Blinded by the light

Once again, with the coming winter, those familiar bright lights will hit us all.

The stage lights of the panto, you say? Pumpkin candles, Christmas displays, a diamond ring perhaps? No, not at all. It’s the lights of oncoming cars, the beams of which would put the Starship Enterprise to shame.

The RSA website is utterly useless in this regard, as is the garda one. Basically, the lights must not be ‘too bright to dazzle other road users’.

What an ambiguous statement. People have driven towards the sun with more clarity than they’ve driven towards the Viaduct on a dark night.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if you’re being called towards the light held by St Peter, or it’s just an artic lorry with pitch floodlights attached to the front of the cab.

This problem is getting worse and worse with each year, and is completely unavoidable.

However, while the authorities get their knickers in a twist with matters of tax, insurance, and the NCT; increases the price of fuel year-on year; decries road fatalities, and cuts hedges with the enthusiasm of a rabid beaver, you can be sure that they’ll start talking about headlight brightness in perhaps 10 years.

Is it a conspiracy to get us all to move to bigger, newer cars where HID and LED bulbs are standard?

Those of us who can afford nothing more, nor want anything more, than a small runaround car are suffering the most.

Usually a low vehicle, it’s bad enough trying to deal with oncoming headlights but at least you can flash them quickly like you’re a little mouse with a torch.

If John or Mary or Billy or Theresa is behind you in their SUV, however, all bets are off.

The lights fill the car so you feel, for a moment, like you’re a Super Trouper Lights Are Gonna Blind Me. Neither Agnetha nor Frida were driving at the time though, and it’s hard to feel like a celebrity singer when you’re squinting, afraid of death on the N71.

Loss of latte levy

Our spineless government has done a U-turn on yet another easy win, the latte levy.

This levy was to add 20c to the price of a coffee or tea for those that fail to remember their takeaway cup.

If you baulk at the potential of a price increase to your hot drink, baulk at this: 22,000 cups are disposed of each hour in Ireland.

That’s not a typo, but it is about 200 million cups each year, an unfathomable amount of waste.

The cups, a mix of plastic and paper, are rarely if ever recyclable.

Killarney has failed in its efforts to remove disposable cups completely, as the town’s Coffee Cup Project admitted many businesses in the town centre had withdrawn from the scheme, although some remain.

The point of sucking a €4 coffee from a plastic cup is even absurd; tea is best from a china cup, coffee the same.

Paper covered in a plastic is surely an emergency measure, not a first-option.

On the market are bamboo options, glass, metal flasks, or a plastic one if you prefer a lighter portable option.

The levy should be treated as the plastic bag charge; let the people whine and complain, and do it anyway.

Just grow a backbone.