Recent figures from the Home Office show that the police are targeting motorists who break the speed limit as easy pickings while seemingly ignoring other offenders.

In the last eight years, speeding convictions have risen from 700,000 to nearly 1.9m yet, during the same period, there was a marked drop in convictions for drink/drug related offences.

Convictions for other offences, such as driving on pavements or failing to stop at pedestrian crossings, fell by 55 per cent.

The number of roadside cameras now stands at 5,000, the highest in Europe.

These figures bear out what I have been saying that police and the Government are more interested in screwing the motorist than making the roads safer by actual policing.

Excessive speed can be a contributory factor in some accidents, but not in as many as the powers-that-be would have us believe.

Poor drivers and those under the influence pose more of a danger than someone who does a few miles over the limit because they failed to spot a camera.

Yet the police seem to be ignoring other offenders and are happy to let Big Brother cameras raise funds to be shared out willy nilly to various coffers.

When will the traffic police get back out on the road and catch the drivers who pose a real threat to other road users and ease up on those who pose no threat to anyone?

Despite complaining in the Oxford Mail some weeks ago about young drivers in Didcot charging about like loonies, I have yet to see a police car patrolling the streets and the problem persists.

The new Orwellian number plate recognition system vans may catch a few miscreants.

But the DVLA takes weeks to update new owner details, meaning that police have powers to arrest a driver and tow away his car, even though he is innocent of any crime, if he does not carry all the relevant paperwork to prove otherwise.

One thing that was enshrined in English law was that you were presumed innocent until proven guilty.

But it now seems that we are all deemed guilty unless we can prove otherwise.

Bring back Dixon of Dock Green!

Evening all.

TONY ANCHORS Didcot