Last week I took a mock driving test with a fully trained instructor. I failed, miserably, but I knew all along that I would.

Having driven for 27 years I figured that I would have built up so many bad driving habits that it would be impossible to pass. I was right.

We stopped counting my faults at twelve serious X's and one incident of dangerous driving, which in itself would mean an automatic fail. I drove with one hand, sometimes with one finger, I didn't use my mirrors (women thing they're for applying makeup), I didn't look over my shoulder (who does, its damned uncomfortable) I failed to indicate on roundabouts, drove over speed bumps too fast, was too SLOW at intersections (I ask ya) and was pathetic on use of handbrake and changing down gears.

I cut across an intersection onto the opposite side of the road for a shortcut (there was no damn traffic coming) and that's an automatic fail.

Added to all that is the fact that I have forgotten the meaning of a vast amount of road signs and boxes, squares, rectangles, two parallel lines and all that are double Dutch to me know. I'm a man to admit to my faults am'int I?

How and ever a refresher courses sound like a good idea to me, for all those of us living in the comfort zone of being so called "experienced drivers". But my heart is torn if I'm to be honest because if you really were to follow many of those rules then the world's traffic would grind to a halt.

Looking in three mirrors every few sections, applying the handbrake every time you stop, looking over your right shoulder when pulling out or your left when reversing, gearing down through ALL the gears, not attacking merging traffic on a motorway, strewth! It's all to taxing for my poor brain. Somebody get me a taxi!

Acceptable?

Is the world changing so fast that many people these days, in Cork anyway, accept that freeloading off society is acceptable?

For much of the week on air I batted too and fro with callers who had much to say on why its ok for young girls to have two and three kids all by different fathers and it was nobody else's business.

Sorry? Surely it's the business of the society that's picking up the tab and actually assuming the responsibility of the many layabout, uncaring, mean fathers who should be supporting their child or children and the mother of their baby? But no, dozens of calls to criticise why I should pry into a person's private life like that.

Sometimes it's difficult to do my job and it would be a lot easier to sit on the fence and not engage and ask difficult questions believe me, but for me it's the deal I have struck with the Listener. Having said that not everybody will always agree.

Especially the ever increasing percentage of freeloaders who claim for everything in life, including houses, while never wishing to contribute one single positive thing to the society in which they live, except more children who, in learned behaviour grow up like their parents and mirror what they see.