Recently I had reason to travel slightly further afield than is my usual need. Having a very comfortable vehicle with all mod cons a few hundred motorway miles was by far preferred to the uncertainties and cost of travel by train. On my return home it dawned on me how similar this country`s road traffic has grown out of all proportion to the underlying infrastructure in a manner similar to the courts being overwhelmed by structural failings, staffing shortages, political interfering and increasing regulation which cannot be policed or enforced. In 1966 when I obtained a driving license there were fewer than 10 million cars on UK roads. Statistics on other vehicles are unreliable. Today with an unpredicted and increased population there are 41 million. I remember clearly driving on the M1 which opened in 1959 at 90MPH prior to the 70MPH limit being imposed. There was generally little individual danger owing to the low ratio of vehicles to motorway mile. My single fine for speeding was for driving at 80MPH on that same M1 in 1984 stopped by a patrol car two miles from the second last exit before the M1 ends.
During my recent trip I did not see a single police patrol car. On that Sunday journey flashing signals of 50MPH were ignored by most vehicles. These signals were repeated for about four miles before brake lights ahead became quite obvious from a few hundred yards distant where police were tidying up the inner carriageway after a car had apparently gone off the road. There were of course the usual hundreds of yards of road narrowing or coned off with much machinery lying idle but no workmen around. Daily around 25% of crown courts are not in use owing to a lack of available judges, structural building problems or lack of legal and other staff. Recent disclosures in the media indicate that some cases of rape will not be heard for up to four years. Delays at magistrates courts are going to increase now that the MOJ has decided once again that 12 months custody is available in some cases. Loud voices from the parliamentary and other sources Left are calling for everything but the building of more prisons. Laudable as those policies are the protection of the public does not seem to be the prime consideration. Just as motorways need to be increased the Sunak government finally admitted billions of pounds were wasted on a high speed rail network that was flawed from its inception.
As in decades long gone government priorities seem to be aping Alice through a judicial looking glass. Interfering with a badger sett is punished by ten weeks custody suspended. Over the last decade or so with unpaid fines, compensation and costs running at anything from one to two billion pounds outstanding it has taken one court nine years to identify an offender. In many US states such miscreants are jailed a day for every $ owed to the court. I have witnessed such courts in action. It was and is a salutary lesson for those involved. Criminal Behaviour Orders [CBOs] are a joke; a refining of ASBOs they should be renamed Displacement Orders because they are the modern version of the the police saying, "Move along now; nothing to see here". This is just another similar single occasion repeated tens of thousands of times annually. Domestic violence and stalking have rightly moved up the public political agenda but so has releasing suspects even on conditional bail. It`s not an exaggeration to consider that the expedient judicial dog is wagging the justice tail.
The essentials of our lives as citizens of a civilised nation which rewards its workers, encourages those who aspire to improve our and their own fortunes and indicates its non acceptance of those who would feed as leeches off other`s endeavours is fading whilst we count the angels on the pinhead. Just perhaps those who retain their belief in a democratic society where there are downs as well as ups will see that society renewed in the next decade without undemocratic means having to be employed to retain it: otherwise known as the democratic paradox.
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