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October 31, 2005
Take care motorists, splashing a workman could land you in court!
Our hard pressed police are hard at work driving down crime and pursuing real criminals - motorists! In what must be one of the stupidist and most pointless prosecutions of recent months - I can't go further back than that without finding something equally petty - a police force (and our equally worthless Crown Prosecution Service which probably couldn't successfully prosecute a real criminal if they found one) have just spent £5,000 prosecuting a motorist who drove through a puddle in the road and splashed two council workmen with the water.
Unfortunately for him, our ever vigilant police saw the incident and followed him for a further two miles, no doubt checking to see if he went through any more puddles, before pulling him over for "driving in an inconsiderate manner". Enter the CPS, who decided to prosecute this man who freely admitted that he had driven through the puddle, qualifying it by saying that he could not drive around it because of on-coming traffic. The Magistrates evidently decided that his driving deserved censure, because they have fined him £150 and awarded three penalty points on his license, stating that he should have stopped and waited until it was safe to drive around the obstruction. No one seems to have taken account of the fact that the oncoming traffaic stream was almost continuous and that this would have caused problems for other motorists behind the first one - who was almost certainly not the only one to go through the puddle!
Yet again it seems that our "justice" system is more interested in persecuting motorists for daring to drive their cars, than it is about dealing with the criminals who make life misery for law abiding citizens. When do we hear of the police pursuing someone who has smashed a woman drivers window and snatched her handbag, briefcase or other valuables from the seat beside her? Or of them pursuing someone who has just car jacked - often violently and with a weapon - some motorists car? What would the Magistrates do if they did? Probably let them out on bail, or, if they did decide to hear the case, give them a "community service" sentence so they can carry on car-jacking.
If ever there was an example to be found of the police being too busy hounding motorists to go after real criminals, this is it.
Posted by The Gray Monk at October 31, 2005 05:15 PM
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