What’s the point of having laws, if you don’t enforce them to the hilt?
That’s right, there is no point!
If people don’t respect the law, that’s an easy-to-follow idiot-proof recipe for anarchy.
And that’s a dish nobody in their right minds wants to sample.
And it is not enough to enforce the law a little bit. You can’t go round enforcing a bit of law here, a bit of law there. This country expects its law enforcers to enforce 100% of the law, 100% of the time.
That’s why Chef Constable Anthony Bangham is calling for police forces up and down the land to come down like a ton of bricks on motorists caught going even 1mph above the speed limit.
He told a gathering of top cops the other day that he’s planning to do exactly that on his home patch, the (now-defunct) historical kingdom of the West Mercians. And, when Bang ’em up Bangham talks traffic, top cops tend to take note!
Bangham was quoted in various national newspapers last week insisting that the police need to change their message (presumably from something like “We’re here to uphold the law fairly and firmly, to prevent crime, to pursue and bring to justice those who break the law, to keep the Queen’s peace, to protect, help and reassure the community, and to be seen to do this with integrity, common sense and sound judgement”) to “We are proud to be law enforcers.”
There’s no place on Britain’s roads today for traffic officers to mess around exercising so-called common sense or ‘discretion’. If the perp is over the limit, they’ve put themselves in the red zone and fully deserve whatever’s coming to them.
Road users today are effectively cocking a snook at the law of the land, thumbing their noses at hamstrung traffic cops who’ve been forced by right-on laissez-faire politically-correct pen-pushers back at the station to allow a 10% + 2mph margin of getting-away-with-it, when in truth they should be taking law-breakers straight out of the game.
That ten percent allowance for those seen as merely dabbling in law breaking has clearly got to go. As for the two percent margin of error – to allow for the vagaries of dashboard speed indicators – that’s a sword that cuts both ways. Rather than allow drivers to escape punishment for going at 32mph in a 30 limit, they should be done for doing 28.
It’s drivers not cops who should be held responsible for errors in the calibration of their onboard instruments. If you’re speedo’s saying 29, you should allow for it’s being 2mph out. Ergo if you’re doing 29, you’re tacitly accepting that you might be doing 31 and therefore breaking the law.
You might be. You might not be. But you’re wilfully taking that risk.
QED: you’re nicked mate!
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