriad of people I know who have left Canberra for Melbourne this week are probably going to that event…I’m glad that I wasn’t present when the idea of going was floated as it would have made for a very boring conversation.
Anyway, back on topic, there are supposedly going to be 50 security guards, although organisers have claimed on 3AW that the number will be closer to 200, for the 40,000 people expected to attend, which works out at 800 people per guard (or 200 people per guard if the organisers are to be believed), a number which falls short of some supposed benchmark of 2 guards for the first hundred people and one guard for each hundred thereafter.
Surely though, the number of guards plus the uniformed and plain-clothed police who will be there is plenty for what will almost certainly be a festive and fairly pleasant event. The people who are whinging about a lack of guards really need to remember that security guards are not riot police, and are really just a form of crowd control and a deterrent to those who may want to cause mischief. There is almost nothing that they can do to prevent or stop a riot should the conditions be right for them…that’s when you call in the police and let them deal with it.
Sometimes I think the people who are whinging about this (as the latest thing in a long series of “whinging because we can”) won’t be happy until there are two security guards for every attendee. They don’t seem to realise that nobody would actually attend such an event, and they would avoid “organised” events if such rules were put in place, effectively leading to impromptu events in suburban locations, which are prone to gatecrashes, and the exact trouble that these organised events tend to discourage.
Virtually mandating that people attending these organised events end up dancing with the security guards is not helpful to anyone, and it’s about time that the people who in reality want to ban organised (and impromptu) events, and are using this security hoopla as a thin veil to do so, should just follow my lead, and go to bed before midnight on New Year’s Eve.
What a pity it is that there isn’t going to be a natural thunderstorm around 11:59 on Wednesday night in Sydney. Just think of all the money that the New South Wales government could pump in to schools, roads and hospitals:
SYDNEY will usher in 2009 with a $5 million pyrotechnics display using almost twice as much fireworks as last year.
More than five tonnes of fireworks will explode over Sydney Harbour, in what event organisers have dubbed the Midnight Creation Storm.
The fireworks display will feature “stunning new effects like lightning, thunder and rain,” Sydney New Year’s Eve Creative Director Rhoda Roberts said.
Which makes me wonder why the weather bureau haven’t noticed the impending storm. Their forecast calls for “mostly sunny” weather.
“As we go into the countdown and the fireworks begin, you really are going to be taken away to another world.”
My question though, is where are all of the climate change alarmists? Why aren’t they complaining about the pollution from the fireworks:
More than 5000 kilograms of explosive devices will be fired into the sky, 2000 kilograms more than last year, at a cost of $5 million.
On the bright side, at least we haven’t been fed the usual nonsense about the fireworks being great for the economy, because think about it for a moment, about the only people to make money out of new year’s eve are licenced premises, taxis, and whichever television network has a bunch of inebriated hosts ooohing, aaahing and rambling at the fireworks. The first two would happen regardless of the fireworks, just in a more distributed manner, and the latter, well they’re on all three commercial networks this year as Seven and Nine have worked out that there are fireworks outside of Sydney…wouldn’t be nice if these were people from whom we could be spared.
If the title sounds familiar, it should, it’s a quote from Sir Humphrey Appleby’s Christmas message.
It seems an appropriate title for a post which is a bit of a reflection on the year that has been and the year that is ahead (although I’m not convinced that it is possible to reflect on an event which is yet to occur). I started to think about this a couple weeks ago when I noticed that Mark Parton was trying to get people to give their year a rating out of ten…I’m not really convinced that such a thing is possible as a year is such a long time and so many things happen that I just don’t think that I can really weigh them all up against each other to come up with a definitive number.
It has been such a strange year with a number of ups and downs along the way including a few points in time where I nearly didn’t see the year out (well, I still haven’t, but I think you get my drift). The latter half of the year has probably been better overall than the first half, but the highs and lows have been much more pronounced.
If I remember this year for one thing, it will something that I don’t want to write about for fear of incriminating myself…at least I don’t have to worry about it any more. I might feel like writing about it in a couple years…three years sounds like a good number, and I’d be interested to see the resident conspiracy theorist who thinks I don’t exist try to work this one out…the clues are all there if you look hard enough.
