The charm of the vulnerable, less fortunate, minority?

“Question my attitude? I’ll show you f**kin’ attitude!”

I was very fortunate to grow up in Ireland’s oldest city, Waterford, while even at times of recession and underdeveloped localities, kids had the resource of culture, a sense of pride in what was theirs, and a healthy respect for right and wrong. Now I’m not saying that kids didn’t fall off the tracks, of course they did but it was isolated incidents not a daily routine that turned into a reign of terror.

Today is a very different story. In ever-increasing numbers, young kids, young adults, and alarmingly their parents, are laying siege to our fair country. Anti-social behaviour is now a way of life, for which it is almost protected in local by-laws as a human right to invade and terrorise public spaces. Anyone who has not experienced anti-social behaviour or those who have witnessed it but never tried to tackle it, will find the next statement rather shocking: If you live in a private (whatever that means) housing estate that is being terrorised by gangs of ill-behaving teenagers (and sometimes younger) you are powerless to do anything to stop it…

The Garda response time is such that it is a physical impossibility that they arrive on time to catch the offenders in the act. If they do catch them and they are under 16 then they are simply dropped back home to Mammy and Daddy only to return an hour later, seeking revenge. If they are over 16, they are cautioned and told to move on – again the same problem ensues. If you can identify, provide video footage (since it is now legally, morally and socially questionable to take a photograph of a minor committing a crime because you are deemed to want that photo for immoral purposes), give written statements, and eventually turn up in court, then the best you can hope to achieve is the issuing of a JLO (Juvenile Liaison Officer – basically a visiting nanny) for anyone that has not previously been convicted of a crime or perhaps the ultimate goal of a slap on the wrists because by hell or high water you will not secure any other punishment! The number of ASBOs handed out since their introduction is almost countable on one hand, apart from that kids pretty much have to kill somebody before they are locked up. Oh the poor kids, the vulnerable, they must be protected! Of course if you do go to court and give evidence against (read harass a child who is crying for help if you are part of an action group) the child of a “bad” family, oh boy, you truly are on your own after that; not to mention what their bite-size accomplices will do.

We have spent so long identifying groups of people that social guilt forces us to describe as “less fortunate” or “minority” and nailing down legislation to protect them that we have forgotten to balance the legislation to protect the majority also. We now have laws that effectively ensure that any terrorising delinquent who is from a “less fortunate” or “minority” background will get away Scott free, while Paddy up the road gets 2 penalty points and a fine for doing 2kmh over the limit on a dual carriageway with no traffic. Hey, it’s the morally right thing to do, isn’t it? The law is the law and we must punish those who break the speed limit perhaps even put them off the road for repeated offences, but if you’re a member of a “minority” group or a youth from a “less fortunate” background, oh no, you can’t be banned then, the Equal Status Act and many other ridiculous pieces of biased legislation are your get out of jail free card (literally). So, just like every school kid knows the name of the Taoiseach, so too does this knowledge trickle down into the socially depraved ranks of delinquents and criminal undergrounds. Whether it’s casual vandalism or organised usage of un-prosecutable 11-year-olds to run drugs, we have laws that protect each and every one of them so that they can return tomorrow to do the same.

Attitudes change with age; we become less tolerant of our childish ways and a greater part of social conscious reflects that “boys will be boys” and the older we get, the more we forget our wayward childhood that caused anguish for our neighbours. Indeed it is possibly true in terms of our past interaction with our neighbours but what so many of these action groups and rights movements carelessly fail to recall, is that after running across our neighbour’s front garden we didn’t give their car a kick on the way out; after deciding to knock on somebody’s door and run away, the knock was not delivered through the heavy kick of a foot; anytime we were caught short on nature’s call it was when we were in the country with our parents and the nearest tree was the only option, we never unzipped and watered the neighbour’s plants like some dog marking its territory; I could go on but these meaningful differences would seemingly have no place in the debate of protecting the vulnerable.

