My giddy aunt. Surely even Nick Freeman cant get anyone out of this one?
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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I can just about se where this solicitor/lawyer is coming from, it's certainly imaginative and they're getting their money's worth !
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Ignoring the obvious facts... bear with me
If someone sitting in the car could help him drive, what was the real point? If you need a driver in the passenger seat to look out for you then why not have them drive. There's no way he could ever drive alone. Blindness can range from little sight to no sight but he has no eyes.
I hope he's in serious trouble..... and thinking about it he cannot have had a license either being blind. Hope the co-driver on a ban has the book thrown at him too. Thankfully nobody hurt.
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PU,
If you want to see some 'imaginative' legal work take a look here:
www.groklaw.net/
Summary here:
www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005031...6
It's The SCO Group vs. IBM filed in March 2003 and scheduled for trial next year.
High-dollar legal practice at it's worst and likely to be used as law school study material for years to come.
Ob. Motoring link.
IBM are providing the technology to put black boxes in every vehicle in the UAE.
Kevin...
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Slightly off-topic, but similar: A NZ Herald story about a man caught speeding, who was found to have no arms, and using one leg to steer and one for accelerator & brake. tinyurl.com/nh7rh
Condensation:
Quote:
11.00am Friday September 1, 2006
A dangerous driving charge against an armless man was dropped by police today as his trial was set to begin.
Colin Raymond Smith, 31, a Tauranga beneficiary, had pleaded not guilty and was to argue that driving with his feet was not dangerous.
The case was dropped in Tauranga District Court today.
Smith, who was born without arms, has apparently been driving with the use of his feet for years without any problems.
He was charged after being stopped for speeding on State Highway 2 near Papamoa mid-morning on March 23.
Smith, clocked at 121km/h in a 100km/h zone, was issued with infringement notices for speeding and driving without a licence, which he did not dispute.
Police later laid a charge of driving in a manner which might have been dangerous to the public, which Smith denied.
Unquote:
It will be interesting to see if Mr Smith attempts to get a licence now. Tauranga is quite a small town and his card has been well and truly marked now, so he won't be getting away with anything more.
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Do we know who is paying for the defence costs? I hope it isn't the great British public.
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Do we know who is paying for the defence costs? I hope it isn't the great British public.
Well apparently both the driver and (banned) passenger are asylum seekers so its unlikely they have much money to pay their costs. I guess it will probably come out of the public purse. As usual, it will be the lawyers who profit out of this.
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If he does have the book thrown at him I suppose he can say "well I didn't see that coming".
Drum roll.
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8< SNIP 8<
Comment removed - DD
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Like others I am pleased no physical harm came to anyone as a result of this Iraqi barm-pot and his (banned from driving at the time) barm-pot friend doing this experiment.
However unlike many others I find the utter gung-ho insanity of the thing highly amusing, even touching. I sincerely hope they are not jailed or heavily fined, but given a sound scolding and introduced to the pleasures of bobsleigh racing, ski-jumping and downhill cycling for the partially sighted.
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Except they are on Legal Aid and it is our money, I should think. Immigrant, blind, untaxed and uninsured got to be given help!
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Immigrant, blind, untaxed and uninsured got to begiven help!
Well yes, AS, that's the law here.
Can you not feel a slight tug of sympathy though for someone blinded by a bomb (assuming of course that it was not his bomb) but still wanting to drive? And admiration, on some level, for the mad attempt to do it?
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i agree lud someone should look into his situation and be the driving force for him because the wheels of justice can be very slow,maybe he should have kept to the right side of the law (or in this case seing as we drive on the left ,the left side)
i take my glasses off to him though,but not when driving..............
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Anyone who drives without 3rd party insurance is, in my book, a dangerous driver. This chap is daft and dangerous and should be taken back to where he came from.
Phew....it's a good job I'm not in charge....
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Can you not feel a slight tug of sympathy though for someone blinded by a bomb (assuming of course that it was not his bomb) but still wanting to drive? And admiration, on some level, for the mad attempt to do it?
I certainly can! But it's an exercise for a track, not an urban street. I hope that court is severe in its adminition, but not too harsh in its punishment.
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Anyone seen "Scent of a Woman"?
: )
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Anyone seen "Scent of a Woman"? : )
I have stevied. What's more, for the coincidence department, I was talking on the phone to my Iraqi friend earlier and mentioned the subject of this thread to amuse him. After giggling a bit and saying 'That's what Iraqis are like!' in a pleased sort of way, he added: 'There's a very good film about that, with Robert de Niro in it...'
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NW, are we of like mind on something at last? Hooray!
I believe we may often be really.
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>Can you not feel a slight tug of sympathy though for someone blinded by a bomb (assuming of course that it was not his bomb) but still wanting to drive?
I can understand him wanting to drive - but doing it, no. He after all knows exactly what it is like to be maimed, so why on earth is he risking the life/limbs of his passengers and other road/pavement users like this?
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Passenger was clearly up for it. And they obviously both felt they wouldn't actually hurt anyone. And they didn't.