Anyway, as I mentioned at the end of the breakfast show on 1WAY FM this morning, and alluded to yesterday on this blog, the year ends for me on a tentative note. The brief summary of it is that I have somewhat willing become unemployed, although the longer version is much more interesting.
Regular readers would probably recall that in June I resigned from my job with AussieHQ. What is less well-known is that I took up a similar job with AussieHQ in late August, a move which, in hindsight, may have been a mistake. It was definitely a mistake to ignore my option about a week later of submitting an application for a journalism job at Capital Radio, although a number of bridges would have been damaged beyond repair had I been successful with such an application.
I should make it clear that I don’t have any problems with the people at AussieHQ. They are a group of thoroughly decent people…you would have to be decent to take somebody back a short time after they resigned. When it comes down to it, I’m sick of technical support. I’ve convinced myself that I’m not sick of it enough times to know that I am completely and utterly sick of it (he said as he publicly killed any possibility of a last resort job in some other technical support position with another employer)…there is only so much of dealing with other peoples’ problems that I can take.
Last week, the week that I spent in Deniliquin, proved to me just how much I was deluding myself to think that I was making some sort of wise decision by staying in technical support. I absolutely loved my week at 2QN, and I recall saying that, if they would have me back, I would love to come back.
Things became a bit difficult on Monday afternoon when I was asked to come back. I knew at that time that taking another week off from my stable, if boring by comparison, day job would be damaging to my chances of retaining said day job, so I initially turned down the offer to go back to Deniliquin on the grounds that it just didn’t look like it would be workable. At the same time, I was being offered a change of pace in my day job…A PR role, seemed interesting and deserved consideration, and I was reasonably excited about it, but I wasn’t comfortable with the reasoning behind my decision to turn down the time in Deniliquin.
My options, as I saw them, were to accept the Deniliquin offer, or accept the PR offer…continuing in tech support was not an option, and to compound matters, I needed to make the decision by about 6am.
I consulted with some people for “external advice”, including Tim Malone who happened to relieve the other difficulty in the consideration, the small matter of the 1WAY FM breakfast show. I received some useful advice, but ultimately I had to make the decision for myself, and when I came to the conclusions that:
1. PR isn’t a role that I can see myself enjoying for an extended period of time, and
2. Radio is where I really want to be
The decision became obvious. The only remaining concern was that the Deniliquin job may have been filled by one of the casuals who live a lot closer to the town that I do. By 9:30am I had an answer, I had the job.
That afternoon I was asked to resign from AussieHQ, a request which was more amicable than I was expecting. Refusal would have been an option, but I doubt that my application for unpaid leave would have been granted, and I would probably have been fired for failing to attend work for a week, so the resignation is probably the better option. It also means that AussieHQ can employ someone else who will hopefully enjoy the job more than I did.
I enjoyed the job for a while, quite a while in fact, and I usually found something to enjoy each day, but the days of going to work and enjoying most, if not all, of a shift are long gone. The opportunity to move on is a welcome one.
So, moving in to the new year, I find myself in a bit of a pickle. As of the close of business on Friday the 2nd of January, I don’t have a job. I have about a week and a half of leave to be paid out, and the few days of work in Deniliquin to be paid, and of course the week just gone in Canberra as well. What happens after that is a mystery.
A heap of radio jobs were advertised just before Christmas, so I will have to follow those leads, although if I’m lucky I might find that an existing contact has a position, even if it’s casual or part-time.
At this time I’m more than willing to move if a full-time position is available. Moving for a part-time job would be a decision to be dealt with on its merits. Ultimately it’s a great opportunity to move on, without needing to worry about the stability of an existing job.
I’m approaching the new year with cautious optimism…for all I know it could come crashing down in a big heap, but with any luck it will turn out better than before, and everything will be good. “Bring it on” I say!
The event in questions was a protester setting himself on fire outside Parliament House. The opposition and sections of the media have jumped all over Mr. Bidgood for his actions, but I really can’t see the problem.
