For the man with the nice German car and the personalised number plate.

You overtook an ancient Honda, and the copper by the roadside clocked you doing over 50 when the road said 40. He handed you the fixed penalty notice.

You instructed a lawyer from a good firm and stayed home while he set to work expensively, pedantically, laboriously picking holes in the evidence. It was a shame you didn't see him work.

Your man was a magician. An artist. You would have been proud.

"This piece of paper was late" he said."The Magistrates can't consider it in evidence".

"The unknown calibrator of the laser gun scrawled their name and can't be traced" he said. "The Magistrates can't consider the certificate of calibration in evidence".

"The speed signs on the road may have been there for eight years, but no-one can point to the local govenment ordinance that makes it legally binding."

I tell you what; given enough time your man could have proved the non-existence of the road and the two towns it connects. He could even have cast doubt on our understanding of the terms "miles", "per" and "hour".

There was no way we could convict. After all, there wasn't any evidence left standing once your man sat down. Based on the say-so of a copper with a probably accurate laser gun it was more than likely that you were speeding. But "more than likely" doesn't get the job done.

Look, congratulations and all that : you have an absolute right to protest your innocence and to hire the best lawyer you can get a hold of.

You were even awarded costs - and so you didn't pay a penny.

But listen. That means that the taxpayer had to stump up for the whole exercise. Hasn't the government got better things to pay for than an expensive lawyer to protect your precious clean licence? I wonder what will need to be cancelled to make the budgets balance.

Even worse : the police officer had to attend court for half a day when he could have been out policing the county. I'm sure I'm wicked for wondering if you're the type to mouth off in the pub about there not being enough bobbies on the beat.

I just hope that you genuinely were innocent. I would hate to think that the whole expensive and frustrating performance was based on a lie.

Twitter Ye Not

Some of the cleverest, most tech-savvy people I know use Twitter.

Stephen Fry (IQ 1000) uses it.

My friend Flit (IQ 10⁸) uses it.

Tech colossi like Rupert and Kenny use it.

Lesser mortals also use it. Lots of them. In fact the (hiss!) Daily Mail think it could replace Churchill in the primary school syllabus. Oh yes !

To me, it's an updated version of those tiresome business execs who made a show of leaving themselves messages on a portable dictaphone : "Note to Self : Must leverage my synergy." Or those Japanese tourists who spend so much time snapping thousands of photos that they hardly notice where they are and forget to actually do anything. It's like the shiny-suited young men shouting banalities into their mobile phones in public : "I'm on the train." No-one cares !!!

I prefer to blog. To spend a couple of days mulling over in my head whether something is worth the wear-and-tear on the keyboard. To spend an evening chasing down les mots justes.

And between Bloggages, I do what I need to do in the real world without stopping to update cyberspace re: the progress of my day.

Just what am I missing ?

Update : I was SO proud of the title of this post. I was therefore crestfallen to find that that over 266,000 other pages on the Internet used it before me.

Motionless

So the talentless and clueless suck-up, Andrew "Bowel" Motion, has decided to give up being poet laureate.

Good.

He seems only to have got the job in the first place thanks to Tony Blair's assumption that homophobic middle England would not countenance the appointment of a better qualified lesbian, Carol Ann Duffy.

Now that he has resigned/retired, you would think that Ms Duffy would get the nod and her odds of replacing him are 11/10 on William Hill.

Worst bet in the world - she doesn't have a hope.

Simon Armitage used to be a rebel with a fine ear for language. His work has become increasingly bloated and derivative over the years. He's a heterosexual white male.

In other words, he's the perfect candidate to replace Andrew Motion.

Put your money on him at 5/2 and when he wins, treat yourself to a copy of "Rapture" by Carol Ann Duffy with the winnings.

The F-Word

Police officers have fun - they enjoy the challenge of their work and the buzz of thief-taking. They also enjoy world-class banter in the dull bits between the action.

Funeral Directors have fun - you would rapidly go off your nut otherwise with all that death and grief. Plus there's the reward of relatives comforted and a job well done. Also there's a brother/sisterhood of people in the business that you can share stories with.

Magistrates ?

I've lost count of the number of times people have used the phrase "interesting and challenging" around me. As in "I hope you are finding the work interesting and challenging".

Is there really anything wrong with this Magistrate admitting he is (gulp) Having Fun?

It's not like I'm up at the front, grinning like a loon. Or laughing out loud as I contemplate punishing yet another already-broken person. It's certainly not that I'm taking the responsibility vested in me lightly.

My public face is as responsible as I can manage. I try not to smile when a lawyer goofs, nor mutter "yeah yeah ..." when the defendant goes off on an extended holiday from the truth.

But in private, Magistrates do have fun. I've seen it.

And the work truly is "interesting and challenging".

When you are performing a worthwhile duty with fascinating co-workers and the work is both interesting and challenging, how is it possible not to enjoy yourself? Should it really be part of your job description to pretend (even in private) that you're not?

MIscellaneous Provisions

Nothing much of note happened in my most recent sitting - just a few small transport-related Naughtinesses to punish.

I was however disappointed that it was another of our courtrooms that got the rare chance to exercise our little-known power to rule on the appeal of a taxi owner against the decision of the local authority to revoke their cab licence.

Neither of my experienced colleagues had ever sat on one of those before, and both were totally ignorant of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976, under which it seems we have the power to force a local authority to relicence a cabbie, even though they feel they are unsuitable. There's even the possibility of the defrocked cabbie making a further appeal to the High Court.

You've got to love the references in this Act to the older Town Police Clauses Act 1847 which introduced the very concept of licencing taxis into British law. It also gave powers to the police to impound stray cattle and appears to say that it is illegal to fly a kite in the street.

Beats me why it should fall to Magistrates to play the part of an ombudsman to the taxi industry, although I suppose it is a similar decision-process to fielding pub licence appeals. I can't quite believe that none of the governments since 1847 have jumped at the chance to set up a quango like Ofcom to deal with taxi-related matters.

I suggest calling it "Ofmeter" and yes, I'd love to chair it, at a salary of several hundred thousand, with a pension big enough to make everyone in the country hate me.