Shush! Keep this to yourselves …

This morning, after undertaking a food shop designed to enable me to last at least three weeks without leaving the house, I am barricading my front door, refusing to answer my phone and just generally ‘lying low’.

Attentive or regular Rust readers will know that I am one of not a small number of UK motorists who are being persecuted and hounded by the Treasury and Home Office in their desperate attempts to maintain tax revenues in the wake of the ‘dreadful’ Brexit Referendum result.

I blogged a week or two ago about my latest brush with the enemy of every Brit’s democratic right to drive on the public roads at the speed of his or her choosing – provided it is done safely, of course – without being harassed by the motoring authorities, who have little to do to justify their vast public expense other than pursue perfectly peaceful law-abiding citizens for spurious and unnecessary traffic offences, most particularly marginal instances of exceeding some arbitrarily-low localised speed limit artificially but cunningly designed to raise money to pay for welfare benefit pay-outs and the treatment of self-inflicted anti-social illnesses and conditions being suffered in consequence of over-eating, over-drinking, and incessant smoking.

Somewhere in north London I had allegedly been travelling at a few mph over one of said alleged limits and had been contacted by the British gestapo, initially being asked to confirm whether or not I had been the driver of my own vehicle on the date and time in question.

I had been.

Subsequently I was written to again to be informed that – as an alternative to being prosecuted at a cost of a £60 fine and 3 points upon my licence – I could take a Speed Awareness Course (I noted that the cost of said course was a slim £97) if I wished, albeit that the authorities would have to check first whether I was eligible to attend one. It was explained to me by a pal that ‘eligibility’ depending upon me not having attended such a course in the past number of weeks, months or years (I forget the exact details).

Since I have been remorselessly persecuted by the authorities for some time it may not surprise my readers that I have already served a six months driving ban for reaching 12 points on my licence (all the result of perfectly-justified or explainable alleged speed offences, a fact completely ignored by the magistrates in question), and – currently sitting on 6 points on my licence for two further similar occurrences – it was of course of some interest to me that I might be able to avoid going up to 9 points on my licence by going on such a course.

So I duly indicated my willingness to attend a Speed Awareness Course on the form received and sent it back. I am still waiting for a reply containing a decision as to whether I am eligible to attend it.

[I should add here that I am not 100% confident that the result will be positive, since I seem to attend Speed Awareness Courses regularly and have come to regard the experience as an occupational hazard of motoring upon Britain’s clogged-up roads at all. In fact, rather like I think it was Donald Sinden (was it in the 1954 Doctor In The House movie starring Dirk Bogarde?) who eventually passed his medical finals after six years primarily because the same questions had come around again, I now feel I’ve reached the stage, not only where I practically know the script before the course supervisor spouts it, but where I could actually conduct a Speed Awareness Course better than 60% of those who do it for a living. But that’s by the by, of course …]

Anyway.

My present purpose is to report that over the weekend I received notification from the motoring authorities of another alleged speeding offence committed by moi!

For about forty-five minutes I fumed and cursed at the iniquities of life as it is lived in a nation where bad-loser Remainers are determined to punish those of us who exercised our democratic right to vote to quit the economic and political catastrophe that is the EU dinosaur.

Simultaneously I tried to work out the permutations going forward. Would the authorities offer me the option of going on another Speed Awareness Course whilst a decision on whether I would be eligible to attend previous one had yet to be reached?

And would I get a bigger sentence (than otherwise be the case) for the sheer cheek involved in me actually applying to go on yet another Speed Awareness Course in such circumstances?

I should not make fun of this. If I get turned down for the Speed Awareness Course I’ve applied for – and am not allowed to apply for another one whilst being considered for an earlier one – that means I could pick up a total of £120 in fines and 6 points on my licence.

Which would mean an inevitable appearance back before the beaks at a date to be determined so that they could consider giving me a second driving ban – and indeed a much longer one that the 6 months I got last time.

It was at about this point yesterday that Her Indoors pointed out that my new alleged offence had apparently happened on the same day, in the same place … and at the same time … as my previous one.

In effect, it could even be some form of duplicate of the allegations relating to my previous offence …. and not about some new offence at all!

But why was a different department of the Gestapo writing to me anew – on the face of it, as if my previous exchange had never happened – about the same offence, a month after I had previously been contacted about it … and in circumstances where I had already effectively admitted my guilt by applying to go on a Speed Awareness Course as punishment, in preference to taking a fine and 3 points on my licence?

Proof, if it was ever needed, that I’m being hounded by the authorities.

That’s why I’m holing up in my pad and going to sit it out for the next three to four weeks. Please don’t tell anyone where I am, and in particular please don’t let the police know. If I can just lie low for a bit, all this ‘little bit of bother’ may go away …