If a newspaper photographer had been there, or a television camera crew, or even if I had been there with a camera, there would have been footage and/or photos. The photographer or camera crew would have taken the pictures back to the newsroom for their News Director to decide if they wanted to publish it, whilst I would have taken the photos home and published them here on this blog.
People sell photos of newsworthy events to the media all the time, so I can’t understand what the problem is here.
Joe Hockey, a man for whom I have a great deal of respect, has been the loudest critic of Mr. Bidgood…frankly Mr. Hockey, pull your head in, and ask Julie Bishop to actually answer a question the next time she appears on Lateline.
As for Mr. Bidgood. He has apologised for his actions (unnecessary in my view), but I will be writing to him to support his actions. What he did was attempt to bring the truth to the public, and it’s nice to see a politician doing that for a change.
I’ll start this by saying that I have a lot of respect for the Police and the work that they do, in fact it is on my list as a possible long-term career objective, although whether I would meet the fitness requirements of the job is something that we can debate another day. As such, none of what I’m about to say is in any way intended as a slur against the Police, rather it’s an editorial that I should have written a long time ago about how annoyed I am at a particular set of dubious and malleable statistics being trotted out by the Police on a regular basis.
I’m referring to the statistics which get thrown at us about unlicensed drivers. Of late, with automated number plate recognition technology being used all over the place in “compliance operations”, these statistics have been trotted out a bit more than usual, generally alongside a statement from a senior Police officer who is “disappointed”. The latest AFP press release on the subject is a good example:
Traffic compliance “Results disappointing”
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
The Compliance Targeting Team, comprising of ACT Policing officers and ACT Government representatives continue to be disappointed by Canberra drivers.
Using the highly-successful RAPID plate-recognition system, the team has targeted unregistered, uninsured and defective vehicles and unlicensed drivers on Canberra’s main arterial roads since 20 October, 2008.
To date, the team has detected 111 unregistered vehicles, 56 uninsured vehicles and issued 215 vehicle defect notices.
Of significant concern is that 126 unlicensed drivers, including 50 suspended and 6 disqualified drivers were detected.
Detective Superintendant Mark Colbran said it was driver’s continual disregard for compliance and road safety which is most disappointing.
“The fact that between January 2006 to September 2008, 22% of serious motor vehicle collisions involving injury in the ACT involved either unlicensed drivers or unregistered vehicles, highlights the importance of these types of operations to the safety of all Canberra road users.” Supt Colbran said.
“We will continue to target those drivers who fail to register and insure their vehicles, in all areas of Canberra”.
“These operations are for the safety of all Canberra motorists and we ask that all motorists be patient when approaching vehicle checking points”.
Motorists should be aware that the Compliance Targeting Team will be conducting a compliance operation on Adelaide Avenue, commencing at 3pm, Friday (November 14). Traffic delays should be expected.
The main problem that I have with these statistics is that they seem to work on the premise that a shiny bits of plastic turn people perfect drivers which, as we know, is utter nonsense. People with valid shiny bits of plastic are involved in accidents all the time…in fact, according to Detective Superintendant Colbran, people with valid shiny bits of plastic and valid vehicle registration are involved in 78% of serious motor vehicle collisions involving injury. So, does that mean that 22% of such collisions involve “unlicensed” drivers…well that really depends on your definition of unlicensed. (I’m going to stick with the 22% number, which is an overestimation, for the moment, because I have no figures with which to separate the “unlicensed” from the “unregistered”).
When the Police talk about “unlicensed drivers” they really mean people who don’t have a valid bit of shiny plastic. Basically it’s an erroneous name for a statistic which includes people who have invalid bits of plastic (eg. those who have been suspended and/or disqualified from driving) and people who have never had a bit of plastic (who, for the sake of convenience, I’m going to refer to as the “never-helds”, an abbreviation of “never held a licence” which is another term which seems to get used). It’s slightly unclear whether these figures include unsupervised learners.
