That’s it – I’m off!

Further proof that I am being hounded by Big Brother government authorities emerged over the weekend when out of the blue I received a personal notice of yet another alleged speeding incident caught by CCTV camera in west London.

On the day in question I was pootling along on my way to a wedding in the Midlands in traffic conditions that I would describe as ‘busy’. What I mean to convey by that sentence is that I was proceeding along, maintaining an appropriate ‘stopping’ space between my vehicle and the one in front of me, at exactly the same speed as said vehicle … and indeed every other in my vicinity that was proceeding in a similar direction. No slower, but certainly no faster. All of us were travelling safely and securely, bothering nobody, obeying the traffic lights and almost certainly (as far as I could tell) all going about our respective businesses in a perfectly normal, unremarkable, manner.

Apart from the fact that anyone forced by circumstance to drive around or within the M25 would know only too well that there are far too many cars (let alone people living) in south-east England for comfort – my view for some time has been that a small tactical nuclear device taking out (oh I don’t know, say) 4 to 5 million people would do the capital city no harm at all – these days it is to all intents and purposes physically impossible to break the speed limit, even if this was your desire, anywhere within the confines of Greater London. That is, unless our mighty traffic authorities have randomly decided that you have been (allegedly) proceeding at 37 mph in supposedly 30mph section of the roadway at some point within the previous five weeks.

I cannot even recall an instance where I was ever consciously going even 28mph in Greater London within that period.

Over the past thirty-five years – via the simple expedient of being accused of minor speeding offences – I have been subjected to a concerted and systematic persecution by the British government of every successive hue, purely in order to fund its runaway public sector spending, ludicrous-large overseas aid budget, the NHS and its ever-growing expenditure on PPI-built hospitals and management consultants, not to mention the squillions of pounds it traditionally lavishes upon Whitehall in all its guises.

After these decades of being relived of my hard-earned cash to the point where I have been forced to regard the arrival of traffic police official notifications of intended prosecution as little more than an occupational hazard, I have finally come to the end of my tether.

I have lost count of the number of ‘you can save trouble by accepting a £XX fine and three points upon your licence’ offers (or indeed, the number of ‘speed awareness’ courses I have been invited to attend as an alternative to paying said fine and points penalty) – and I’m not even going to mention the 6 months ban I endured a few years back because I had allegedly reached 12 points upon my licence.

Ladies and gentleman, I have had enough.

I have now decided to bend the knee – but not quite.

I’m going to respond by doing what any sane person in my position would do.

Now completely worn down and exhausted by being personally singled out by the authorities to this extraordinary extent, I have decided to respond by giving the UK Government a slam-dunk and one-off ‘two fingers’ response to the way it has been treating me.

Yes, folks – I have decided to accept the inevitable and give up driving altogether.

Never mind the supposed costs of Brexit to the UK economy – and all other the cack-handed spendthrift schemes and policies that our ideas-bankrupt politicians and ‘betters’ can dream up in order to spend more money – I’m hereby giving the Government notice that from now on they’ll have to find another way of funding their general largesse to the world and their all-expenses-aid three week overseas ’research’ trips spent sunning themselves on any of the five star hotels they traditionally frequent in the West Indies during the winter months.

Ingolby has had enough. He’s not going to give you the satisfaction. Get your damned money from someone else.

I hope you’re proud of yourselves …