Month: March 2018

I watched Jamie Carragher playing football for Liverpool down through the years. I saw him playing live at Anfield and I also saw him on the TV and I’d have to say that I always admired the way the guy went about his business.

He was a good, solid professional, extremely loyal to his club and seemed, on the face of it, to be a genuine person. I was a little surprised when I saw him joining Sky Sports as a pundit when his playing career was over because I would have considered him to be too quiet for that role.

But he took to it like a duck to water and he proved himself to be an inciteful analyst who wasn’t afraid to speak his mind and he didn’t mind upsetting people. He was a rising star in the Sky camp and you could see him settling into the role and growing in confidence every week. That was until the wheels came off.

Only Jamie Carragher can explain what he was thinking about when he reacted the way he did after being goaded by an opposing fan. In case you’re not interested in football and haven’t been following the story let me explain.

Liverpool had just been beaten by Manchester United and after the game, a Man United fan was driving home with his 14 year-old daughter, when he drove alongside Carragher who was also caught in traffic.

The United guy started shouting at Carragher and he was rubbing his nose in the fact that Liverpool lost the game. Things got out of hand and Carragher opened his window and spat at the other car. He was filmed doing it and it wasn’t a pretty sight, in fact it was disgusting.

Carragher has apologised to the family concerned and has been suspended by Sky until the end of the season. He claims that this is totally out of character for him and he wants a chance to prove that he is a better person. I’m sure that he’s not a bad guy. He made a silly mistake on the spur of the moment, but it is one that could yet cost him dearly.

But we shouldn’t be all that surprised at this incident because spitting footballers is not a new phenomenon. I watch a lot of football on TV and it seems that every time a camera closes in on a player, he’s spitting. It’s constant and they’re all at it. It’s a dirty habit and it looks disgusting, but it has become part and parcel of the modern game.

I don’t know why it is peculiar to football because it doesn’t seem to be an issue in other codes. It’s not something I have seen on a rugby field, on a tennis court, on a cricket pitch or on a golf course. There was a rumpus a few years ago when Tiger Woods was caught on camera spitting as he walked along a fairway. It’s just not done.

So, what is it about footballers? I watched the next televised football game after the Carragher incident. It was Manchester United playing Sevilla in the Champions league. I was particularly watching for spitting and I noticed that Marcus Rashford was at it every single time the camera focussed in on him. He wasn’t the only one and even one of the other players that was being substituted, spat on the ground as he was just strolling off the field.

There are other habits too that are perfectly acceptable to some people but offensive to others. For instance, there are many people who chew gum. It never did anything for me and I don’t particularly like the texture of the stuff. I have no issue with people who do use it but I can’t for the life of me figure out why so many prefer to spit it out on the footpath when they’re finished with it.

Oprah Winfrey has a hatred of gum because of the experience she had with her grandmother when she was a child. Her grandmother had habit of chewing gum and she used to stick the old gum to various pieces of furniture, so she could re-use it at a later stage.

She said she grew up in Mississippi and her family was poor, so her grandmother used to try to save it by sticking it on the bedpost or on the cabinet.

As a child, Oprah often came in contact with some of these old bits of gum and it disgusted her so much that she actually developed a phobia and she became afraid of it. It didn’t end in adulthood either and in later life when Oprah became successful, she banned gum-chewing in her offices. If she had her way, she said she would implement a world-wide ban on the stuff.

There’s another habit that is almost as bad as spitting, and that’s chucking litter out of car windows. Food wrappers and drinks containers are a regular feature along the roadside because certain people are too ignorant or too lazy to hold onto the items until they get to a waste bin.

There are other habits that don’t necessarily fall into the category of disgusting, but they can be a bit baffling and even a little annoying. I’m thinking of these guys who insist on wearing their trousers half way down their arse, showing their jocks to the world. I don’t get it, but it has its followers.

My grandmother often wondered why youngsters follow the guy who does the wrong thing instead of following the example of the good guy. She said we were always attracted to the guy who was a bad influence.

