Pasta Strainer Deemed Religious Headgear

According to the NZ Herald, pasta strainers are now considered suitable religious headgear in Austria ... at least for drivers licence photographs.

It took him 3 years but Niko Alm an Austrian Pastafarian has finally received his laminated drivers licence card showing him wearing an upturned pasta strainer on his head after the driving authorities ruled the kitchen utensil was a suitable religious accessory for a Pastafarian.

So what now?

• Will the French ban pasta strainers?
• Will the Australians enact laws to allow traffic police to demand they are removed for identification purposes?
• Will pastafarian motorcyclists demand the right to wear these instead of crash helmets?

At least I know the answer to my next question
Q: Will stupidity never end?

A: No, or at least not while I've got this blog going.

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Update:  Niko Alm has blogged about this (In German) here. There's a picture of the licence on the page.

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Another update: According to this article in German the story isn't quite as reported or claimed on the website and has grossly exaggerated:

Even the rumored three-year waiting period was, according to the Vienna Police Department is not correct. "The license is completed since October 2009. He was not only picked up" (Google Translate)

Stopping Crime: Finally someone "gets it"

From today's paper, a grieving father understands:

"Mr Borrell, whose son was killed by a youth already on bail for assault, said he favoured tougher sanctions against violent youth offenders, including short periods of incarceration, to 'shock' them before they progressed to life-threatening crimes." NZ Herald

And from the same paper, we have evidence of a justice system that still "Doesn't get it"

"One of the country's worst repeat drink-drivers has been jailed for two years after his 20th conviction for drink-driving and his 35th for driving while disqualified."NZ Herald

So, if he's "a very real and serious danger to the community" has it been left until now to get him off the streets?

I've long felt that a big part of the problem we have with escallating violence and crime levels is that people, especially young people, get away with lesser crimes and learn that there are no concequences  to their anti-social behaviour. This leads them to an ever increasing spiral of progressively worse behaivour until someone is killed and then there is an outcry.

I believe that if we started imposing small, but real, penalties from the start, then progressively increase those penalties until either the person learns to comply with what society requires or is removed from society, we'd be a lot better country to live in.

Driving with cellphones

I'm writing this in the closing few minutes of October 2009 and by the time I finish it will be November. On November 1st it becomes illegal to use a hand-held mobile phone while driving. The penalty will be a modest $80 fine and 20 demerit points.

We've been getting the usual propaganda for the last few months on how it is unsafe to phone and drive. The message has been paid adverts and an endless succession of reportage from tame journalists echoing the official line. The figures that keep being repeated are 4 times more likely to have an accident while talking on the phone and that it is as dangerous to use a mobile phone while driving as it is to drink and drive.

If this is true, why on earth is the penalty so low? Or to put that another way why are our politicians so gutless about this?

There's only a very few options here:

• It isn't as dangerous as is claimed (Please note I'm not disputing that it's dangerous)
• Driving under the influence of alcohol isn't as dangerous as claimed. (Again, I don't believe this)
• As alcohol is a drug, our politicians are wanting to punish it more for moral reasons
• Our politicians are too gutless to take road safety seriously.

My money's on a combination of the last two; but I've been wrong before.

Whatever the truth of the matter, we have an appalling road toll in New Zealand and it's about time that the authorities started taking enforcing the road laws seriously.

The mystery of Ireland's worst driver

BBC NEWS Ireland's worst driver:

Police in the Irish Republic finally caught up with Mr Prawo Jazdy, the country's worst driver, after they sought him from north to south for score of unpaid speeding and parking fines. Finally an ordinary copper in the Garda's national headquarters sent a letter

He had been wanted from counties Cork to Cavan after racking up scores of speeding tickets and parking fines

"Prawo Jazdy is actually the Polish for driving licence and not the first and surname on the licence," read a letter from June 2007 from an officer working within the Garda's traffic division.

Given that Poles are Ireland's largest immigrant population, it says something about how Irish Police are trained and communication gets to the ordinary plod on the street.

Can you see any parallels with how our police are trained?