Tory MP high on speed, soft on crime

The BBC’s Nick Assinder reports: “Hemel [Hempstead]'s Tory MP Mike Penning has just about sewn up the motorists' vote with a new demand for the scrapping of thousands of speed cameras. … ‘Motorists are increasingly frustrated that many of them are installed as a cash raising mechanism,’ he says.”

Yes, how dare these politically correct nanny-state socialists penalise innocent law-abiding citizens by punishing them for breaking the law? Thank heavens the criminal element have a champion to stand up for their rights.

Penning is surely following his party leader in wanting less top-down regulation. The way to get people to behave better is to give them “social responsibility”. After all, who knows best whether I’m driving safely: a faceless bureaucrat with a bunch of TV screens, or me? The question answers itself. The sooner Britain’s roads are self-policing, the safer and freer we’ll all be. And if we can’t scrap the laws, let’s just ignore them.

This is an enduring bugbear for Penning. A couple of years back, he wrote that “more cameras have been deployed and sadly more people must have been caught and fined for breaking the speed laws.”

Yes, it’s very sad that more law-breakers are being caught and punished. It’s not sad that people are breaking the law. And it’s certainly not sad that over 3000 people a year are killed in road accidents.