Mini bikes are small motorised vehicles, because these are propelled by an engine they are classed as motor vehicles. It is because of this they must comply with regulations if they are to be ridden on the road.
If you are to ride a 49cc mini bike on the road, firstly you must have the appropriate license, in the UK you will need to be 16 years old and hold a provisional license. This allows you to ride registered vehicles on the road as a learner.
You will also need to undergo a compulsory bike test (CBT) which then allows you to ride legally on the road.
If you have all this you need to ensure the mini bike is road legal. 99% of mini bikes are not road legal and are nowhere near high enough standard to be classed as road legal. Therefore it is quite a task in order to get a mini bike road registered and legal, and thus most people do not attempt to do it.
The mini bike will need to pass an SVA test, this is probably going to cost more than what you paid for the mini bike itself. But if you still want to get it legal, then your mini bike will need to be fitted with front and rear lights, indicators, speedo and also must undergo tests to ensure the mini bike is built to a high enough standard (which no mini bike is).
The bike must also be restricted to a certain speed if you are 16, and noise regulations etc. must also be taken into account. As you can see this is a lot of hassle, hence why people rarely bother to do it.
If you do not follow this route to get your bike on the road, then it is not allowed to be ridden in any public place, this includes public parks, pavements, or roads. The only place which these are allowed to be ridden is therefore private land.
If these bikes are ridden illegally on the road then police have the power to seize and crush your mini bike, and if you were caught riding it you could face having points on your license or could face a prison sentence.
Not really worth riding the bike illegally is it? These days however people are still not getting the message and still ride bikes illegally which gives other mini bike riders, such as myself a bad name. There are a growing number of incidents of bikes being seized and crushed in the UK every year.
So the next time you think about riding your mini bike illegally, make sure you know what the dangers of doing this is, or you could be in with a huge shock!
By: Marc Wilton
Mini Bikes and the Law
Understanding the Human Side of a Debt Collector May Help You Deal With One (part One)
Copyright (c) 2008 Stephen Lau
In the present financial climate, debt collection is commonplace and many people may have to deal with debt collectors due to delinquencies. To deal with creditors is an art.
If you are among one of them, you may think that debt collectors are inhuman: they may have harassed you relentlessly.
Nowadays, many individuals have become debt collectors simply because they need a job, because they want to help others, or, for some, because they have a strong need for control and power. Whatever, debt collectors get trained, but do not go to school to become debt collectors.
Remember, debt collectors are just human, like everyone else. They, too, may have problems paying their own bills.
Understanding the human side of a debt collector may help you deal with one successfully. You must understand that their work environment is always filled with negativity. They need to call you incessantly and relentlessly: they would like to see as many as possible their clients become current. Like most other types of work, they have their own daily, weekly, and monthly goals to meet too.
As a smart consumer, learn how to deal with a debt collector. Dealing with debt collection is less of a hassle if you have the know-how.
According to Sun Tsu’s famous book “Art of War”, “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy, but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.”
So know your debt collector (your imaginary “enemy”) and know yourself, and you will resolve your financial problems successfully.
As a smart consumer, it is important to make your account current. It is to your own advantage if you do. Ignoring your debt or delinquency problem – what most consumers choose to do – will not make the problem go away. Make your account current through a plan (knowing yourself, such as how much payment you can afford, and what to do with your current emergency debt situation) and good communication with your debt collector (knowing your “enemy”, such as making the debt collector help you resolve your financial problems).
Knowing yourself also implies adopting a positive and confident attitude before and when you make your initial contact with your debt collector. Remember, you are not a bad person just because you cannot pay your bills. When you put down your name on the dotted line to obtain a credit or loan, you probably did it with good intention. When you are having a financial problem, take care of yourself first and foremost. Do things that may lift up your spirit – things that do not require further straining your finances, such as going camping or fishing (but certainly not going on an expensive vacation).
Be open-minded; avoid being neither defensive nor aggressive when you contact your debt collector. Remember, he or she is human, just like you. An attitude is never a good communication skill, and will not get you anywhere.
Rest assured, your debt collector knows your name and address, your home and work phone numbers, the amount of loan, whether it is secured or unsecured, your payment history, your late payments, and your last payment date and amount. Your debt collector has everything in front of his or her computer when speaking to you. Therefore, you must have the same level of information, otherwise you might feel being intimidated while speaking to a debt collector. That is to say, you must also be as prepared as your debt collector to stay in the same level of information.
As a smart consumer, always request a copy of the payment history and a copy of your contract for the delinquent account (if you have not already done so), and have them mailed to you. This may not only buy you more time, but also show your intention to resolve the problem. To protect yourself, you must read your contract in its entirety and review your account payment history. If errors occur, use them to your advantage.
