A new conspiracy against motorists is taking shape in the West Midlands where the political boss of the police, Simon Foster, and the mayor, Richard Parker, want to keep more money from speeding fines.
They’ve been whingeing about the money going to the Treasury for some time. What they don’t admit is that the whole system is far more convoluted than it may seem.
The money from speeding fines may go to the Treasury but hundreds of thousands of motorists a year attend speed awareness courses and, financially, these are nice little earners for the police, not the Treasury.
That’s because these courses are managed by a company set up by the police themselves called UKRoED (Road Offender Education Ltd) which enjoyed income of £94 million in the year to March 2024.
Out of that, £86.8 million is accounted as “cost of sales” most of which went back to the police forces who nabbed the motorists because UKRoED guarantees to cover their costs while some forces run courses themselves, another nice little earner.
In the case of the West Midlands Police, they budgeted to pay UkRoED £4.5 million in January this year (apparently this was an accounting provision based on an estimated cost. After a long chat with a very helpful spokesperson, I am none the wiser about what the police get in return though we must assume they end up in profit).
Meanwhile, UKRoED pays its boss, Ruth Purdie, £173,000 (up from £135,000 the previous year). Its directors’ pay totals £459,000 while the wages bill for its 30 staff rose 26 per cent from £1.5 million in 2023 to £1.9 million last year. The company had £5.4 million reserves and 1,650,322 people attended speed awareness courses (other courses are also available).
It gives its profits (£1.6 million last year) to its owner, the Road Safety Trust (also run by Ruth Purdie, once an assistant chief constable in Cheshire).
The Road Safety Trust has doled out £12.2 million in grants to various deserving causes. These include the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (£231,650); Transport Scotland (£313,300); the Bikeability Trust (£231,352); £127,000 lobbying Parliament; and £49,000 to Nottingham Trent University for ‘understanding and explaining the differences between the mental-models of motorcyclists and car drivers for detecting hazards: from theory to training’.
In other words, a multi-million-pound industry has been created on the back of motorists, most of whom get done for driving slightly over arbitrary speed limits imposed by the people who profit from these misdemeanours.
There is a fine line between using speed limits to protect lives and merely as another way of increasing taxes but that line was crossed a long time ago. And it’s not as simple as our glorious leaders in the West Midlands moaning to the Treasury over a couple of million quid.
The last thing they should have is any incentive to exploit motorists any more than they do now. Mr Foster’s claim local speed enforcement schemes face a £2.2 million deficit is just not credible.
Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Friday, September 26, 2025
Big Brother owns you
As Margaret Thatcher once said: ‘No! No! No!’
She was talking about the EU not the imposition of identity cards but it is definitely the sort of totalitarian nonsense she would have derided as offensive to any idea that we live in a free country.
I know all the arguments about how we have to identify ourselves in a thousand different ways already so why not consolidate it in one mobile phone app supplied by The State?
But we are still at liberty to leave home without being obliged to prove who we are to any interfering secret police person who happens to take a dislike to us.
ID cards will do absolutely nothing to affect the immigration crisis or our population explosion. They will just add yet another layer of bureaucracy, State interference and busybody Starmer-knows-best to our already over-regulated lives.
And the idea it will only be imposed on people who work is complete nonsense. If we have any interaction with the State (using the NHS, paying taxes, driving a car, applying for a passport) an ID card will be unavoidable.
And once all that stuff is stored away somewhere on the internet, how long before China, Russia, scammers, fraudsters and shysters are using it to destroy our lives, our livelihoods and, quite probably, our country?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjxz2WGl6KA
She was talking about the EU not the imposition of identity cards but it is definitely the sort of totalitarian nonsense she would have derided as offensive to any idea that we live in a free country.
I know all the arguments about how we have to identify ourselves in a thousand different ways already so why not consolidate it in one mobile phone app supplied by The State?
But we are still at liberty to leave home without being obliged to prove who we are to any interfering secret police person who happens to take a dislike to us.
