Thursday 18 January 2018

Getting the Point of the Driving Laws

In the world of "rules for drivers", Jordan Cassidy of Manchester knows how it works.

Faced with getting enough points on his licence to lose the right to drive for a while, he appealed to the magistrate that if he were banned, he would lose his job, and his girlfriend might leave him.

He has a driving job. A man who can't drive anywhere without speeding - because, let's face it, anybody who actually gets caught speeding is pretty much speeding a lot all the time - asks not to be banned from driving because it would stop him driving for a living.

He has a job doing something he is apparently incapable of doing without breaking the law.

If a baker couldn't make bread without spitting in it, we would rightly demand that the bakery found a new baker. If a carpenter repeatedly hit her or his colleagues with mallets, that carpenter would have to do the carpenting somewhere else. If a Foreign Secretary repeatedly made decisions that were bad for this country, lied, and endangered the safety of some its nationals... no, wait. Let's not go with that one.

So it strikes me the very thing a magistrate should not allow Jordan Cassidy to do for a living, is the thing that he is begging to keep his licence to do. Chairman of the magistrates, George White, has explicitly said that he will bend the rules for poor driving to enable Cassidy to drive. Poorly. George got to be very stern. But Jordan Cassidy can still be behind the wheel tomorrow.



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3 comments :

  1. The issue is that he is probably the type who will drive, license or no license. He knew that he relied on his driving for his job, but still broke the rules a number of times. He who takes the risk, suffers the penalty of being forgiven?

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  2. You can't take into account that "because, let's face it, anybody who actually gets caught speeding is pretty much speeding a lot all the time". You can only convict people for the offense they are charged with.

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    Replies
    1. You don't actually need to. He has been convicted of speeding four times. How can he be driving for a living?

      Delete

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