“What’s the problem with grouping all of these people as “unlicensed”…after all, they aren’t insured?” I hear you ask. Quite simply, each category has a very different risk factor:
Suspended drivers are a tad difficult to quantify. In most cases, they’re probably not outright lunatics, a lot of the time they’re probably just people who were over the speed limit a couple too many times when somebody in authority was watching. For every one of these people, there is probably another validly licensed driver who has done the same thing, just without being caught. Sure, there will be some in this category who probably deserve to be off the road for longer than their suspension period, but for most who have been suspended purely on accumulated demerit points, they’re not exactly a high risk, most would probably be about the same risk as validly licensed drivers.
Disqualified drivers are a different story. These tend to be repeat habitual offenders who have been removed from the road and have been disqualified from holding a driver’s licence for very good reasons. This category are almost always a ticking time-bomb and I fully support efforts to keep these people off our roads.
Those categories are very easy to count, and are therefore quite easy to include in accurate statistics. We know how many of them exist, and we can easily work out the “serious collision” rate for these categories of drivers. The other categories aren’t quite as easy.
Unsupervised learners: There are plenty of them. We know how many leaner drivers exist, but we can’t really work out how many of them are unsupervised at any given time, especially seeing as any half-smart unsupervised learner will not be displaying “L” plates. Generally speaking, despite their lack of experience, learners are regarded as the safest category of driver on the road, and considering that learners are generally competent enough to progress to a provisional licence for some time before they actually do progress (you don’t suddenly become competent in the last five minutes of your final assessment or logbook lesson), having a competent learner on the road without supervision isn’t likely to cause a “serious collision”. As far as I’m concerned, this is a fairly low risk category as well, especially when you consider that learners do their learning on public roads, and it’s very rare to hear of a fatal collision involving a learner driver.
Drivers who have never held a licence: A completely unquantifiable category. We know that they exist, because the Police keep telling us that they’ve found some, and I would suggest that we have probably all known at least one. The Police like to make an example of this category when they find them, especially if they’ve been involved in some other traffic incident. “Police catch driver travelling 10km/h over the speed limit” doesn’t make for much of a news story, but “Police catch unlicensed driver at 10km/h over the speed limit” does make for a bit of a story. Ultimately the Police, apart from actually enforcing the law, have the job of making us believe that they are enforcing the law within a three block radius, hence the whole raft of “do this and you will be caught” messages that we receive from them on a regular basis, and it’s much easier to get that sort of message out there with stories about people who are perceived as “doers-of-no-good”, so they run with those stories as much as possible, further cementing the category’s place on the “doers-of-no-good” list.
Anyway, the “never-helds” are impossible to quantify because, by the very nature of the category, there is no list of people in the category, so we can’t say that “90% of people in this category will kill someone if we don’t stop them first” because to say that, we would need to be able to show that, historically, 90% of never-helds end up killing someone. We can’t measure a percentage of an unknown number, so we can’t really say that “never-helds” are more or less likely to kill or injure another road user.
I’d be willing to admit that this category appear in more Police press releases than any other category, but I’ve already explained the reasons for that, and it has nothing to do with the number of incidents involving this category of driver. The interesting thing that we can see about the press releases regarding collisions involving this category of driver, is that, almost without fail, there is another contributing factor, generally alcohol, which basically means that, like every other category of driver, a drunk version of this category is more dangerous than a sober version of this category.
This kind of leads back to my original point. Despite all of the press releases about Police catching people who have never held a licence, they still keep finding them at these “compliance operations”, and they only reason they are finding them is because the number plate recognition software has said “Car is registered to person without licence…check driver”. The people driving in front, behind and next to the unlicensed driver didn’t know that they were unlicensed, which indicates that they were probably driving normally. It is said that a good driver “blends in”, and that’s precisely what most “never-helds” do.
Really, the crime here isn’t that they’re dangerous (which in most cases they’re not), it’s that they haven’t gone through the administrative hoops required in order to make insurance companies cough up in the case of something bad happening. It’s got nothing to do with road safety, and everything to do with paying the government nominal amounts of money for bits of shiny plastic that insurance companies like.