We didn’t do these things because even though we may have been little terrors, we acknowledged that some things just weren’t done and weren’t right. Not for the age-old fear of getting a physical retribution from patre and matre but moreso because it just never entered our heads that you could urinate into somebody’s letterbox nor did it seem appealing that you could damage somebody’s car for fun – why would it? Somewhere along the line, attitude shifted, coupled with legislation and social mindset that provided enough freedom for “less fortunate” children (and indeed sometimes fortunate children who are still young enough to be immune to punishment) to roam free and test the system just short of murder. They passed on the way to the next rank below them and it propagated from there. Young adults they became and then parents themselves, taking with them the knowledge that life was just one big event without consequence – isn’t that lovely!

Where did it all go wrong? Through times of development and pseudo-boom many pockets of society developed extreme social guilt that others didn’t get up off their arses and make something of themselves – give rise to the term “less fortunate”. At the same time we somehow allowed ourselves to see criminality, trespassing, rape, public disorder, and illegal dumping as an ethnic way of life that must be protected. We then spent decades shouting this from the tallest soap boxes and instilling it in the minds of the community in addition to making those whom we patronised for their inaction and potential wastage, believe the social guilt that we spewed, that they were the “less fortunate” and “minority” groups whose way of life should never change and should be protected, why should they conform to laws that apply to everyone else? Yes, we’re “less fortunate”, our kids will roam the streets shouting and screaming so that everyone will identify them as “less fortunate” and excuse them from crime. We’ll cause social disruption, block roads, spill violence onto the streets because we are a “minority” that doesn’t have enough acknowledgement and it is our right to draw attention to ourselves so that people will understand us. The local councils will wash their hands of corrective action against “housed” problem families if they cause trouble in the community because it is their job to help the “less fortunate” and not punish them. The Gardaí will do their best to obey the letter of the law until such time that they can get a promotion from community policing and into a real position that allows them to enforce law equally, across the board. While the attitude of those who cause so many problems for society, stinks ever so badly, it is the social guilt of certain lobby groups and action groups who will never find themselves dealing with the results of their lobbying, whom have gotten us into this dire situation. They gave birth to the attitude of wrong is okay and insult thy neighbour but it’s not okay and it’s time that things changed.

No doubt there will be many who take exception to this outwardly suggestive prose, implicating the “less fortunate” as the main trouble makers and that “rich kids” are even more problematic – greetings to you who obviously have never dealt with these children outside of your social work and lobbying! Having suffered at the hands of anti-social behaviour for years now, with thousands of Euro worth of damage done to my property and living in fear most evenings to the extent that I have had to install CCTV around my home; I can tell you that 100% of my problems have been caused by “less fortunate” children from nearby housing estates. On quick survey of one estate, while working with the Gardaí to report damage done and anti-social behaviour on one occasion I noted that in a small council estate (about 40 homes) there lived a gang of over 20 children from different families, all of whom either engage in underage drinking, stone throwing at cars and houses, prior history with the Gardaí, and on, and on. There is no bad apple spoiling the barrel: The barrel is rotten, accept it. We do not need to nurture, condone, nor defend this indefensible way of life. We need to correct it and change the attitude of these social terrors so that decent people can get on with their lives. We created this attitude as a society who cared not and saw it fitting to develop unwarranted social guilt; we must now change it and correct the laws that give rise to such problems. Three strikes and you’re out – kids in detention and families evicted from housed locations for not dealing with the prior behaviour leading up to it. It’s the only way ahead, the only way to social harmony, and the only way to reduce petty crime figures.

A clever and appropriate nomenclature coined by John Murray Brown of FT.com to summarise Ireland at the moment. Our Emerald Isle is looking more like a junk shop, jade dragon – cheap, useless, outdated, and fragile. On one hand our country is fighting the evil of wreckless developers and their associated debts while on the other the government and courts appear to be doing everything possible to stop these people from going bankrupt and giving them all the chances necessary to welcome them into the ba-nama republic that we have created. It’s fair to say that some great strokes were pulled over the years by unscrupulous Irish politicians but what we are currently witnessing is the equivalent of the first admiral on the Titanic persuading people to get back out of the lifeboats! Amidst all of this iceberg hugging behaviour is the persistent belief that somehow getting the public to vote YES on the Lisbon Treaty’s second time referendum will save the country, as if Christ the Financier were due a second coming. Rather than awaiting the return of our money messiah however, we should probably be more focused on crucifying the current radicals that have brought us to the water’s edge but neglected to admit that they were drowning while supposedly they were walking on the surface. Here’s a link to the FT.com article.