She was probably right, but the good guys can let you down sometimes too.

 

 

There are many discussions taking place currently about the sentences being handed out by the judiciary in this country. Recent cases seem to have awakened a curiosity in the general public about the criteria used by judges to assist them in reaching their decisions to award certain prison sentences.

As a retired policeman, I can tell you that there have been many occasions when I have scratched my own head while trying to figure out how some of these decisions were arrived at.

There is also some concern about the use or abuse of the free legal aid system and the cost to the tax payer for providing this service. The Minister for Justice has recently been quoted as saying that free legal aid is rigorously means tested and is only provided on merit.

I suspect that there are many who would dispute that.

The other issue of concern is the number of previous convictions that some offenders have that don’t appear to be taken into consideration when deciding the appropriate punishment. Giving offenders the opportunity to mend their ways and turn their lives around is all very well, but how far does that stretch?

If someone comes before the court having crossed a line and it can be determined that this action was out of character for the person, then certainly, that should be taken into account. Maybe that person made one mistake because of the circumstances they found themselves in at the time.

Where it can be shown that the offence in question is completely out of character for that individual and the likelihood of that person offending again is remote, then certainly the judge should be taking that on board.

But when a defendant stands before a judge with a string of previous convictions as long as his arm, then surely it should be time to consider a more serious punishment. If a criminal is hell bent on pursuing a life of crime and repeatedly comes before the court, then is it not time to suggest that maybe the guy is not going to reinvent himself?

Many defendants over the years have claimed that they had committed their offence because they were addicted to alcohol or drugs at the time. Then swear they have turned their lives around and have seen the light. They have become model citizens, apologise profoundly for the error of their ways and promise never to darken the doors of a courthouse again.

For a lot of these characters, that new leaf lasts until they leave the confines of the courthouse. As soon as they head out the door, they have a tendency to revert to type.

That happens largely because these guys just see the whole thing as a game. They pillage and plunder, play cat and mouse with the police, get caught every now and then and promise the judge they’ll be good. Then when the first opportunity presents itself, off they go again.

That is evidenced by the fact that so many of these criminals are repeat offenders with a long list of convictions. So, at what point do you say that enough is enough? Is there ever a point where these guys should get no more chances, can no longer qualify for free legal aid and get no more opportunities to offer the same old excuses?

There are certain guidelines that a judge must take into account when imposing a sentence. The overall consideration is that the sentence must be in proportion to the seriousness of the offence. In other words, it wouldn’t make sense to give someone life behind bars for stealing a bottle of wine from the local supermarket. Fair enough.

The judge must also consider potential mitigating factors such as whether there was a guilty plea. This is important too in so far as a guilty plea can save the victim from the stress of having to go through the ordeal of a trial and having to give evidence which can be daunting. It can also save a lot of money as trials can be expensive affairs.

They must also take into account whether the accused co-operated with gardaí; whether they expressed regret; whether they are a person of good character; and the personal circumstances of the accused such as age, health, family circumstances etc.

The impact of the offence on the victim must also be considered, as well as potential aggravating factors such as violent behaviour or abuse of a position of trust and if the accused has previous convictions.

It is then a delicate balancing act to try and achieve the appropriate sentence on the basis of this information.

The judge has the discretion to impose concurrent or consecutive sentences if the accused is convicted of more than one offence. A concurrent sentence will usually apply where the offences formed part of the same event or course of conduct.

While all that makes perfect sense when you see it written down on paper, the way it transfers into actual reality in a courtroom setting can often leave many of us perplexed.

For example, there are career criminals using high-powered stolen cars to travel the length and breadth of the country to break into rural farmhouses and family homes. These homes are very often occupied by older people who are now living in fear.

Habitual criminals are abusing the system because they have little fear of it. They know that even if they do get caught, the odds are still in their favour, so the risk is worth the reward.

In the meantime, the lives of the victims have been changed forever and they are afraid to go to bed. That’s not right and it’s about time that the fear was put back where it belongs, with the bad guys.

