The new year, according to some astrologer or other, was a very good time for making resolutions, as long as you got on with them from the start. If you’ve left it ’til now, forget it. Depending on your particular weakness, you might be just as well off.

By way of example, I quote you Mrs Liz O’Connor of Carrickmacross. Liz, who is a widow, has just celebrated her 102nd birthday in St Mary’s Hospital, where she has spent the last ten years or so. And she revealed her secret for a long life: “I always liked a wee drop of whiskey and a pinch of snuff.”

It is a recipe that certain puritanical ministers should perhaps take to heart.

To heart indeed! All the available evidence indicates that a wee drop is good for the ticker. We should all indulge in moderation for the good of our health. But where, apropos recent controversies, would this leave drivers?

As regular readers will know, I am a staunch opponent of prohibitionist drink-driving laws. I believe they are simplistic beyond reason as well as socially regressive.

This is not to say that I am in favour of drunken driving. I am not. Indeed, I don’t believe that I’ve ever met anyone who is. But the present insane situation, where a person one milligram over the limit is regarded as equally punishable as a person who has drunk ten or twelve pints on an empty stomach, and where both are liable to mandatory punishments which are greater than those usually imposed on murderers and rapists, is utterly untenable.

An approach which balanced recommended levels of alcohol and a sliding scale of punishments with a serious attempt to generate a sense of responsibility in drivers would seem far more just. And is not justice a fundamental principle of our democratic system?

Let me indicate what I mean. If we agree that a person’s reflexes are impaired after 80 milligrams, then a person who is very slightly over this limit is only marginally culpable, right?

However, if he (or she) drives very fast on a dark and winding road, which is slippy from fallen leaves and recent rain, then that individual is a great deal more dangerous. And if, as a result of his foolhardy driving, a crash ensues, then this guilt is magnified many times.

The system of sanctions should reflect this exponential scale. But in doing so it must accept that a person who is slightly over the limit is not a grave danger to other members of the public. This would suggest the following:

• regular and random tests by the police;

• that a person with between 80 and 90 mg receive a recorded caution from the officer, this caution to be entered on the police computer files, to be activated if the person offends again within a given period, and to remain a matter of record;

• that a person with between 90 and 100 mg receive a small mandatory fine as well as the above caution;

• that someone with 100-110 receive a more substantial fine as well as a caution;

• that a person with 120-130, and beyond be charged with driving under the influence of drink, with a recommended range of sanctions to be applied by the courts.

To all of these should be added an additional element, that of dangerous driving. Where a person is in him/herself a hazard (e.g. dangerous overtaking, or conspicuous overloading) and is found to be over the limit, then a second range of punishments-on-punishments should come into play. For the purposes of illustration, let’s say that everything is multiplied by four.

And if the person goes one further and causes an accident, then multiply by four again. That way, we build in a major disincentive to dangerous driving.

A new look at safety on the roads also has to look at a number of other factors. One is the skill of the driver. There are some people out there who are lethal. I know one (a teetotaller by the way) who has, in a manner of speaking, two left hands and feet. This is a hopelessly nervous person who gets utterly flustered at the first moment of difficulty.

In order to avoid any gender bias in this, I will call this person Sam. Now Sam holds a provisional licence, but drives alone. Recently, this genius almost wiped a cyclist off the face of the earth: the car was coming out of a laneway and Sam, at the wheel, “didn’t see” the cyclist. Fortunately our intrepid driver missed.

There are lots of drivers like this who shouldn’t be on the road. There’s also lots of cars which are defective. As for the roads . . . well, the main roads in the Republic are generally fine now. It’s the secondaries and side roads that are the killers. Making the roads safe should mean just that: making the roads safe.

Speeding has also been mentioned as a factor. And it can be, in the wrong place and at the wrong time. But a competent driver travelling in good light in a sound car is safe on major roads at very high speeds. There should be daytime and night-time speed limits. Indeed, there could also be speed restrictions for poor weather as well.

To be specific: that new road past Leixlip is very comfortable. On a dry surface, in a big powerful car, you could safely do over 100 miles an hour. But on a wet night in November, with a cross wind, and a juggernaut spraying a pound of shite on your screen every minute, you would be well advised to stick at 50 or thereabouts.

Now, we’ve entered a new age of technology and thought. It cannot be beyond the imagination of such an intelligent man as the new Minister for the Environment to come up with a law that would recognise the above, a balance between carrot and stick, that acknowledges our social patterns but encourages responsibility.

And three small points: just because other EU states have adopted a certain limit doesn’t mean that we have to. After all, they could be wrong. As for the recommendations from Michael McDowell for an American-style Highway patrol, forget it. We have enough troubles. We don’t need PD police. We need, rather, to re-establish a sense of partnership between police and citizens.

And finally, it isn’t really very helpful to point to a small reduction in road deaths as a benefit from the present draconian approach. Anyone who wasn’t being driven around in a Merc could see that there were very few cars on the road. By the same logic, the way to stop deaths at work is to stop work. Effective, sure. But hardly reasonable.

And this is something we’ll hear more about, I dare say.

Speaking of reasonable, I see that a new US Congress has been sworn in, and the new leader of the House is Newt Gingrich. Newt. That’s some kind of toad, isn’t it? Um . . . parts of its anatomy are favoured by witches, am I right?

Well, anyway, Gingrich was waxing lyrical recently about his favourite film. Not Pulp Fiction, for sure!

Not Schindler’s List, nor ET, nor Star Wars, nor Casablanca, nor The Searchers. Not even Rocky, or High Noon. Nope, this bloke is touting for Boys’ Town. A Spenser Tracy/Mickey Rooney film about a kind of tough-love orphanage-village. Sentimental slop of the most awful kind. America is doomed . . . again.

When this geezer gets loose on foreign policy we’re going to have some fun, I’ll tell you!

Having Gingrich in such a powerful position is a bit like having Vladimir Zhirinovsky as Speaker of the Russian parliament. Things are bad enough, mind . . .

The mess that the Russians have walked themselves into in Chechnya is incredible. You’d have thought that after Afghanistan they’d have learned. But no.

Last week’s comments by Yelena Bonner, widow of Nobel peace prize laureate Andrei Sakharov, are apposite: “No concept, even that of the indivisibility of Russia, can justify a war against the people. A democratic country cannot retain by armed force an ethnic group that does not wish to remain part of it.”

One accepts this as an enunciation of a principle. It could usefully be applied to the United Kingdom and the Irish. It could just as easily be applied to Ireland and the Ulster British.

This year we will see whether we are collectively able to resolve this very considerable conundrum.

**

On a quite different subject, I also read that the smart money now says that the star of Bethlehem was in fact a very rare triple conjunction of planets Saturn and Jupiter in Pisces. So rare, indeed that the next one is due in 2662. So next time some wild-eyed millennialist has you by the lapels about the second comings and goings, would you point this out?

• The Hog