Anyone who texts while driving a car is a deliberate killer. He or she knows the risks and can be said to have the intent to kill.
The only thing that separates this from murder is that the killer does not care whether or who he kills.
He knows his action could be fatal, and he still does it. If he fails to kill anyone, he is morally no different from a would-be murderer who shoots but misses.
Anyone who texts while driving a car is a deliberate killer. The only thing that separates this from murder is that the killer does not care whether or who he kills
If we ever did have the sense to restore the death penalty, I would be happy to see it applied to such persons, for example to Peter Morrison, whose moronic, selfish, savage behaviour killed Highways England traffic officer Adam Gibb and paralysed his colleague Paul Holroyd.
These good men were out in filthy weather, trying to clear up after another crash.
Morrison was driving his show-off Mercedes car at an average speed of 81mph on the M6 in rain so heavy one witness said it was like being in a car wash. Yet he was seen shooting past other cars ‘like a missile’.
The killer, convicted last week of causing death by dangerous driving, admitted his use of a phone at the wheel was ‘unwise’. But he denied it was dangerous.
Waxwork Tories will melt away to nothing
Not long ago I jeered at Madame Tussauds for refusing to make an effigy of Theresa May. They had set themselves up as constitutional experts, and decided that a Prime Minister who had not been ‘elected’ did not deserve to be fashioned in wax.
Of course, Prime Ministers are not elected, but get their power from Parliament, which is elected. Mrs May, since she went to the polls, has actually been much less of a Premier than she was before.
And I bet she wishes that Tussauds had not bothered. Her appearance there in meltable form has just led to more cruel jokes about how feeble and temporary she is.
A staff member works on a wax figure of Prime Minister Theresa May leaving 10 Downing Street, on display at Madame Tussauds in London
The image looks a good deal more cheerful and confident than the real thing.
And so it is. The Government is itself a wax museum. It has no true purpose, except to follow a policy – exit from the EU – which most of its members dislike.
Almost any determined lobby can, by squawking loudly enough, secure the sacking of any Cabinet Minister with the aid of bored media. Nothing lies ahead except embarrassment and bungling.
It is, I think, the end of the Tory Party, which was unwisely kept on life support by deluded voters and greedy donors when it should have been given decent burial a decade ago.
Without some astonishing earthquake, a Corbyn government is coming and it is hard to see how it can be prevented.
What is left of the Tories will no doubt adopt the policies of Mr Corbyn, as they adopted those of the Blairites, after a brief struggle with what they call their consciences. They will do anything to get office.
Well, what will you all do then, those of you who insisted on sticking to the Tories, and keeping them alive, however many times they betrayed you? It is precisely because the Tories believe in nothing that they are so useless.
Get used to the idea that you now have no friends at all at Westminster. It has been so for years, but from now on it will be painfully obvious.
While he did this ghastly thing, he was preoccupied with football, sending 25 WhatsApp messages in 17 minutes – one 96 seconds before he slewed off the road to kill Mr Gibb and ruin many other lives besides.
Could this ‘happen to anyone’? I do not think so. But something like it could ‘happen’ to someone you know, today. And someone else you know could be killed or terribly injured as a result.
Every day, I still see people on their phones while driving. And if I reprove them, they jeer that I can do nothing about it because the police don’t care, which is true.
Does anyone in this country not yet know that it is dangerous to text while driving? Is there the remotest excuse for this? Even at 20mph, those who do it risk killing or injuring a child on a suburban road.
What will stop them doing it? It makes me so angry that I am tempted to suggest a few public hangings at motorway services, with the killers’ heads left to rot on spikes along the central reservation, Game Of Thrones style. But even I recognise this is going a bit far.
Let us compromise on the reintroduction of police traffic patrols, which have vanished as totally as police foot patrols.
Speed cameras do not remotely make up for their disappearance. And they have disappeared.
A friend of mine recently drove from London to Glasgow and did not see one patrol car. I am sure this is quite typical.
I know they are busy painting their nails and doing Gay Pride parades, but couldn’t they spare a few hours for this task as well? It is no good making the fines bigger and bigger, as we keep doing, if people are confident they will never be caught.
If the moron Morrison had been caught texting, and properly punished, he wouldn’t now be the broken, astonished creature he is, amazed at the consequences of his own folly and doubtless full of self-pity.
And his victims would still be happy and healthy, and their families would not be devastated. Yet somehow it is nobody’s priority to do anything about this.