We are surrounded by advertising these days. It’s on the TV, on the radio, on our newspapers, on our phones and our laptops. It’s all around us, it’s impossible to avoid and not all of it is good.

When we’re driving, we can see it on billboards and on abandoned artic trailers propped up in farmers’ fields, positioned strategically so you can’t miss them.

If you haven’t noticed it before, then have a look the next time you’re out and about. See how many trailers you can spot languishing among the turnips, with messages stuck to the side of them. There’s no shortage of companies telling us what to wear, what to eat and where to eat it.

The trailers are in fields because it’s difficult for advertisers to get planning permission to erect advertising signs on the public roadway, but you don’t need permission to advertise from a field.

OK, so they’re not illegal, but they can be a distraction. They are designed to catch your attention at a time when you should be concentrating on the road, so there should be some form of regulation on them. I think they’re unsightly and a blight on the countryside and in many cases, they are nothing more than oversized litter.

Many of them are just rusted heaps, held together with bailing twine and sticky tape with torn posters peeling off them and I wonder if they are even an effective advertising tool?

Signage on the side of the road is regulated for a reason but you can always trust the Irish to find a way out of a legal requirement. The first thing we tend to do when we encounter a legal deterrent is to look for a loophole to beat it.

The fact that the legislation may have been created for our health and wellbeing, and possibly to save our lives, is neither here nor there. We will do our best to defeat it.

I heard a discussion on the radio about the new roadside drug testing equipment that was introduced here not so long ago. Drivers can now be tested to determine if they have drugs in their system. It stands to reason that we would all be safer on the road if people, doped up to their eyeballs on cannabis or cocaine, were not sitting behind the wheel of a car.

It’s a simple saliva test and from that they can tell the type of drug and the quantity present in the drivers’ system. The idea is to make the roads safer for all road users, which is surely a good idea. But not everyone sees it that way.

A professor explained how the machine works and he suggested that it should deter drivers from getting behind the wheel of a car if they are under the influence of drugs.

The first caller to the radio show wanted to know how many cannabis cigarettes he could smoke before he would be caught for drug driving. So, instead of looking at the benefits of this new technology, he immediately wanted to know what he could get away with.

That’s kind of missing the point but it seems to be our default position. When someone tells us that we can’t do something, it just makes us more determined to do it anyway. My father always said that the best way to make something popular in Ireland was to ban it.

When smoking was first banned in pubs in Ireland, it was met with fierce opposition. It was a health initiative designed to make the air cleaner and safer for us all to breathe so that our health would be better protected. This was something that we would all benefit from it in the long run, so you would imagine that it would have been well received. Not so, and there were plenty who didn’t like it.

They claimed it was an infringement of their human rights and they demanded the right to fill their lungs with toxic fumes. Nobody was going to prevent them from getting cancer and having yellow teeth as long as they had a breath left in their bodies. Albeit a bad one.

Anyone who wanted to interfere with their right to get sick would have to do it over their dead bodies, which was a distinct possibility.

This decision was going to spell the end of pub life in Ireland. Customers wouldn’t be able to cope if they couldn’t have a fag in one hand and a pint in the other.

But smokers were eventually forced to go outside. Initially, some tested this to the limit by standing just inside the front door with one foot or a finger outside. Smoking rooms were invented that often defied logic. Restaurants had smoking and no smoking sections even though in some cases, they were all in the same room under the one ceiling.

But eventually we settled down and grudgingly realised that this ban wasn’t such a bad thing after all. The air was cleaner, our clothes didn’t stink after a night out and the décor wasn’t stained anymore. You could eat your meal without having to search for it in a cloud of smoke coming from the guy at the next table.

So, we were happy again and we wondered what all the fuss was about in the first place. So, maybe the fact that it took us so long to come to our senses has more to do with how we sell the message than the actual content of the message itself. It could be that advertising is the real issue here and to be honest, some of it is pure rubbish.

Literally, and in many cases, it’s just sitting in a field scaring the cattle and annoying the motorists.