The Defence Brief

I went to visit some primary schools in Oxfordshire earlier this week.  My primary school was very different to those I visited this week.  My school was an old Victoria building where the youngest children joined the school on the ground floor and the older you got the higher your progressed up the building.  Each floor had separate classrooms and its own large assembly hall.  In contrast the schools in Oxfordshire were all largely open plan with two or even three classes in one (large) room.  Also noticeable was the small size of the school halls and the number of them.  As I say, my primary school had four assembly halls, three of which were large enough to fit the whole school for the dreaded whole-school assembly.  This was a useful feature as the first floor assembly hall was used daily by the whole school as the lunch hall. Noticing that the schools had just one small assembly hall each we posed the question, "where do the children luncheon?" ...

I spoke to a chap today who has been accused of a drink driving offence.  He denies it, but that's not really important because this post isn't about him or his case. Like many people I meet dealing with drink driving offences at The London Drink Driving Solicitor this chap faces losing his driving licence and with it his job and so not being able to afford his mortgage.  Understandably, he's very worried about feeding his family if he loses his job and cannot pay the bills. Now, many people take the attitude that he has brought the punishment on himself and I can understand why people would take this view.  But, is taking people out of work and making them and their families reliant on the state for their accommodation and food really the best way for us to deal with this offence? It's just a suggestion, but why not change the drink driving law so that it no longer carries an obligatory driving ban but instead has a sentencing guideline that starts with everybod...