Big Brother

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According to the Daily Express, Bedfordshire’s Chief Constable, Mr. Anthony Armstrong, has set up a special “spy squad” whose job it is to keep watch on disqualified drivers seven-days-a-week, so that anyone who drives while disqualified can be apprehended. While we are entirely against disqualified drivers flouting the penalty imposed on them, it is significant that whereas other classes of offender often involved in violence, petty theft or causing disturbances, are exonerated from punishment and permitted, after a lecture, to leave court without a stain on their character, at the discretion of the Magistrates, the car owner is once again to pay an extra penalty. A driver disqualified for having three licence endorsements, perhaps for nothing more criminal than parking, speed-limit or other technical offences, can now, under Mr. Armstrong’s jurisdiction, be under continual police observation and full details of his or her affairs—place of residence and employment, types of vehicle owned, etc. according to the newspaper report— will be lodged with the Bedfordshire spy-squad. In Luton, it seems, two officers have been put on this full-time spy work; it was incidental that in two months they also caught a drug pedlar, a burglar and car thief. Criminals have more freedom than Bedfordshire’s disqualified drivers and the ratepayers who urgently need police help -and protection may well ponder on this new spy system. — W. B.