ID cards will do absolutely nothing to affect the immigration crisis or our population explosion. They will just add yet another layer of bureaucracy, State interference and busybody Starmer-knows-best to our already over-regulated lives.
And the idea it will only be imposed on people who work is complete nonsense. If we have any interaction with the State (using the NHS, paying taxes, driving a car, applying for a passport) an ID card will be unavoidable.
And once all that stuff is stored away somewhere on the internet, how long before China, Russia, scammers, fraudsters and shysters are using it to destroy our lives, our livelihoods and, quite probably, our country?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjxz2WGl6KA
Thursday, September 25, 2025
The sex capital of Lancashire
It’s tough, saving money. That’s why Rachel Reeves doesn’t bother. It’s even tough for recently-elected Reform Party county councillors. But if they can’t manage it, what hope is there for Nigel Farage’s party, let alone the hard-pressed taxpayer?
Reform’s leader in Lancashire, Stephen Atkinson, recently admitted it wasn’t easy and he’s going through the county council’s spending line by line.
If he needs a little help, perhaps we might draw his attention to Blackpool, apparently a den of iniquity judging from the council’s payment of £2.2 million in July to the local NHS for the cost of sexual health clinics.
The council says: ‘Our clinics offer a free and confidential sexual health service to everyone in Lancashire, regardless of your age, gender or sexual orientation. We won't judge or lecture you.’
(I suppose if Reform councillors axed that spending, it would be typical of politicians: here today, gonorrhoea tomorrow).
As with every local authority, Lancashire relies heavily on agency staff, to the tune of at least £1.8 million in July alone. I wonder if anyone would notice if they simply stopped employing temps for a month or two.
Then there’s £4.5 million paid to Edenred in July (when, for the most part, kids were still at school). Edenred provides free meals for kids during school holidays using a voucher and gift-card system.
It might also be worth checking out Whinney Hill landfill site in Accrington where the council spent £4.6 million in July on fees, taxes and dumping rubbish.
The £18 million dished out in grants to eight district councils to improve facilities for the disabled might raise a question or two, along with almost £1 million spent with charity CGL Services dealing with drug misuse in adults and £344,000 paid to support victims of domestic abuse.
Still, for a local authority over-spending by £28 million this year, this may be small beer and I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a reduction on last year’s £1.7 million pay and expenses bill for Lancashire’s county councillors let alone or the £1.4 million they paid their top seven executives.
Anyway, with £1.2 billion of ‘usable’ reserves, what’s there to worry about?
Reform’s leader in Lancashire, Stephen Atkinson, recently admitted it wasn’t easy and he’s going through the county council’s spending line by line.
If he needs a little help, perhaps we might draw his attention to Blackpool, apparently a den of iniquity judging from the council’s payment of £2.2 million in July to the local NHS for the cost of sexual health clinics.
The council says: ‘Our clinics offer a free and confidential sexual health service to everyone in Lancashire, regardless of your age, gender or sexual orientation. We won't judge or lecture you.’
(I suppose if Reform councillors axed that spending, it would be typical of politicians: here today, gonorrhoea tomorrow).
As with every local authority, Lancashire relies heavily on agency staff, to the tune of at least £1.8 million in July alone. I wonder if anyone would notice if they simply stopped employing temps for a month or two.
Then there’s £4.5 million paid to Edenred in July (when, for the most part, kids were still at school). Edenred provides free meals for kids during school holidays using a voucher and gift-card system.
It might also be worth checking out Whinney Hill landfill site in Accrington where the council spent £4.6 million in July on fees, taxes and dumping rubbish.
The £18 million dished out in grants to eight district councils to improve facilities for the disabled might raise a question or two, along with almost £1 million spent with charity CGL Services dealing with drug misuse in adults and £344,000 paid to support victims of domestic abuse.
Still, for a local authority over-spending by £28 million this year, this may be small beer and I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a reduction on last year’s £1.7 million pay and expenses bill for Lancashire’s county councillors let alone or the £1.4 million they paid their top seven executives.
