Speeding points have hit their limit - DVLA figures show we need urgent review

Now in my late sixties (oh all right, I'm 69) I reckon my driving is safer and more considered than it's been since I picked up my first set of car keys back in 1973. I was 17 and though I'd passed my test at the first go, I still had a lot to learn. But as far as I can remember, I rarely picked up points on my licence.

Three for driving with a fractionally bald tyre (a particularly punctilious policeman nabbed me for that one); three decades later, for doing 80-something on the M5 (fair enough) and that's about it. I mostly motored with a clean licence or, for very rare interludes, one with no more than three points on it.

Until now. The proliferation of 20mph speed zones, and their rigid, robotic enforcement by the use of speed cameras, means that - as for millions of other fundamentally careful and speed-averse drivers - my points are mounting up. I've got six currently; two sets of three for inadvertently going 4 mph over the limit.

Another couple of minor infractions like that and I'll hit 12 points and almost certainly be banned from driving for at least six months. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not whining. I accept that speed limits must be enforced (though I must say that being fined and given points for doing 24mph in a 20 zone at 4am on a deserted, neon-lit dual carriageway seemed a tad unforgiving), and that certainly means being fined.

But points too? Points which all too quickly these days can accumulate and lead to automatic disqualification? A colleague accustomed to coming into work in the wee small hours along a deserted 40mph stretch of urban dual carriageway didn't notice the limit had, seemingly arbitrarily, dropped to 30.

By the time he realised, he'd been clocked by a speed camera doing ten above the limit over four straight days. No word of warning from a real, live traffic cop after the first offence to alert him. So he received four sets of three points - and lost his licence.

Is that proportionate? REALLY? To ban from the roads a perfectly safe, responsible motorist with no previous history of offending; not even a parking ticket to his name? I don't think so.

DVLA figures show more than 140,000 people are currently banned from driving: that's an all-time high and a 15% hike year on year. By all means fine them for breaking the limit. But automatically sticking points on their licence too, for even the smallest of misdemeanours, seems way over the top.

We've reached a limit. We need a review.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Corporate computer hacking of the kind that has currently laid Jaguar Land Rover low seemingly has two likely sources. Either it's a hostile government such as Russia or China. Or it's a loose federation of spotty 'erberts operating from their boxroom at mummy and daddy's.

The latter seems to have been the case in the recent attacks on M&S and other UK supermarket chains. These sadsacks do it for kicks, or ransom, or both.

Either way, the punishment when they're caught needs to be exemplary. We simply cannot afford to have a major national asset like JLR floored in this way. Deterrence should be front and foremost in any judge's mind.

I'd suggest the minimum sentence for corporate hacking - the kind of irresponsible attack that's costing JLR millions, risked thousands of jobs, and completely halted production of Jaguars and Land Rovers until October, kicks in at 15 years.

And I'd go further - 20 years if a ransom's involved. We've simply got to stamp this out.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I listen to a lot of radio. And I mean, a LOT. Mostly of the speech variety. And I truly believe that radio will be with us forever. TV didn't kill it off, despite the direst predictions back in the Fifties and Sixties. Social media and the internet has barely scratched radio's hide. It still breaks stories, bands, solo artists, and can be funnier than anything you'll see at the movies or on telly.

BUT - and it's a big but - there's one kind of radio that I wish, with a burning passion, would vanish from the airwaves, never, ever to be heard again. I hate it. If I have to listen to more than a few seconds of it, giant hives break out on the back of my neck, my sight dims, and I bleed from both ears... the radio play.

Hell would be being forced to listen to an eternity of radio plays.

You can tell you've accidentally tuned into a play and not, say, a documentary or discussion programme, in about three seconds. No actor, however gifted, however garlanded, can act decently in radio play.

You can hear them PRETENDING (especially if their character is "on the phone", for some reason). Even a multiple Oscar, Bafta or Olivier award-winner falls flat on their face in a radio play. Any party that promises to ban them gets my vote.