Last October the Irish people went to the polling booth to have their say on the Lisbon Treaty – the result was a definite NO. The path is now being paved for a second vote on the treaty; So, what’s changed?

Before the first Lisbon vote, many people had a great number of concerns about the Lisbon Treaty’s content. Unusually despite this, every single, major political party supported the YES vote. The public were subjected to the opinions of ministers who openly admitted never reading the treaty document yet were convinced that YES was the only way to vote. After the NO vote won out, the government played out on the back foot for a while; the occasional snipe at the public and various fallacious comments such as how they made the recession worse by voting NO.

In recent times we have heard about the legal agreements sought by the government of Ireland, that would protect the points of concern, as expressed by the public. Concerns that you will remember, did not exist before the last vote as they were supposedly non-issues. However, the government now seems to agree that these are actually issues and has spent a great deal of public monies on legal council and drafting these so-called guarantees. So, the NO vote was right all along, we actually had genuine concerns?

So, the parties’ line is now that these agreements are in place and protect the genuine concerns of the Irish people so we can all be good little EU subordinates and vote YES because they want us to. Every major broadcaster and printed media has conveyed this message to the people and many lobby groups have convinced pockets of voters that YES is now the only option because these guarantees are in place. Very clever PR and electioneering; I take my hat off to the powers that be for conceiving and executing such an incredibly intricate and conniving plan.

What we haven’t heard anything about in the Irish media is how not a single word of the Lisbon Treaty document has been changed. We have also not been told how these guarantees are standalone documents that do not form an appendix to the treaty and that these guarantees are effected now, prior to the impending second vote on the treaty. What we are not being told is that voting YES to this treaty will supercede these guarantees, give power to the EU commission on all future decisions (a commission on which Ireland is still not guaranteed a seat) and allow the EU commission to govern with a treaty that remains unchanged from the original NO vote, still carrying all the concerns of the Irish public (confirmed recently by the Irish government’s actions as being genuine concerns). So essentially, Lisbon II will see the Irish government persuade the Irish citizens to return to the polls and despite ratifying all original fears and concerns, ignore their better judgement and vote YES anyway. This request will be made despite not a single word of the original treaty being changed and our only guarantees of comfort being standalone documents that will be superceded by the treaty coming into effect, rendering them null and void.

While not being one for holding back on what I believe in nor what I think about things, I really am lost for words that the Irish government truly believes that the Irish people are that stupid. I’m further confounded that somehow, lobby groups are managing to persuade certain groups that these hard times are linked to the last NO vote. I’ve always said that the Irish state verged on being Orwellian but am I truly gobsmacked at the blatant, stone-faced, audacity with which this deception is being performed.

Last time I voted NO because of concerns that the Irish government now says are genuine. Nothing has changed and the Irish people are being hoodwinked by clever political manoeuvres and fallacious scaremongering – this time I will be voting NO again, regardless of what anyone says. We’re still at square one.

When the Green party in this country were sucked into power last year by the great vacuous siphon of Fianna Fáil, I thouhgt to myself, this is no longer a party of idealists and tree huggers led by the political incarnation of Duncan from About the House; this is a Marxist and Sellout Party.

Sadly I have not yet been proven wrong. Despite all their fluttering and spluttering like a diesel engine under water, the party has stood fast in its only stable belief at the moment – it’s better to be inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.

I recently read an article in the mainstream printed media that cited further rumblings from the Green Party about further taxes on our emissions, our fuel, and pushing, pushing, pushing us further towards a carbon tax on every man woman and child. All this despite the fact that the country already has one of the higest global costs of living and the fact that we are in serious recession with no free money to spend on taxes that will be unavoidable if such measures are taken.

