To be able to travel on the open road and watch the miles slip past, your only commitment is to your own timetable. That is freedom with total control of oneself, which has become a very popular holiday.
There was a time when Italy, to encourage tourism, issued petrol coupons which one could buy from the AA in London and no doubt elsewhere, which were free of the high taxation on road fuel, on the highways and byways of that wonderful country. Each coupon made it very clear on the reverse, in several languages, that no extra money should be paid for fuel when using the value of the ticket.
It is about seven hundred miles from London to the Lakes in Northern Italy and well worth the journey. And so it was, we were staying in a flat overlooking the waters of Lake Maggiore, very close to the borders with Switzerland, where, incidentally, fuel costs were a lot lower, not a problem as we had the coupons free of tax.
Lake Como at that time was more popular for tourists than the place where we were staying so in anticipation, we made our way there. The gauge on the dash was telling me it was getting serious, and we needed to find a supplier to fill the tank. We came down a winding road into a quaint small hamlet and there on the side of the road, next to a café was a petrol pump, literally on the pavement, nothing else.
I produced the required number of tickets for the fuel we needed and gave them to a young boy, who had run out of the snack bar. He pumped the fuel into the car, and we were ready to move on. Holding his hand out he then asked for more money. I refused pointing to the wording on the rear of the coupon. He took no notice of it and continued with his quest for more cash. This was surely wrong as we had never had to pay anything more on other fill ups.
After my continued refusal It did not take very long for a Police (Carabinieri) car to arrive, they bundled me in the back and after a little while I was thrown into a prison cell for refusing to pay for the petrol. That is ‘diligence’ dealing with the law as they saw it.
Following that treatment, I paid the extra cost – but I got my own back by selling the remaining tickets to the people we were staying with, and afterwards refuelling in Switzerland, the neighbouring country.
There is this lady who is in her late thirties, married with two children – Molly Edwards, is also a Sergeant in the Police force, a responsible occupation. Richard Patton, who is thirty nine, is also married with two children; he is a constable in the same unit as Molly.
Their attitude and a lack of discipline to their duties sums up the problem with the British Law enforcement agency, which has been reduced to nothing more than a social influence of care, with little effort to carry out the real duties required.
The reason I say that, is because these two serving officers were having sex in a Police car. The car had been bugged because their seniors had been suspicious of the two. They were able to listen to the conversation in the car and whilst the pair ignored a 4.17am call from the station to attend a hospital to deal with two victims of a serious assault outside a nightclub, they heard him saying ‘aww, let’s just get naked’, At the time, they were parked up 15 minutes away having sex.
The report does not say what the middle aged couple had been taking to create such amour at that time in the morning. Perhaps they are now marketing it as they are both out of a job – resigning before the disciplinary committee was able to investigate the events
It is a pity that the same diligence with the investigation was not followed when an active Police officer, Wayne Couzens, used his position as a ‘so-called Police officer’ to apprehend a woman for the sole purpose of doing her harm, in total disregard of the badge he carried.
No one in command previously thought it was strange when he was swapping vile racist, sexist and homophobic ‘WhatsApp’ messages with his colleagues, he even had a slang name of ‘The Racist.’ If he had been investigated at that stage they would have saved a family incalculable grief.
How is it, that a great country, which deals in honesty at every level can be brought to such a low? In my opinion it is because that honesty has been coupled with caring and kindness. Nothing wrong with that unless kindness blurs the picture between right and wrong. We read frequently of people who have committed serious crimes being let off with a virtual slap on the wrist.
The leader of any organisation knows the importance of morale within the group – without it, discord and lack of commitment. That is exactly what the British public are seeing in a police force not fit for purpose – it’s Officers standing around waiting for instructions instead of doing what they are employed to do, in protecting the populace against misbehaviour.
And again it is my opinion, but I feel that many leaders should change their attitude, before we disappear in a barrage of misbehaviour, thieving and murder, by dismissing the ‘woke’ methods they use to govern and return to a time of using old attitudes and leadership, which served the country well for hundreds of years.
Take care
Facebook.com/percy chattey – Writer and Author
