Anorak

Girlfriend of Prince William, Kate Middleton, has been photographed using her mobile phone while driving. Now this strikes me as potentially embarrassing for someone. The law states quite clearly that using a mobile phone while driving is illegal. It's a specific offence. I don't understand why it had to be made a specific offence. There is already a "dangerous driving" law, and a "driving without due care and attention" law. Surely either could be used to prosecute the user of a mobile phone, depending on the circumstances, but I digress. The fact is, she broke the law and a picture of her breaking the law does appear to have made it into just about every national daily newspaper.

Ok, so it's not a big issue right? For instance, Princess Anne has been to court over her dogs eating small children or something, and I'm sure that she wasn't the first, and won't be the last royal to fall foul of the law. As I remember, she was treated much like anyone else, and fined. So what is the problem with Kate Middleton? I'll tell you. The penalty for driving while using a mobile phone is up to two years in prison. The prison term is not mandatory of course, but it's been well publicised and everyone is expecting stiff sentences for offenders.

So, what will the authorities do? Will they arrest Ms Middleton and fingerprint her like a common criminal? Will she have to face a judge and what will the sentence be? There will be howls of protest from Daily Mail readers if she receives anything less than a custodial sentence. The Sun will claim in bold letters across the front page something along the lines of, "Will's bird escapes cage", right next to a picture of her skirt blowing up as she gets out of a car.

What gets me about the report in the Telegraph is the comment from, "Roger Vincent, spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents". You can almost see his anorak can't you. He says, "Drivers are four times more likely to crash if they are on their mobiles". Sir, you just made that figure up, or you simply repeated what some other prat told you. How can you possibly measure how much more likely someone is to have an accident when they are talking on the phone? You need to know how likely an accident is before you can tell how much more likely the same accident is with a single different variable - knob-head. Oh how I hate meaningless statistics.