Not quite...

For instance you might know that as it stands, if you have a passenger in your car and they are found without their seatbelt on, not only do they receive a fine and loss of points but you also receives a fine and loss of points- and unless you have a dash cam or seat-belt chime for the rear seat of your car that can prove otherwise, you're fucked. Let me give you an example:

During my 2 years moonlighting as an Uber driver, I picked up a bunch of young blokes one night in Broadbeach. They hopped in and once they were seated, I looked behind me to check they were fully in and sitting down, ready to go, like I always did. I asked if they were buckled in and we were ready to go, and they said they were. In the darkness I could see their belts tight across their lap and I'd heard the clicking of their seat-belts. Fair enough. So off we went...

Now, this was the night club strip of the Gold Coast late on a Saturday night. My car was full, the roads were typically busy with traffic and I had the radio on- in between making conversation with my front seat passenger, checking my speed, keeping an eye on the stop-start traffic on the Gold Coast Highway and checking for idiots making a dash across the road. Basically, what any safe driver would do, right?

We turn up a one-way street in Surfers when a cop van flashes its' lights behind us. I pull over, cops walk up and reckon I didn't use my indicator as I made the turn (I'm suspicious of this because I ALWAYS use my indicator- there are enough dickheads that don't, as is). Then he points out two blokes in the back seat who don't have their belts on. Fines and loss of points for these idiots in the back... and fine/ loss of points for me. I pointed out the absurdity of this to the cop there who rattled off the road rules, I'm not a taxi driver so if I crashed and the passengers died I'd be fucked etc etc textbook cop talk. Just another officer fresh on shift and eager to make a haul for his employers in an area that's a gold mine for law enforcement...

I took the matter to court (because being a commercial driver, I needed every drivers' point I had). The actual court appearance was unbelievable. The arresting officer said as my car had turned up the street, one of the guys in the back had leaned right forward in his seat and that's when they'd flicked the warning lights on. Then when I took the stand, the Police prosecutor ran through all these ridiculous scenarios, looking for any line of reason, no matter how far detached from reality, to justify them upholding the charges against me. Essentially, because I stopped short of tugging each one of those pricks' belts when they got in to make absolutely sure they were buckled in- and because I had other things to be doing during the 10 minute trip (check my speed, watch the traffic in both lanes ahead of me, check my rear-vision mirror for cars behind me, watch for pedestrians, make friendly conversation with a paying rider etc) it was apparently still not good enough. Supposedly I should also have been checking every seat belt in the car every minute to make sure these morons in the back hadn't decided, at some point, to go "Hey, let's unclip our seat-belts- that'll make this trip better!" The Police prosecutor and the judge seemingly found it difficult to believe that a) I could have known they were all buckled in at the start, and b) I hadn't known this idiot in the back was leaning forward in the 10 seconds before the cops flashed their lights at me...

So I fought the law, and the law won. They did so using all kinds of laughable arguments that never apply in the real world, just to maintain their case against me. I felt no malice towards the Police prosecutor or the arresting officer. But fuck me if it isn't a statement on how idiotic and over-regulated this country is, when I can be charged and fined because a bunch of guys old enough to vote, old enough to serve our country, old enough to drink and old enough to hit the clubs made the conscious decision to put their own lives at risk. It'd be different if these guys were young children- but it's basically like if somebody at a party smoked ice and I was charged for not stopping them. My grievance isn't with the cops- like any other job, there are fuckwits and there are decent ones. But I have a big problem with the system itself and how clearly it's been set up as a revenue raising scam, thinly disguised as giving a shit about the welfare of John and Jane Citizen. Unfortunately, too many people don't give a shit because beer footy cricket pokies renovation shows what about fuckin' Don Burke aye best country in the world straya caaaarnt at least we aren't like those muricans shooting each other every week aye- now pass me a beer caaarnt....

WGMG: People who use the fact it's current year (or. It's 2017 guizzze) as a factor in moral arguments. The only time you should use current year arguments is in public policy such as transport and tech debates. Not moral. Everyone have their own beliefs. Fuck off with trying to force others to adhere to yours. 

Amen. Likewise, people who wank on about being "On the right side of history".

Like it's written in stone somewhere what "side" history is meant to be on...both this and The Current Year are major normie red flags. 

Ugh...normies are also WGMG. 

The other people pointless debating are those who (so conveniently) assume that anybody who disagrees with their precious opinions only does so because they're either uneducated or lacking in human decency. Like I said, how convenient for them that they always have the "right" opinions and just so happen to occupy the "right" bubble of thought...

People who use the words white privilege are worse than evangelical Christian doorknockers. 

WGMG:

In the wake of the SSM vote you'd expect a few companies to get on the bandwagon- it makes perfect business sense and the rainbow colour scheme is a marketers' dream. But WGMG is the sheer volume of useful idiots lapping it up. You see them on these companies' Fb pages going 'OMG where do I get (insert product)' or 'Good on you guys for supporting equality, I'll be buying plenty of (insert product) #loveislove'. It fills me with disdain that people are gullible enough to fall for this shit and not see it for the blatant "How do you do, fellow kids?" stunt that it is. If I was a little more cynical I'd produce some shoddy merchandise with the rainbow flag and 'LOVE IS LOVE' written on it, sell it as a massively inflated price and make a killing...

People like this are the reason our mainstream political parties have gone to shit and shows like 'Gogglebox' get produced. The males of the species are the ones who can't work out why they always crave KFC when watching the NRL on TV. The females of the species are the girls who the Day of the Dead tattoo, perfect haircut guys from Marconi's gym are banging on the regular...

Fuck it, just a whole lot of shit that's been going on.