Review your state’s laws regarding collections and the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) to know your rights as a consumer. Know what a debt collector can and cannot do. If you do not wish your debt collector to call you at work, fax a request to that effect. A debt collector cannot disclose your debt information on a telephone answering machine without your prior permission, or by mailing you a postcard.
If you are knowledgeable of the law and your rights, your debt collector will know that he or she cannot intimidate you.
(Part Two will be on the communication with a debt collector.)
By: Stephen Lau
Patriarchal Societies Promote Women’S Rights’ Abuses
Patriarchal Societies Promote Women’s Rights’ Abuses
Today’s world differentiates a lot from what it was 50 years ago. It has transformed; sometimes for the better and sometimes for worse. Places have changed and with them their people have too. In general, today’s people have more acceptance and tolerance towards one and other and are open to experiencing cultures different from their own. The Human Rights have developed and are practiced across the globe, distinguishing what is humane from what is intolerable. Unification is seen amongst countries which are willing to aid each other hence 192 countries are members of the UN with the hope of making the world a safer and healthier place for all. Over the past few decades many countries have been concentrating on maintaining equity within their people whether it’s regarding wealth between the rich and poor or equal rights between both sexes. The notion that men are the superior sex has been long forgotten for many communities. Although many countries no longer have problems between men and women, patriarchal societies still exist and it is these societies that promote women’s rights’ abuses.
Patriarchal societies consist of Third World Countries, some from the Middle East but mostly from South East Asia and Africa. Generally these countries refuse to rid themselves of ancient traditions and culture not realizing that many of these traditions must be discarded since they are unjust. For example in India where the ritual of dowries lives on and continues to cause hassle, to the extent that the largest jail of the capital has a separated quarter for mother-in-laws who murdered or abused their sons’ wives. Presently it is ‘home to roughly 120 women, some of whom are serving 20-year sentences for murdering their daughters-in-law’ (Lavin, 2006). Indians have clasped their dowry tradition for over hundreds of years although The Dowry Prohibition Act was released back in 1961 (Lavin, 2006), it fails to fulfill its purpose and so it is looked upon as a “paper tiger” (Lavin, 2006). It is said that ‘every 77minutes a dowry death is reported’ (Lavin, 2006) and in the year 2005 7,026 reported dowry deaths occurred. It is difficult to believe that a country progressing at the rate of India still stomachs such barbaric behavior that is happening in masses. One of the reasons dowries are considered so important is because of the notion that girls are burdens to their families. Girls are not expected to work in most patriarchal societies thus when a husband takes the daughter away from a family he is doing a favor for them by releasing them from one of their burdens therefore he should be rewarded with an adequate dowry. The idea of men being the provider of the family is a primeval one since it originated in the times when men were in fact the better option for providing for the family being the physically stronger sex however this is no longer essential to successfully handle a household. A regular job accompanied with a decent wage is enough to make a woman capable of providing for herself and family. If women were encouraged to work they would never be considered a burden nor would they depend on a man for financial security. Other than limiting women from leading their own lives and forcing themselves into marriage, many patriarchal societies’ households further seize the protection and rights of women even after marriage. A sufficient amount of domestic abuse takes place in numerous Indian households, including marital rape and emotional abuse (Lavin, 2006). If women were able to support themselves they would not be forced into staying in abusive relationships. According to the book titled “Women’s Roles and statuses-The World Over” in the year of 2000, ‘the ratio of female to male enrollment in secondary school was 83 women to every 100 men’ however the number of women in post secondary schools drop significantly in comparison with only 37 women to every 100 men (Hepburn & Simon, 2007). Education and work would free many Third World women from physical and emotional abuse, girls would not be looked upon as burdens and this would lead to a decline in cases of abuse and issues such as female infanticide. Female Infanticide is most common in patriarchal societies. It is most prominent in India and China, where the number of deaths of girls shortly after birth, continues to increase (Female Infanticide). Parents prefer to have sons over daughters since daughters weigh down parents and are also more capable of dishonoring a family. Men are believed to be the ones that will ensure the family by earning money whilst women are considered the source of economic drainage for a household. Women are not only loathed due to their incapability of being profitable when it comes to bringing money home, they also become the object of abuse and murder when they fail to carry the honor of a man whether it is their father, brother or husband, lucratively. ‘Honor Killings’ is a crime that most people in developed countries would have never heard of but unfortunately these crimes are still very common in patriarchal societies. ‘Honor killings’ is the name given to the murder of a woman who was killed by family members because she had brought shame to them in some way, (Khalaf Al-Ajely, 2005). In countries such as Iraq, ‘honor killings are an accepted practice’ and usually are not reported, (Khalaf Al-Ajely, 2005). Reasons for ‘honor killings’ differ, from refusing to marry a man of the family’s choice, to marrying someone of her own choice, to being raped. The fact that an innocent woman could be murdered by her own family members for being raped by a perverted chauvinist is extremely overwhelming. Since the fall of the Saddam regime, ‘more than 400 women have been raped’ and ‘more than half of them have been murdered in honor killings’ (Khalaf Al-Ajely, 2005). Although ‘honor killings’ are equivalent to murder, culprits are treated differently despite of what authorizes say. One of the many women murdered in ‘honor killings’ in Iraq was Shawbo Rauf Ali, a 19 year old who was accused of being involved in an extra marital affair by her husband, who made this assumption based on a sole ‘unknown number that appeared on her cell phone’ (Salih, 2007). Hawjin Hama Rashid, a Women’s Rights activist in Iraq stated that ‘honor has been a prime motivator of violence against women, because in such a patriarchal society women are considered the honor of their men’, (Salih, 2007).