Don’t believe me? Well consider this. The usual fine for a driver who has never held a licence in the ACT is about $400. The fine for an unsupervised learner is about $90. Considering that you can start the day as a “never-held” and end the day as an unsupervised learner, without any noticeable increase in skills or ability, and absolutely no increase in your level of insurability, do you still think that this is about road safety?
If anything, it’s probably about “compliance”. We have rules, therefore they should be followed, and that will make everyone safe. Gee, what was that statistic? 78% of “serious motor vehicle collisions involving injury” involve people who validly licensed drivers…and this year’s road toll is how high? Well, that’s been a roaring success hasn’t it?
I suppose that I have missed one category…the people with expired licences. I think we’ve already disproved the notion that plastic makes you safer, so I probably don’t need to elaborate on this category.
So, what am I getting at with all of this? Am I suggesting that we should abolish licences and have a free-for-all? No, absolutely not. The licensing system is about personal responsibility, it’s a deterrent, a “be responsible or we’ll take this plastic away, and your ability to drive along with it”. The licensing system is not perfect, but it plays an important role in society…it’s a way for us, as a society, to say, “yes, you can drive that particular type of vehicle and we trust you to do so”, and through that, we can put in place a system to deal with problems when they occur.
What I’m getting at here, is that we are constantly being fed some nonsense of a statistic about “never-helds” and unsupervised learners being as dangerous as disqualified drivers, and as a population, accepting it without thinking about it.
As I said earlier, I’m sure that almost all of us have know at least one person who has been driving when they legally should not have been, it’s probably a side-effect of the car becoming such an integral part of modern society, and some of us may have even been there ourselves, I know that I have been. I’m not proud of it, and I was certainly a bit out-of-pocket because of it on a few occasions, but I never hurt anyone, and nobody worked it out (except for one person who guessed after about two hours of guessing why I was feeling too paranoid to leave work) so I must have “blended in”. If I could go back, the only thing I would change is that I would have gotten (what an awful word) my licence a bit sooner than I did.
The bottom line to all of this is that unlicensed drivers generally aren’t as bad as we might like to believe. I don’t condone the behaviour from a legal and administrative perspective, and I regret my part in it, but for the most part, you probably notice them about as much as you notice any validly licensed driver, and no matter how much Police Media may try to mangle the statistics, we’re not all about to die at the hands of unlicensed drivers.
If the statistics say anything useful at all, it’s that the Police aren’t catching enough unlicensed drivers in their general day-to-day duties (which could be construed as a testament to the “blending-in” of these drivers) and as such, their “concerning” catch rate in these operations is too high for their day-to-day statistics to look any good, and as such they’re trying to lower the catch rate by warning us all about the next operation, and effectively telling all the drivers who could be caught to “please avoid this road for a little while”.
Perhaps the lesson from this is that critical thinking should apply to everything that you read, especially that which comes from The Powers That Be. The things which you find between the printed lines can sometimes be quite interesting.
John McCain said today that Sarah Palin did not damage his presidential bid, and he dismissed as typical campaign sniping anonymous criticism aimed at her following their crushing defeat.
[..]
He disputed that a different vice presidential pick would have changed the outcome against Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
At campaign rallies, “The people were very excited and inspired by her. That’s what really mattered, I think,” McCain said. “She’s a great reformer.”
I, for one, hope to see Sarah Palin back in four or eight years (preferably eight, because I’m expecting Barack Obama to see out a full eight year dual term) having a shot at the top job. Given a bit more time to build up her experience, I think she could make a great US President.
In the meantime, hopefully John McCain’s statements on the Jay Leno Tonight Show will be enough to stop, or severely slow, the Republican in-fighting. The last thing the US needs is an opposition party who unravel in to a giant messy rabble in the way that the Liberal party seem to do in opposition in this country.
Or what? 20th Century Fox will cancel the movie and ban Luhrmann from ever having anything to do with any movie ever again? Well, it would be nice, but I don’t suppose that particular dream will come true. I reserve the right to hope though.
That said, the sooner that he finishes it, releases it, and it goes away, the better.
If I am ever forced to sit through his “interpretation” of Romeo and Juliet again, then The Powers That Be should prepare a padded room for me, because they won’t get any sense out of me at my trial.