Recently I had the pleasure of spending lots of hard-earned money to get a BER certificate survey performed on my house that I am selling. The guy who did the assessment is a top guy and a true professional but enlightened me to the fact that half the assessment is guess work and based on assumptions. It doesn’t matter that you have a gas boiler that you may never use to heat your water it still brings down your rating if it’s not 100% efficient and many more stupid assumptions. So much in fact that a 5-year-old, modern home, with good insulation and double glazing was awarded the average rating of a D2, which is pretty low down the scale. Imagine introducing a carbon tax on that? Imagine what anyone with a 20-year-old home is facing!

Another thing that particularly annoys me about the Green Party in this country is not only do they choose to ignore EU stupidity such as the BER system and its impact on people but they also choose to ignore our own national stupidity. Just over a year ago the new road tax system came into being and vehicles were to be taxed on their emissions. On face value a wonderfully progressive idea, even if it doesn’t take into consideration that somebody might only drive 1000 km per year and have almost no emissions. However, such was the stupidity of our implementation that all possible Green intent was striped from this plan when it was announced that it only applied to cars registered in 2008 and beyond. Imagine an outwardly Green policy to reduce emissions and save the planet is actually encouraging waste, disposal of existing cars and purchase of new cars, incurring shipping, manufacturing, etc waste and emissions and dissuades people from the primary function of environmental consciousness, to recycle and reuse. Yet again our Green policies are nothing more than penalise the majority and tax everyone. Everyone knows that the only sensible way to be environmentally conscious about vehicle emissions is to tax the usage, i.e. tax the fuel and do away with road tax. Alas that idea would never fly.

Yes, our dear Green Party presides over a government of incompetence that sits only to tax and taxes only to cover its own blundering expenditure rather than putting any thought into policy making and budgetary planning. Indeed I think it is fair to say that the only shade of Green left in this party is that which reflects the envy of how Fianna Fáil have managed to garner so much power and that Super Duncan and co will never realise such ambition.

…well actually I said it would never happen again. About 18 months ago I managed to complete one of my life goals and crossed the finish line in the Dublin City Marathon taking with me a few thousand Euro for a local charity in Waterford City. It was a thrilling experience and one, having felt the toll on my energy resources, thought that I might never do again. It never put me off running though and since then I’ve run half-marathon runs and several 10 mile races too.

However, last December, during an indoor soccer match I badly hurt my foot and damaged some ligaments that stopped me doing anything for a long time. During my recovery I made the typical mistake of yielding to an injury rather than working it back to health and I hurt my thigh muscle, which in turn made me put additional pressure on my lower back and yes, it went too. Long story short, I’ve been plagued with injury for the last 6 months and haven’t had a single run beyond the weekly game of indoor soccer. During that time I had a lot of time to reflect on how much I missed my regular runs and the freedom I felt when in a good stride and the endorphins are flowing through the brain and I decided to set my sights on October 2009 and the Dublin City Marathon.

So, yesterday, for the first time in 6 months I felt ready to take my first steps again and went for a run. I decided that an easy 10km was what I needed and easy wasn’t the word – it took me 1 hour and 3 minutes. That’s probably the slowest 10km I’ve ever run and well off my average pace by about 15 minutes. However, I made it and it was exactly what I needed to refocus my mind. So, that leaves me with 4 months of solid training until October when it will be a warm in to the race and I don’t think that I’ve ever looked forward as much as I am to putting myself through 26.2 miles of torment again. However, as many of you out there will appreciate, running is an addiction, the feeling you get after a good run is unquantifiable or when you hit a good stride at mid-distance and you feel as though you could sprint the next 5 miles non-stop, the thought of not doing another marathon is worse than the thought of doing one. Getting there and getting back to a decent pace will be a long battle though – I’m seriously off form!

