Phones and Driving
Sometimes I dispair.
I was working late in the office last week, when the only other guy left with me answered his phone:
Hi. Yeah. I’m just leaving. I’ll call you from the car.
Maybe I live in a particularly sheltered La-La Land, but I was actually shocked at this. So I asked if he was REALLY going to call from the car on the way home, pointing out that talking on the phone would render him as incapacitated as if he’d been drinking - hands free or hand-held. His response was that he’d be on hands free, and it wasn’t illegal, so there wasn’t a problem.
We got briefly into the conversation that he certainly wouldn’t drink and drive, because that’s illegal. Yet although he accepted that talking on the phone would be somewhat of an impairment, it wasn’t illegal hands-free, so he was going to continue to do it.
I’ve emailed the HR director at work to ask what the company policy is on this (without naming the guy in the office), as we all have company-supplied phones. As yet, no answer at all.
Anyway. I’m on holiday this week, so such things shouldn’t bother me. But they do - especially when I’m reminded of them by this post on the Crap Cycling & Walking In Waltham Forest blog:
A petition for an immediate driving ban for all drivers caught using mobile phones.
It’s one of those http://petitions.number10.gov.uk petitions. Does anyone know of any of these that have ever been acted upon? Or are they just a diversionary tactic by the office of our unelected Prime Minister? A bit like having an enquiry into this or that, but without the expense of paying the people to run it, or having the bother of publishing a report at the end [after the election].
And then just a little further down my Goooooogle Reader page, this very sciency and well written piece by Tom Vanderbilt (it’s on texting and driving, but not too far off-topic to include here). It also included this cartoon that illustrates the point perfectly - it might not be illegal to phone / text where you are, but the big bloke with the scythe who TALKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS doesn’t really care about that:
“…unelected Prime Minister.”
I’m under the impression that (as is the case here in Canada) you chaps live in a parliamentary democracy where the prime minister has never been elected but, rather, is always appointed by Her Majesty.
Well spotted, and of course completely correct.
It’s traditional (though I don’t think explicit in law - I may be wrong on this though) that the PM is the leader of the party with the majority in Parliament, and we don’t elect a PM as such. The position - actually called The First Lord of The Treasury - is an appointment from the reigning king / queen.
In this case though, there was no election for the leadership of the majority party either. Honouring an alleged nudge-and-a-wink agreement between Gordon Brown & Tony Blair, no-one stood against Gordon Brown for leadership of the Labour Party, and there was no election.
The saying goes that in a democracy, if you don’t bother to vote, you get the government you deserve. I’m sure there’s some version of that to apply here!
Canada suffers from the unfortunate burden of a written constitution - which nowhere mentions the existence of such a thing as a prime minister.
The custom is that Her Majesty accepts advice from the person or persons who can command the confidence of the House of Commons. That’s not necessarily a prime minister - we’ve had a least one government (in Ontario) of cabinet collective rule with no prime minister. And many examples of coalition governments with elaborate deals amongst the parties concerning the rotation of the prime minister - also at the provincial level.
After the last three elections for the Dominion government in Ottawa, we have had minority governments, one of the Liberal party and the other two Conservative. It adds a little thrill to Question Period when the leaders of the opposition parties have the numbers to vote down the government on a non-confidence motion if they don’t like the answers they get.
What’s interesting to me is the guy’s complete subordination of with what he ought not do (ethics) to what he can do (law.). That’s scary.