Anyway, with £1.2 billion of ‘usable’ reserves, what’s there to worry about?
Wednesday, September 03, 2025
Speech in Britain has never been free
We have never enjoyed freedom of speech in this country. From the dawn of the printing press (banning the Bible in English, regulating newspapers during the 17th century etc). The State has always regulated what we are allowed to say.
The ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ trial in 1960 (‘Is it a book you would even wish your wife or servants to read?’) supposedly ushered in a more permissive era.
But the libel laws are always there to suppress any real dissent (In the ‘60s, The Move pop group lost a libel suit brought by Prime Minister Harold Wilson over a postcard suggesting he was having an affair with Marcia Falkender). These laws are still regularly used to stifle inquiries into the rich and powerful.
Judges can slam injunctions on reports ‘not in the national interest’ and there’s always contempt of court, a device making it nigh-on impossible to display contempt for the courts or our legal system.
The only difference between the 17th century and today is that the police and lawyers have more opportunities than ever to stifle dissent, shut people up and close down legitimate inquiries. We are not even allowed to say anything nasty.
Activist, politically-motivated lawyers are taking over from Parliament; unelected judges impose their right-on views; the State media has become the thought police; most of our politicians are compromised or complicit. And as for the police, I daren’t say what I really think.
Then there’s the weight of public opinion (albeit usually a tiny minority of the public especially in our fatuous universities) which punishes anyone expressing a contrarian view no matter how much they may be stating the bleedin’ obvious.
We are not a tolerant or liberal society. I doubt if we ever were. The tragedy is it’s getting worse and the forces of oppression – politicians, lawyers, police, the State media and vocal lobbying groups – are stronger than ever.
As Shakespeare’s Jack Cade said in ‘Henry VI Part ‘2: ‘Is it not a lamentable thing… that parchment, being scribbled o’er, should undo a man?’ Mind you, I’m surprised it is still legal to quote Act 4, scene 2, line 68 of the same play.
And won’t be long before even this sort of diatribe is repressed. I’ll come quietly, officer, but society is to blame.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/09/03/farage-us-congress-speech-free-speech-britain/
The ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ trial in 1960 (‘Is it a book you would even wish your wife or servants to read?’) supposedly ushered in a more permissive era.
But the libel laws are always there to suppress any real dissent (In the ‘60s, The Move pop group lost a libel suit brought by Prime Minister Harold Wilson over a postcard suggesting he was having an affair with Marcia Falkender). These laws are still regularly used to stifle inquiries into the rich and powerful.
Judges can slam injunctions on reports ‘not in the national interest’ and there’s always contempt of court, a device making it nigh-on impossible to display contempt for the courts or our legal system.
The only difference between the 17th century and today is that the police and lawyers have more opportunities than ever to stifle dissent, shut people up and close down legitimate inquiries. We are not even allowed to say anything nasty.
Activist, politically-motivated lawyers are taking over from Parliament; unelected judges impose their right-on views; the State media has become the thought police; most of our politicians are compromised or complicit. And as for the police, I daren’t say what I really think.
Then there’s the weight of public opinion (albeit usually a tiny minority of the public especially in our fatuous universities) which punishes anyone expressing a contrarian view no matter how much they may be stating the bleedin’ obvious.
We are not a tolerant or liberal society. I doubt if we ever were. The tragedy is it’s getting worse and the forces of oppression – politicians, lawyers, police, the State media and vocal lobbying groups – are stronger than ever.
As Shakespeare’s Jack Cade said in ‘Henry VI Part ‘2: ‘Is it not a lamentable thing… that parchment, being scribbled o’er, should undo a man?’ Mind you, I’m surprised it is still legal to quote Act 4, scene 2, line 68 of the same play.
And won’t be long before even this sort of diatribe is repressed. I’ll come quietly, officer, but society is to blame.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/09/03/farage-us-congress-speech-free-speech-britain/
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)