Naturally no undertaking such as a marathon should be done without trying to raise something for charity and last time around it was a local hospice; this time I’ve chosen to run for the Irish Heart Foundation and see if I can get together a few Euro for them. All those of you with your hands on your wallets, steady now, I’ll publish details of the mycharity page nearer to the event. Wish me luck as they say!

Just a quick thought before I watch George Lee disect the doom and gloom of blowing the boom. This weekend has seen a truly wonderful couple of days for Irish sport. The national rugby team completed an historic grand slam victory in the 6 Nations by defeating Wales in what was truly the most tense game of rugby I have ever seen and Bernard Dunne faught through an incredible battle to win the Super-Bantamweight World Champion belt in boxing. In a time of recession and societal depression, again I turn to my TV to watch George, our nation’s sports stars have not only achieved personal glory and greatness on the world stage, they have lit a beacon of hope, a focal point of happiness to lift the spirits of the Irish people. Roughly 25 people who have not changed a single thing about our economy have done more for the Irish people in one day than our entire government has done in 2 years. Says it all really… Nevertheless, well done lads, you did us all very proud.

…since I had a good rant about insurance companies. Well, it’s a new year and there are two advertisements that are really getting on my nerves at the moment. The first is a radio advert by AXA who claim to be your “local” insurance company. Drop in and get your amazingly cheap policy with no fuss. Well AXA are far from your “local” insurance company so don’t let that fool you into supporting your own. In fact unless you live in Dublin or Derry you won’t be talking to somebody in the same county as you when you call them. On top of that, the great savings on offer, well I still haven’t forgotten that when I started driving and acquired my first policy through a broker who got me a policy with AXA without my immediate knowledge, they charged me over IR £3,500 to drive a standard, small-engined, of-the-shelf, family car. The next year their call centre told me that they had a blanket ban on my model of car even though I was still insured with them at the time I called for new quotes. I vowed then that I would never do business with AXA again and I never have. FBD is an example of a local company – you can actually drop into one of their offices in your county and say hello to them.

The second advert that really gets me at the moment is the Hibernian TV advert. You know the one that uses the footage of Charlie Haughy telling us to tighten our belts. I guess they didn’t think of this when they used that footage and that somehow highlighting the badness of the past would make us think that here’s a company that cuts to the chase and has no time for those who hoodwink and obstruct? Well just over 5 years ago Hibernian was the first motor insurance company to turn around and tell Irish drivers that the Irish driving test was worthless. Of course they didn’t say that exactly but in a roundabout way they did; they introduced the “ignition” driving test that placed a further obstacle in the path of young drivers with full licenses towards getting cheaper insurance and that somehow a half-day course would eliminate loads of the risk that their hefty statistics claim to otherwise represent. The biggest insult of all was that it completely undermined the official, government backed, Irish driving test by refusing to accept that drivers were qualified. The other thing that relates to that footage of CJ and the motor insurer is that for the last couple of years, while we have all been tightening our belts and getting ready for recession, companies like Hibernian were enjoying record profits in the Irish motor insurance arena. In 2007 the Irish motor insurance industry enjoyed profits of over Eur 357, 000, 000 but of course we’re the ones tightening our belts just like when CJ was buying his fancy shirts – the failure to spot the obvious similarity is frankly baffling and I for one would never hire the genius who came up with that idea for an ad.

Sigh… Rant over.

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Despite Ireland being in recession and despite an emergency, early budget to try to deal with the crisis, and despite a projected shortfall in taxes of €7.5 billion the government of Ireland still sees fit to proceed with a €4 billion plan to develop a small metro system in Dublin. This proposed budget, which will no doubt be inflated as time goes on given government failures with previous capital projects, is equal to over half of the tax shortfall and would put the country in a far better position financially if it was not spent developing a metro line only in Dublin. Many respected business people have already said that building a metro in Dublin will not be a sensible decision nor return any true net worth to the tax payers who are paying for it. In addition, a similar metro project, but more advanced, was completed in Madrid in 2003 at a mere €1.6 billion (http://www.urbantransport-technology.com/projects/madrid/), less than half of the proposed Irish budget. This is a gross misuse of Irish taxpayer’s money and it should be stopped. It’s no more than a vanity project for the government and is far too costly in these times of economic recession and tax shortfalls. Join the cause, let the feeling be known!

