Safe Speed Forums

Just read this article in last night's Lancashire Evening Post:-

"An uninsured driver who had no licence has been fined £200. Joe Bloggs, 18, of XYZ Street, Preston, appeared before magistrates....
He was also told to pay costs of £35"

What a farce. The likely cost of legitimately obtaining a full licence is around £1000 with first car insurance costs at that age similar, if not more.

How can a £200 fine+costs be an appropriate penalty? Presume he also got 6-8 points on his non existent licence

I know fines are means tested etc and the do gooders will be telling us £200 is a lot of money to him but it's still 10% of what he would have had to pay to stay legal.

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That's how Nazi Germany started. They'll be burning books next. (Brian Noble, Wigan coach - updated 20/4/06!!).

As said in another thread this morning - we really do need to ensure that punishment deters these people.

It certainly does not help us enforce the laws nor does it cause the public to have any faith in either the police, the courts or the judicial system when sentences do not appear to fit the crime

Shocking as the video of a drug dealer being caned is on the Waily site - sometimes I think tha't the only answer for some thugs out there.

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

A total of £235 for no licence and no insurance - compare that to Ernest Marsh who got a fine of £90 and £135 costs for allegedly going a few mph over the limit. What has gone wrong in this country?

Indeed so. Ernest, a regular, honest member of society, gets treated like a
pariah.......... whilst the REAL scrotes get the "Oh! you poor boy" treatment!


..and they wonder why the law is falling into disrepute?.....

To be fair, out side of court I have not been treated as a pariah - far from it! I have had only messages of support, and if anything, it would appear that most people who know me have been extremely disappointed in the courts acceptance of the SAFETY Camera Partnership.s version of events.
Their assertion that it has never gone wrong (as reported in the Westmorland Gazette) was seen immediately as a lie, as clearly I have not been the only one flashed WITHOUT getting a ticket - something they denied could happen in court!
I have even had phone calls from complete strangers encouraging me to appeal, and one offering to destroy the cameras for £100!!
Needless to say I declined - the press is the way to destroy the rocky foundation on which they stand.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Why do you find it shocking??

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

As part of the campaign to do away with magistrates the police and others have been given ever increasing powers to impose penalties.

In some areas of the country police have the power to impose a fine of £200 and 6 points for no insurance. The figure being fixed by government.

Courts have been told that we should consider £200 as the standard fine for cases that do end up in front of us. Although in many cases we can't even impose that much due to lack of means.

The 6 points are important. If he does it again he will get another 6 and a driving ban. That leaves him open to custody if he does it for a third time.

Ignoring the financial part of the penalty (because it's a joke), do you really think the offender is worried about points?

He hasn't got a license to start with, so the points mean diddly squat.

As for the threat of jail for driving on a ban, well whoopie do........the most you can get is 6 months, which means you are out in 3 and even less on TAG.
However while you are in, please make yourself comfortable with colour TV, games console, kettle, shower, etc

That is of course assuming you go down to start with, because there is NOT any room in jail!


Besides, it's far more profitable to fu*k the otherwise law abiding citizen up the arse to the tune of £200 for being 5mph over the limit rather than chasing some scrote who doesn't give a toss.

And why doesn't the scrote give a toss?
Because he has no idea of discipline!

And why doesn't the scrote know what discipline is?
Because some do gooder cu*t decided it was against the law to punish our own children when they do wrong!

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

When did you last visit a jail? In common with all JPs I do visit jails and I don't recognise the set up you describe.

Some parts of some jails do have the facilities you mention and access to them can be earned. You still get locked in at night with no choice of who your room mates are.




It is not unlawful to punish children.
It is unlawful to assault them.
Any parent who can't control his or her children without the need to assault them, in spite of a huge disparity in size and strength, should consider whether or not they are fit to have charge of young children.

Oh how very sad These people are just vermin and should be baited and exterminated just like we do to rats.

Some would say that it isn't possible to control children using a punishment which isn't deemed as assault.

Has smacking and ear-clipping been banned in any way?

