I received an email this morning (how I ended up on their mailing list, I have no idea):
Rebecca is a thirteen-year-old Care2 member from England whose teenage brother Jamie was killed by a drunk driver in Otley, West Yorkshire on New Years' Eve in 2010. The driver, who was later convicted and is serving a four-year sentence, was allowed to go on driving for months before the trial commenced.
Rebecca thinks that this is terrible, and her local member of Parliament (Liberal Democrat Greg Mulholland) agrees."In the case of this particular kind of serious offence, where someone has lost their life through drink-driving or driving under the influence of drugs, it frankly seems common sense that they should not be allowed to drive until the case has been heard," he said.
Drunk drivers need to be held accountable for the public menace they become on the road.
This is a typical, disingenuous, campaign run by Care2, a charity funded by the usual crop of one-worldist NGOs and charities, and supported in this case by a Lib Dum MP.
This campaign is really saying, "lets get rid of the principle that an individual is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, and replace that with the idea that he is guilty, and needs to prove his innocence in a court of law."
I agree with the tragic story above in several respects: it is terrible that adults and children are killed on the roads by drunk drivers and that it takes months for what seems like a cut and dried case like this to come to court. I agree that drunk drivers should be held accountable.
But that doesn't change the fact that in this country, we are innocent until proven guilty.
The campaign which should be run on this issue, by the way, is one which makes the punishment fit the crime. Causing death by dangerous driving, causing death through driving while under the influence, causing death with a knife or a gun; they are all the same. Where someone has died, a four year stretch just because it was a car which was the instrument of death, is an insult.