Some would argue that just because a society is patriarchal it does not mean that it abuses women rights. Many women are content living in their male dominated environment. They believe that their position is below their counterparts. For many the entire purpose of living is to care for their husband and his family. A number of Muslim states are accused by the West of depriving their women of their rights and for a handful of these states, this could be true. The women in these states appear satisfied since they believe that they are truly following their religion.
Many believe that gender equality and Islamic law are two conflicting issues. According to the West, Islam is unjust to women with its attitude towards ‘polygamy, divorce, child custody, inheritance and women as witnesses’ (Mashour, 2005). However, Islam does not support injustice to women at all. It was the first religion to give women the rights to inherit from their fathers and also gives them the right to choose their husbands (Mashour, 2005). A man’s right to keep up to four wives at a time is misused by many Muslim men today, (Mashour, 2005) since there is a specific criteria to when a man could marry more than once in the Holy Qur’an. Many Muslim men find it acceptable to assault a women who dishonored them but nowhere does it say in the Qur’an that it is acceptable to take a life of a girl by the name of ‘honor crimes’, (Mashour, 2005). In the cases of Islamic States, culture is confused with religion to such an extent that people justify ‘honor killings’ by saying it is required in Islam. Women do not hesitate in following ‘Islamic’ ways since they feel that they are sacred, unaware that it is just cultural and not religious at all, ‘deterioration of women’s rights in many Islamic countries has nothing to do with their Islamic nature and that most of the gender inequalities are not based on Islam but are mainly the result of traditional, patriarchal, male dominated societies’, (Mashour, 2005) It’s true that many women do not complain of their situation from these countries but this is because they are functioned to adjust and compromise for their own well being. The girls who’s lives are not snatched from them as infants, are brought up to believe that their purpose of living is to cater and care for their future husbands and families regardless of how they are treated. So when they are abused girls are willing to bare the pain. Women in these countries do not have strong organizations that they could turn to when in need of help. Even the police are not willing to offer any assistance since such abuses are considered ‘normal’ in such societies. Not only is it difficult for women to find help, it is also difficult for them to just free themselves of such relationships. Divorce is unsupported by many families as it is looked down upon on. Divorcee girls have a hard time trying to get remarried plus the fact they will probably not be able to support themselves financially leaves them less motivated about separation.
Ultimately, the main cause of the women’s rights abuse in patriarchal societies is the lack of education. Educated women will be aware of what is right and what is wrong, they would be aware of the help that is available for them and options other than putting up with abuse and most importantly they would be aware of their rights. They would be able to differentiate religion from culture and tradition. Also women need to realize that their position in society is equal to that of the men in their society not below them. Patriarchal societies which are mostly conservative limit their women of reaching their full potential firstly by limiting their education and secondly by enforcing cultural baggage on them which only holds them down.
Refrences
Al-Ajely, Z (2005) Killing for Honour. Retrieved Oct 12, 2008
fromhttp://www.peacewomen.org/news/Iraq/May05/honour.html
Female Infanticide. Global Human Rights
Hepburn, S. & Simon, R.J.(2007) Women’s Roles and Statuses-The World Over.
(Lexington Books, pp 226) . Plymouth: Estover Road
Lavin, A. (2006). Dowry Disgrace, India’s “kitchen incident” epidemic. The Weekly Standard
Mashour, A. (2005). Human Rights Quarterly. (Baltimore May 2005.Vol.27 pp562,36pgs)
Salih, M.A. (2007) Global Information Network.
By: reeny