Contrast this with the egregious Naseem.
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Passenger was clearly up for it. And they obviously both felt they wouldn't actually hurt anyone. And they didn't. Contrast this with the egregious Naseem.
Speeding at 35mph and driven by a blind man, went around a couple of roundabouts. I would say they are very lucky not to have killed or seriously injured someone.
I would fingerprint them, photograph them, put them on the first plane back to the Middle East and keep an eye out for them trying to get back in under another identity. Trying to fine them or put them in jail is just a waste of tax payers money.
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I have worked in this country for 50 years, paid tax for all of them and sometimes at 40% so I can't get legal aid. Someone who has been injured abroad, lived here for how long and contributed how much to our country gets legal aid to defence when a guilty plea is what is needed! PS Government has just written off £141 million on yet another failed computer project! That would pay for a bit of legal aid for people who have actually earned it!
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Two different things though AS. We all complain about the government - any government - sooner or later, but to link government stinginess towards us respectable citizens (well, you anyway) with its generosity (pretty relative actually) to penniless disabled foreigners is a philosophic error. You can't blame these poor chaps for wanting subsistence grants, health services and relative freedom from being blown up. And the government, believe me, would continue to rob and torture us even if there were no immigrants at all.
Perhaps if we subsided into violent anarchy people wouldn't want to come here any more. Now there's a thought.
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Lud - i see your point of view. What we need here is people who can and will work within our system and contribute to society and the general good. We don't need people injured abroad coming here to get their lives squared away at our expense. We have enough unfortunates and plain idlers here already, without imorting them!
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That is certainly a commonsense view, AS, and one shared by many I'm sure. However the sheer numbers of people coming here in recent years must mean that some will need help rather than making a contribution. It would be a bit unfair to turf people out for physical defects. We are big and by world standards super-rich (although of course it doesn't usually feel like that), and can afford a few passengers.
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Lud - it isn't a question of turfing them out! IF they don't arrive fit, able and willing to work and in good health they should not be let in to 'use' our system to which they have contributed a big Zero. If I need a knee replacement or whatever, I don't expect to find myself way down a queue with a lot of recent arrivals in it!
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We are big and by world standards super-rich (although of course it doesn't usually feel like that), and can afford a few passengers.
Hmm, that's rather a middle-class perspective. I suspect if you are poor white working class and possibly unemployed (you know, like the people those privately-educated upper-class twits on 'Little Britain' like to make fun of) then you might see things differently. Especially if your kids go to one of those 'wonderfully diverse' schools where there are 40 different languages spoken (the sort of place that middle-class people think shows how wonderfully tolerant and 'enriched' we are - but wouldn't dream of sending their own kids to).
Incidentally, I am white middle class myself, so not having a pop just for the sake of it - but I'm not so daft I can't see that the working class don't get all the disbenefits of immigration and the middle and upper class most of the benefits.
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Without wanting to go too much off topic, what benefits do middle and upper class members of society get?
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Plentiful supply of low-cost labour - drives down labour rates thus keeping lid on inflation and ensuring your restaurant meal is not too dear. Increased population drives up demand for rent and low-cost housing - keeps property prices up and makes that 'buy to let' you invested in a nice little gold mine (middle-upper classes tend to be the property owning classses). Kids will go to private school, or school in a nice area where all the kids speak the Queens' English and the teacher is not trying to make herself understood to the Somali, Iraqi etc etc kids.
If you get a bit fed up and think the country is going downhill and getting a bit crowded then you can always bail out to France or Spain.
Working class have to compete for bottom-end jobs, cheapest housing, crowded public transport etc etc. So now its not just 'outsourcing' of their jobs they have to worry about, but the real or implied threat that they'll be replaced with immigrant labour. Oh, and if they complain about it then everyone will tut tut and call them racists. Not much chance of emigration or a new life in the sun for them.....
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I'm not sure I can agree with that Aprilia. I'm going out now so can't give you a reply worthy of you post but I will when I get back.
Suffice it to say, I certainly don't think working class people are hard done by at all. It's on quite a few levels - when I was in Sixth Form, the majority of kids got 30 quid a week just for turning up. Not to mention University where people get bursaries if their parents earn under a certain amount. And the free housing and...and...and....
I think a lot of it depends on what you'd call middle class though. But I'll make my reply more coherent when I get back!
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Surely he could have got his guide dog to drive. I am sure it could do a better job.
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Last time I was in court was as a witness to a "dangerous vvehicle charge" and the magistrate pointed out to the defendant that a not guilty plea was not admissible since he was guilty if he was driving the vehicle and he had admitted that a wheel fell off - long story.
Why isn't driving whilst not meeting the eyesight requirements, insurance, MOT etc. a similar automatic guilty - would save the courts a lot of time and possibly lots of legal aid.
Also who was actually in charge of the vehicle - surely it cannot be the blind man so the sighted man should be prosecuted as I would have been if either of my children had committed offences when I was accompanying them on L plates.
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i would have thought that the courts rebuttal to the defence would be "res ipsa loquitor" - the facts speak for themselves.
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