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Is it OK to whisper in a child's ear "I'll get you someday, when you don't expect it. You'll be really hurt or die." No bruises to show in court. Nothing to do with size and strength. Child is mentally scarred all its life. Is this punishment, assault or neither?

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

The governor only shows you what he or she wants you to see (although you already know that).
I personally did a prison visit last week.
The person I was visiting has his own room, colour TV, Freeview box (for the extra 60 channels), X-Box games console, kettle, etc.
Oh, he also gets let out 3 times a month to do what he wants for 11 hours a day


Locked in????
Behave yourself....him & his mates are at the 24 hour Tesco at 3am buying booze to get pissed up on the following night

He is actually loving it inside, so much so that he doesn't want his parole granted this month and would prefer to finish his sentence (and he really means it).




Let me tell you something....my kids get told twice....the third time they get a slap across the arse or the back of the legs (nothing more or nothing less than I got, and I'm still here)....but according to the law that is assault.....you deal with it when they turn 16!

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

The sad thing is: I genuinely believe that.
I believe many of the inmate population are professional jailbirds.

Crime pays. Get caught and you get free food, lodgings and other luxuries if well behaved. Not getting caught is a bonus.




Now that the prisons are beyond full, the professional jailbirds will now have to commit more serious crimes to get back in!
IT's nice to know the system is working

In the case of the person I am talking about, he is far from what you could call a "professional" jailbird.

He was a successful man with his own business, etc...and then his marriage broke down.
He resorted to living in a caravan (on a site), losing his job, house, the whole deal.


18 months after it all started, he was caught drink driving.
As a result of being caught drink driving, his home (caravan) was given a spin under section 18 and they found various weapons and explosives that resulted in him getting a 5 stretch.

Since he has been inside, he has had all the creature comforts (even in the 23 hour "bang up" nicks such as Winchester), he has averaged anywhere between £250 & £350 a week in profits as a loan shark, and he is now out every day "working" in the community and socialising with his mates for 3 weekends out of 4.

When he says he is better off inside, he really means it if you compare it to the last year of freedom he had when he wasn't doing anything wrong "per se".

Of course the officials will have you believe that jail is the last place you want to be, but either they are seriously being kept in the dark when they do jail visits...or they know full well what goes on and are feeding you the "official party line" in the vain hope you believe it (I suspect the latter myself as I know firsthand exactly how they work).

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

There'd be uproar if we were allowed to go smacking each other for every indescretion, why should it be any different for a child? Far from being a woolly liberal and whilst it isn't my intention to make judgement upon others, in my opinion, smacking only demonstrates to the child that the adult has lost control of the situation and the only alternative is to resort to violence. I find it interesting how we spend the early years of a childs' life, teaching them right-from-wrong with threats and acts of violence, seems bizarre to me.

Children do not have the self-control, reasoning abilites and moral compass of adults. They cannot necessarily be made to behave by persuasion alone. It is thus necessary, on occasion, to smack them to resolve disputes. As they grow and acquire more adult traits then this becomes unnecessary. Nobody is suggesting abusive levels of force should be used - just a bit of good practice based on millenia of experience.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I can see where you're coming from but how is an abusive measure of force measured though Malcolm? where does one draw the line? As human beings we all have different limitations and expectations, Children may not have self-control but if that's the case, how can one expect them to understand any better having had pain inflicted than a shout or the raising of ones' voice?

I don't know, I just think that if one has to resort to violence, then it is the adult who has lost the moral high-ground and has let the situation develop beyond their control. Again, my intention is not to make judgement but i'm intrigued, whilst I'm not yet convinced that smacking is the best way to bring up children, i'm all in favour of harsher penalties for adults in later life; it might make for an interesting discussion on punishment with another thread rather than hijacking this one.

You have to understand that smacking is not violently lashing out, in a loss-of-control fashion, having run out of alternatives; it is a quick, effective and memorable punishment, at the time of the offence, that will deter the child from acting like that in future, until such time as they are able to think sympathetically and understand why their actions are unacceptible to others.

I'd rather admit to grovelling in the moral foothills after giving a child a smack for running out into the road without looking than waste my time philosphically arguing with them why this was a bad thing to do.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.