A judge with a bit of sense!!!

[ziggysego]

I agree with pints

I agree with POG too!! 

So do I and I can't quite come to terms with it.
I reckon the MOD has taken over POG's account cos he didn't have bollocks all *******'d out. Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks.

Yeah, I agree with Pints too 

[pintsofguinness]

I can't tell you how happy I am to have you boys agree with me...

[pintsofguinness]

"Young people are being cautioned for assaults, and others for thefts. Here is a man of 52; of good character with no previous and he is prosecuted for being 15mph over the limit.

"Where is the discretion?"

It was this bit that I thought was a bit of sense.

You lot are missing my point. Read above!!!

Police out as revenue earners instead of proper police work.

So you want the cops to ignore law breaking because there's more serious law breaking?

[deiseach]

Having been in court recently and then read the BBC reports of the same case I would imagine there is a lot more to this case than meets the eye.  I would imagine that there could be any number of mitigating factors in this case that havent been reported, a district judge would deal with a large number of speeding cases on a daily basis and the fact he has chosen a lenient penalty in this case suggests that there was something unusual about it

I think you're right. Plenty of people with otherwise spotless records get done for going a few miles over the speed limit. To get into such of a flap over a man 50% over . . . something else is going on

[David McKeown]

"Young people are being cautioned for assaults, and others for thefts. Here is a man of 52; of good character with no previous and he is prosecuted for being 15mph over the limit.

"Where is the discretion?"

It was this bit that I thought was a bit of sense.

You lot are missing my point. Read above!!!

Police out as revenue earners instead of proper police work.

So you want the cops to ignore law breaking because there's more serious law breaking?

I would, clearly given that police resources are limited I would like them to be better apportioned. Often you see speed checks in areas that are conducive to above speed limit speeds. The reason the checks are there isn't because the police feel it's the best way to reduce dangerous speeding, it's because it's a good way to inflate both their statistics and their coffers. So given the choice yes there are many laws being broken that I wouldn't mind the police ignoring in order to better spread their resources

[tyrone86]

The judge is a bollocks - yer man broke the speed limit and then didn't accept the fixed penalty in time, he should have had the book threw at him for wasting the courts/prosecutors time That encourages everyone to go to court now.

Some discretion? My arse, the line has to be drawn somewhere and I thought they let you go something like 7mph over the limit but after that you'll be done. 

You're supposed to be allowed 10% leniency of the speed limit to allow for errors in the calibration of the speed traps.

As for the case in question, without knowing the specifics of the case it's hard to know why the judge did this. 30 mile limits are supposed to be about safety of the pedestrian - If your man was doing 45 in a 30 at half 3 in the morning and not a sinner on the street it's a completely different situation than if he was doing it at half 3 in the afternoon and children coming out of school.

[RedandGreenSniper]

I would think the judges point in more about why this man was dragged through the courts when the driver could have and should have been dealt with by way of fixed penalty instead of having an entry on his criminal record.

Its not that the judge did not think he should be prosecuted, he just believed that there were more appropriate ways of dealing with the offence. when the pps refused to deal with it in a more sensible fashion he imposed a nominal penalty.

He didn't pay the fixed penalty, that is why he ended up in court. Which served him well as the fine was well reduced from what he was due to pay, which is completely wrong. Unless, as David points out, there's more to this than what was reported. If there's not then the judge is a fool.

[haranguerer]

"Young people are being cautioned for assaults, and others for thefts. Here is a man of 52; of good character with no previous and he is prosecuted for being 15mph over the limit.

"Where is the discretion?"

It was this bit that I thought was a bit of sense.

You lot are missing my point. Read above!!!

Police out as revenue earners instead of proper police work.

Wtf? The judge is an ageist twat

[thewobbler]

Speeding is an easy target for police, and it seems, for GAAboarders. So long as the same, no-nonsense accepted approach is applied by the same people to all law-breaking, then I'm fine with it. But there's a few people on here might be prone to cherry picking which laws must be upheld.

[Champion The Wonder Horse]

There was a boy in my year at school whose brother was knocked down and killed by a speeding driver within the 30mph limit on the same stretch of road. Had Mr Kenneth Kane been the driver on that occasion would a 1p fine have been a sufficient penalty?