Welcome to my blog. I am a former local journalist who now works in PR and a Conservative and community activist in Woking and Horsell. This blog will keep updated on local issues as well as my interests and quirky news stories.
Come on Harriet, it's only £350
When Jonathan Aitken, a junior minister in the last Conservative government, fell foul of the criminal law you couldn’t escape the wall-to-wall coverage of it.
For those who missed, yesterday Harriet Harman – a cabinet minister and deputy leader of the Labour Party, pleaded guilty to bashing into someone else’s car through driving without due care and attention. Charges of doing so while on a mobile phone were dropped at the last minute. She was fined £350 – about what one might expect for a person of her means – and “accepted” the charge. We also learned that she now has a total of nine points on her license and another three would see her banned.
Okay, there’s been no dishonesty on her part and she’s taken her punishment with the minimum of fuss – as one might expect with a huge amount of damaging PR perilously nearby. But I think she’s got away lightly – it’s not been in the news today, there’s only story on the BBC website and nothing on ITN at all. No doubt PM and Alistair Campbell have been at work trying to keep this out of the media spotlight.
So it is okay then for cabinet ministers in a government that sensibly banned the use of mobile phones while driving (despite never offering police forces the resources to enforce it) to go around on their mobiles smashing into other peoples’ cars.
But then after Baroness Scotland, who took the trouble to break her own law, nothing surprises me.
