What can be done when the governments lose all shame?

[honeybee]

I don't see how the two situations equate to each other. They are eating up our money, I'm not.

Both have no respect for the country's laws. The only difference is in the scale. Just as them, you too are cheating the exchequer by not paying the requisite fines for breaking the rules. And I am afraid given an opportunity, you would be as bad as the people you are cursing.

@NeedSomeAnswers, I hope you are speaking in jest. However, let me make one point clear. I am not going into the classical debate of who should throw the first stone. My point is that while you want to throw stones at the sinners, are we examining our own sins? Are we willing to pay for our own sins? Else it will only weed out the sinners, not the sins. Essentially you replace a set of corrupt people with another that's equally corrupt.

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[NeedSomeAnswers]

@NeedSomeAnswers, I hope you are speaking in jest.

No i was not.

I have 2 reasons for this.

1, For Instance in the UK the speed limit on the motorway is 70 mph. If you ever travel on the Motorway in the UK you can see that everyone breaks the speed limit even if only by 10 miles an hour. Pretty much 50% of the population breaks this law on a daily basis.

Does this make all the people criminals or the law a bad or badly implemented law ?

2, Speeding for instance has no bearing on someone's ability to judge whether a politician is corrupt. Also there corruption is a question of morality a minor traffic offence is not.

I am not saying that everyone should go out and break the law, but i am saying the laws are supposed to be for the good of the people not criminalise the majority.

Corrupt politicians on the other hand, there actions often effect millions of people and generally there actions are controlled by greed, not by trying to get to work on time.

[Pradeep1210]

I think NeedSomeAnswers has already answered the part of question directed at me and is exactly what I was about to say.
Breaking the traffic laws as in this instance is not just for the sake of breaking laws or to gain monetary advantage or indulge in any criminal activity. Also it is ok that some fine has been put on the same; but they should not make it a source of govt. income. They should not expect that people will break this law and they should earn from it.

[honeybee]

No i was not.

I have 2 reasons for this.

1, For Instance in the UK the speed limit on the motorway is 70 mph. If you ever travel on the Motorway in the UK you can see that everyone breaks the speed limit even if only by 10 miles an hour. Pretty much 50% of the population breaks this law on a daily basis.

Does this make all the people criminals or the law a bad or badly implemented law ?

2, Speeding for instance has no bearing on someone's ability to judge whether a politician is corrupt. Also there corruption is a question of morality a minor traffic offence is not.

I am not saying that everyone should go out and break the law, but i am saying the laws are supposed to be for the good of the people not criminalise the majority.

Corrupt politicians on the other hand, there actions often effect millions of people and generally there actions are controlled by greed, not by trying to get to work on time.

So if there are a few politicians who are corrupt, it's ok for you and me to jump traffic signals and break whatever rules we can? And then whine against the high fines when we are caught? When did someone else's act of committing a crime become the justification for you and me to commit a crime ourselves?

You are doing something which you know is a crime. A politician is taking a bribe which he knows he shouldn't be doing. How can you claim to be on a higher plane of morality than the politician? Both are essentially doing the same thing, just on a different scale. However, your decision to jump a traffic light is putting many other innocent lives in immediate danger.

Also when you jump that traffic light, do you ever pay any heed to the many other motorists who have paid road tax, vehicle tax and other monies to the government for the safe management of roadways and the signal system? Do you have any notion that you are infringing upon their right to a safe traffic system? Or is your need to reach office on time more important than any other users of the road?

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[NeedSomeAnswers]

So if there are a few politicians who are corrupt, it's ok for you and me to jump traffic signals and break whatever rules we can? And then whine against the high fines when we are caught? When did someone else's act of committing a crime become the justification for you and me to commit a crime ourselves?

Now if you read my post i never said any of that, what i basically said was;

There are degrees of crimes, which is something that is acknowledged in the justice system itself, and that jumping a red light is in no way comparable to being a corrupt politician whose dodgy dealings affect millions.

Just because you have committed a minor traffic offence it does not stop you being able to judge corrupt politicians. Anybody can make a mistake and jump a red light by accident even, but it is much harder to lie and steal from the public by accident :0)

I am not condoning jumping red lights or breaking any other laws i was just pointing out with your logic, any offence however minor has the same weight as more serious crimes and i disagree with that. The justice system also disagrees with it which is why there is a major difference in charges & sentencing for jumping a red light and fraud or theft.