I’m dreaming of a tight Christmas,
Just like the one in ’84.
When the minister’s gone fishin’
and people start wishin’
To the sound of an economy gone below.

I’m dreaming of a tight Christmas,
With every pathetic government slight.
You may take a ferry, or flight,
And leave Ireland long out of sight.

I’m dreaming of a tight Christmas,
A Christmas when the future’s shyte.
They get a raise and you get plight,
And may all your votes next year be spite.

Merry Recession everybody!

Those who know me will know that I’ve always been a passionate campaigner for the equal rights of the young, both in my youth and even now that I slip beyond technically being “young”. No more so has my anger against age discrimination been shown than against the ridiculous car insurance market in Ireland. I have shouted at the locked doors of the oppressive forces that uphold this unfair market; I have taken a case before the equality tribunal against a major insurer in Ireland only to find that they were retrospectively protected by a clause in the Equal Status Act despite their unfair practices; I have continued to contact ministers, motor industry figures and others about this matter. In all of this I have discovered one thing: The young will never get recognition in this country!

The first landmark case with respect to age discrimination and car insurance came about in the Ross vs Royal and Sun Alliance case in 2003. In this case a 77-year-old man took a case for discrimination against the insurer for their blanket policy of refusing quotations to the over 70s. He took the case successfully and created a landmark ruling in the state. This weekend I learned of another case, of a Christian Brother in his mid-70s who took a case for discrimination against an Irish car rental firm for charging him a supplement of Eur 25 per day because he was over 70 and informed him that once he reached 75 he would not be entitled to rent a car at all. Again this case was taken successfully and a ruling in the favour of the elderly gentleman was made.

Now, within the Equality Tribunal, in 2004, there was also another case involving a young driver and First Call Direct which was only ruled in favour of the young driver because the company decided to change their policy of refusing quotations to under-25s on the day of the hearing, thereby admitting guilt and showing that the practice was unfair. No scrutiny of an insurer’s figures has ever been allowed to take place in the case of a young person.

In the case that I personally took against one of the country’s big insurance companies whom I cannot name for legal reasons, I tackled them through a mediation process whereby I laid my cards on the table from day one and stated unequivocally that I did not want compensation, all I wanted was to view their figures. After over 2 years of back and forth letters and mediation sessions I eventually got to the stage whereby I was given a summary of the figures that were used to blanket refuse all under 25 males. I was shocked to discover that the sample frames in use to compare risk against under 25 females showed a ratio of approximately 9:1 (i.e. 9 times the number of females to males). How any statistician could allow such sample frames to be compared as mitigating factors in a blanket refusal policy for under-25 males, I really do not know. What’s more shocking when you think about it, is how a company with a blanket refusal policy on under-25 males can even have under-25 males on its books. I know the reasons, some are legitimate (Declined Cases Committee of the Irish Insurance Federation) and others are purely business which means that those on the books are immediately within the high risk category. This means that a condensed, high risk sample frame was being contrasted to a “normal”, organic sample frame of females – incomparable! Sadly the data collected was collected prior to the Equal Status Act and therefore admissible as a discriminating factor in their defence.

So, it saddens me greatly when I still see no cases that have demanded that the insurers of this country cough up their figures with respect to the young driver market. We see all the ads on TV and we hear all the propaganda and since we were knee high to a grasshopper, we have always been told that the young are reckless, without ever being provided with proof. However, when the elderly challenge a case the ruling is always favourable and whether it’s insurance cover or repealing a decision on medical cards, the elder citizen always seems to claim victory. The young suffer in muffled rage and nobody sees fit to help them, after all what are they going to do? Their lives are too busy to run around on crusades, chasing justice. They cannot afford to be without a car to get to work, their livelihood depends on their ability to pay up and get on with it – challenging the system is not an option?