This kind of led on from the elderly drivers thread. I hear that Winston Peters announced a new wave of policies for the elderly at the Grey Power conference the other day - subsidised housing, healthcare etc. How do the other parties stack up on this kind of thing? Is it really an election issue? Would Winston actually push for it when in office? Or is he just keeping his most reliable constituency under his thumb?

Sam, I think elderly people not having a great deal of money is an issue. However people are working longer and so therefore I would actually cut back the privilages that you are mentioning.

I think it is a ploy to win votes, I think it is disgusting but Winnie is on to it enough to realise that the majority of votes are older and that we do have an aging population.

Will he enforce it? Winnie tells it as it is so there is a good chance that yes, he would implement it. However there is also a chance he won't, there is a chance that if he got into power he wouldn't because of financial blocks.

In short, its hard to say, maybe, maybe not. It depends on how much you trust the man.

But, this has actually lost my vote and my opinion of good ol' winnie has declined as a result of this policy.

Now, winnie is intelligent, if most of his votes are elderly then a better proposal would be that drivers under 25 should have drivers tests once a year. So you get hte license at 18 and each year until you are 25 you have driving tests. That I would support, that would be supported by the elderly.

Winnie should also implement automatic loss of license if speedng 15 or more km/ph for under 25s. This would solve a great deal of roading problems.

Why do you call him Winnie? There's already a member called Winnie [Laban].

I don't know why I call him Winnie, I guess its because I admire the guy and like him, hes been in politics for ages and a lot of people have a nickname for him, its one of those things you hear and you repeat as well.

Automatic loss of licence for speeding over 15 k's sounds good - but why not for all drivers? That'd solve even more issues although it'd never make it into law. Just not politically acceptable. It really heats me up to think about (stereotype incoming) all those middle-aged investment bankers in HSVs who think they can do whatever they want on the road. The fact that as a BA student I'll never be one of them is totally irrelevant, of course... :)

why only the 18-25 age group? Because they are more likely to have crashes than any other group.

I was aware of that. I'm sure that your proposal would do a hell of a lot of good. My point was, surely it'd have even greater benefits if applied to everyone - as hugely unlikely as that is.

Yeah, perhaps. But the only reason this demographic group has more crashes than other groups is because of the number of ricers who are aged between 18-25. If you took the fools out of it, I am positive you'd find that the number of crashes in this age group has dropped dramatically since the introduction of the graduated license scheme came in. Apart from crashes caused by ricers, or people driving illegally on their restricted license, most crashes you hear about these days are caused by older people (typically 30-40 years old), losing control from the speed they are doing, undertaking dangerous passing manoeuvres, or falling asleep from fatigue. Generally speaking, accidents occur for no other reason than the driver is not concentrating or makes poor judgement calls.

Indeed, many younger drivers are inexperienced, but for the most part they realise it, and take more care than older drivers for this reason. As such, it is not the fact that a driver is young that makes him bad. It's the fact that he has a naïve "it will never happen to me" attitude towards driving, and this is not a characteristic unique to under-25's. If you really want to find out who shouldn't be on the road, go and make some over 35's do their license tests again...

Peace,
Nick

P.S. As for Winston, who knows if he'll actually do anything he promises. What I do know though, is he is a bloody good politician, who knows his niche market. If a party stood for parliament who promised to further subsidise tertiary fees, increase student allowances for all students, wipe the stupid "secondary" tax code for those with student loans, and gave students completely free health care, I know who I'd be voting for...

Maybe we should have testing every 2 years for those over 75, testing every 5 years for people between 25 and 74 and testing even 2 years for people under 25.

The only issue with Peters is his nasty stone-age immigration laws. i agree he's excellent at what he does. but his nationalist policies on immigration would take us back to 1950's Arkansas. Me thinks.