[FunkyDexter]

There do seem to be some concepts being conflated heer that really don't belong together.

First of all, crime (whether major or minor) for personal gain cannot be equated with civil disobediance. Ghandi did not march to the sea to harvest salt because he wanted his balthi to taste nicer. He did it because he wanted to highlight a particular injustice that existed at the time (one that was part of a much largter whole). On the other hand, when you cross a red light because you're in a hurry you're not doing it because you want to highlight some inherant injustice. You're doing it because you want an extra quarter of an hour in bed. If you want to cross red lights as a protest you really need to be public about it. Take some photos of yourself and send them into the government. An unseen protest is worthless.

Secondly, you cannot justify a crime, no matter how trivial, on the basis that "everyone else is doing it" or "it's harmless". NSA, the example you gave of moderate speeding is a good example of the sort of minor crime many of us engage in but we shouldn't try to fool ourselves that we're justified in doing it. Instead we need to be honest with ourselves and say "Yeah, I know what I'm doing is a bit wrong but I'm happy to live with being a less than perfect person". (I'm not sure you'd disagree with this, I'm clarifying my position rather than contradicting yours).

In the cases of both speeding and jumping reds it's reasonably easy to justify it to ourselves as harmless... right up nutil the moment we kill a child. In truth it was never justified, just a calculated risk.

I agree with NSA that committing a minor crime should not mean you are unable to accuse another of committing a major one. But I also think you should not unable to accuse another of committing a minor one either. Each crime stands in isolation and should be judged as such. Equally, therefore, we should be willing to stand up and accept being justifiably accused and criticised for our own minor failings. That's what personal responsibility means.




Glad that the opening ceremony went off OK in the end but now you've got a bunch of poisonous cobras turning up all over the place (although I'm not sure the government can be criticised for this). I reckon Samual L Jackson need to make a new movie: "Snakes at the Games"

[NeedSomeAnswers]

(I'm not sure you'd disagree with this, I'm clarifying my position rather than contradicting yours).

not at all, a completely agree. You were probably more succinct then me in presenting the same argument.

NSA, the example you gave of moderate speeding is a good example of the sort of minor crime many of us engage in but we shouldn't try to fool ourselves that we're justified in doing it.

I did have another point as well here, some laws are just bad laws. the 70 mph speed limit on the UK motorway being one of them. It in effect criminalises a huge majority of the population, and its un-policable

80 mph to 85 mph would be a more reasonable speed limit (and more in keeping with the speed that the large majority are already travelling at), so i dont believe that you would effect safety by upping it either. You could balance that out by moving some 40 mph zones to 30 mph which would probably have a bigger effect on safety.

[FunkyDexter]

80 mph to 85 mph would be a more reasonable speed limit

I get where you're coming from but I think the effect would just be that we'd drive 10 to 15 mph faster. Instead of speeding doing 85 we'd be speeding to 100. Like most things in life, we drive to a certain percieved level of risk. Modern cars are easily controllable at those speeds so the percieved risk tends to be legal rather than physical.

If raising it would result in us all obeying the limit I think you'd be right. The 70 limit has been in place since the 60s and cars are ALOT safer now than they were then. In fact, I'd go further and use the German Autobahn rules: no limit at all. To my knowledge their accident raes are no worse than anywhere else. I struggled to find a decent source on that but I did find this site which says their accident rates are actually lower on the unrestricted stretches than the restricted. In fact there's lots of evidence that trying to control traffic in any way just makes it more dangerous. Some British Councils have started removing traffic lights from junctions and found they get less accidents. It seems that when you tell people what to do they obey blindly but if you let them thnk for themselves they do just that - think.

The debate's not really about safety, though, it's about legality. If you're breaking a law for personal gain, even if you think that laws bad, then you can't really take some moral high ground and should accept that, to some degree, your undermining the society you choose to live in. If you're breaking it as a protest (and as an ex poll tax protester I do think there can be some call for that at times) then invite the authorities and media along to watch you do it. Otherwise you're really just breaking the rules for no real societal gain.