reohn2 wrote:The thing that troubles me about laura norder in modern day UK is the gradual decline which goes hand in hand with the decline in police numbers and consequentially effectiveness and that those that aren't rehabilitated by the slap on the wrist first offence sentencing.
The number of second or multiple offending offenders is many and varied,the way it pans out IMO is that if there's little chance of being caught there's more chance offending or reoffending.
There's someone who lives on the same estate as I do,who's motoring offences are many and varied including driving without insurance,VED,MOT,false number plates,including displaying different plates front and rear.He was even driving a beat up Ford Ka with diplomatic reg plates at one point,and ids currently driving a Ford Mustang US muscle car,how he affords the insurance with his driving record is anyone's guess!
He's been reported umpteen times and has been convicted on a couple of occasions but is still driving for a living!
As another poster notes, even swathes of police will not stop the many determined-to-drive loonies doing so, by any and all means and despite potential punishments (especially non-punishments like bans). They are addicted to the pleasures of the car.
There is an obvious fundamental cause of the widespread deaths, injuries, misery, pollution and a host of other ills associated with cars: the cars themselves. Why have we come to allow these evil things? That's a rhetorical question as the answers are familiar to all of us. Cars are seductive, convenient and many other things that appeal to many of our basic human desires.
Until lately, our society has been unquestioning of the car - apart from a very few classed as mad bigots trying to deprive Mr Motorist of his legit pleasures and conveniences. As the real price of having the things gradually reveals itself to the public at large (often when they take up cycling, their grandma dies unexpectedly of lung-despoil or their children develop a serious asthma) the mood has begun to change.
Yet the car lobby is still very large, vociferous and entirely unreasonable about their "rights" to degrade so much with their pride&joy. Will this plague of Toads be treated as they should - cured by withdrawl of their lethal toys? Seems unlikely and posts like these, hooting mournfully about this awful case of carmageddon or that, will go on for ever.
Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes