I RECEIVED a penalty notice through the post today for triggering a speed camera in Kidderminster.

I was racing along a quiet empty road at all of 35 miles per hour. I am now a super-criminal!

My fine was not £60 as expected, but a whopping £100. I didn’t realise it had gone up, so that the police can make more profit. I would have hoped that a tiny transgression like 5 miles per hour would have warranted a smaller fine than a man who drives along the same road at twice the limit, but apparently not. Anyway, I thought, that’s life.

Then I read about a chap who is a serial graffiti vandal. He already had an ASBO, or a CASBO, or whatever they called it (a CASBO is more serious, apparently) but he was then caught vandalising a bus in broad daylight as it travelled slowly along a congested road in Stourbridge!

His punishment for this latest crime was, you’ve guessed it, another CASBO. He is starting a collection, if any of you have a trophy cabinet you could let him have. As my brother David wrote in his brilliant parody of modern chav life, Doreen’s Story: “This school is very strict. They get three strikes and they’re out.

Then they get a written warning, and if they offend again, we give them another one.”

So this is the message from the police. Honest man who’s never been in trouble doesn’t check his speedometer and accidentally travels five miles an hour too fast, fined £100. Serial vandal who has caused thousands of pounds of damage to public property – give him another warning. I wonder what I would get if I drew all over the new Tesco building.

I wonder if New Zealand will have me.

Geoff Tristram Via email