Barrier free tolling is coming to the M50 and thanks to the NRA, the customer gets fleeced and the toll companies providing e-tags laugh all the way to the bank.

There are eight operators in Ireland and all of them charge a monthly fee on tags of at least one euro. A montly administration fee for what exactly? Does it buy you flexibility, i.e. the ability to register more than one car to a tag and swap the tag between cars? No. Does it offer good value for money if you aren’t a frequent user? No. The NRA does offer you the chance to pre-register for the M50 and be charged through video recognition. But this comes with a premium. A 50 cent premium each time you go under the M50 gantry.

The other alternative is the tolltag tag, that costs 30 euro and you own it outright. You have to pay an additional 10% on every toll for this privilege. You can update vehicle registration details if you change your car, but I’m not sure that you can register multiple cars to one tag. Which would be very handy for families that use the M50 infrequently and not always in the same car.

The frist time I saw e-tags in action was in Melbourne, Australia. Oh how I wish I was in Melbourne. There I can get a tag for free, provided I top it up by a minimum amount each year for the first three years. If I change my car, I do not have to order a new tag, I can just register new details. Best of all, I can register multiple cars to one tag and swap it between them.

The Melbourne model is what would be nicer for Irish consumers. You’d get your tag for free, you can register multiple tags to one account, you can move your tags between cars and after three years, you do not have to top up by a minimum amont. Thinking about how it might have worked makes me sigh. It also makes me angry that the NRA didn’t manage the e-tolling in a better, more equitable way. One supplier of tags would be preferable, the NRA and there should be no profiteering from tags, they should be break even, cost recovery only devices. After all, the whole point of them is cost recovery for the roads. Now we are forced to pay for companies to profit from the tags that enable us to use the roads.

This image was on the Irish Times website today.

This is ridiculous. Obama is not a messiah. He is just a man. He is not even elected yet. The Irish media’s total obsession with all things Obama is getting just a little bit tired. Yes, a new president is going to be elected in the United States of America and yes, Bush will be gone at long last, but, McCain might yet be the president. The election hasn’t taken place yet. The biggest question really is, can Obama even be a good president given all the unrealistic expectations being placed upon his shoulders?

The new intoxicating liquor act came into effect on July 30th, but having been on holidays and supplied with lots of beer and wine in West Cork and then in South Africa, I wasn’t actually affected by this until tonight. After sailing, we went to the yacht club where we were total piss heads. I drank one bottle of Bulmers and SK because he was driving drank two pepsis. Totally inebriated, we left the club at about five to ten, intending to stop to get some beer. SK told me he didn’t think the off-licence would be open. I hoped that maybe their clocks were five minutes slower than ours. They weren’t. There was no beer to be had. The off-licence was closed. So no beer for us. At home, we have drink, except none of it is “soft”. We have a variety of “hard” liquor, vodka, whiskey, peach snaps, congac, gin etc, etc. We have wine too, but I want to concentrate on the hard liquor. All I wanted was a beer. Now I’m going to drink a vodka or a gin and tonic. A beer would have been the “softer” option. Minister Dermot Ahern stated:

“The Act places restriction on the availability and visibility of alcohol and provides for more effective enforcement to deal with the consequences of alcohol abuse. The introduction of Fixed Penalty charges for offences of intoxication in a public place and disorderly conduct will not only lead to more efficient use of public resources, but hopefully will also support more responsible behaviour on the part of those concerned.”

The rest of the press release on the Deptartment of Justice, Equality and Law Reform website goes on to justify this restriction in alcohol sales. It’s mostly about keeping under eighteen year olds in tow. Because the parents of the underage piss ants can’t keep an eye on what their darlings are doing, the rest of us are being made to suffer this nanny state restriction. Ten o’clock, twenty two hundred hours, you’ve got to be kidding me….. could he not have made the off-licence hours the same as pub hours? i.e. Monday to Thursday, last orders at 2330, Friday to Saturday, 0030hrs, Sunday 2300hrs. Ten o’clock and the buses still have an hour to run. The new legislation punishes responsible, grown up adults who just want to buy a few beers after a long day at work and after work activities. The choices we were left with - go back to the yacht club or go to a pub or go home and drink vodka, whiskey and gin (all together, just for effect). So home we went. To abuse the temple of our bodies. We’ll drink the vodka, whiskey and gin. Probably more detrimental to our livers than beer on its own would have been. Sláinte, Minster Ahern. Are you familiar with the stock piling that goes on the day before Good Friday? The same thing is going to happen now, except it will be every day of the year and every time we go to buy groceries. I’m not going to get caught out by this again. Because, sometimes, a beer is just a beer, except now it’s illegal to buy such a dangerous item at the unforsaken hour of 2200hrs. If you are so concerned about the under eighteens, then raise the drinking age to twenty one, and leave the rest of us to get on with being allowed to buy a beer or some wine at ten o clock at night. I know who will love this legislation though - the vintners. It might force people back into the pubs for the last hour before closing. And we all know about stock piling in the last hour before closing and then the subsequent lock in.