SEEING RED: Ban motorists caught using their phones at the wheel

So motorists will be hit with stiffer penalties if they are caught driving at the wheel on their phones.

This is music to my ears.

Regular readers of this column will be fully aware of my stance on these selfish cretins who put the lives of others at risk.

Under the tougher new laws, drivers who are caught in the act will be hit with a £200 fine and have six points put on their licence.

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The new penalties are double the previous ones, and the introduction of the tougher legislation comes just days after an RAC survey found a considerable rise in mobile phone use behind the wheel.

For me, the Department for Transport hasn’t gone far enough. No, if it was me in charge of our roads I’d hit any driver using their phone at the wheel with an immediate road ban – perhaps for a minimum six months in the first instance.

I was only listening to the harrowing story yesterday of a cyclist who was killed by a motorist texting at the wheel.

Amazingly, it was the driver’s eighth, yes eighth, conviction for driving while using a phone.

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He’d obviously not learned his lesson on the seven previous occasions and the family of the poor cyclist are now left to pick up the pieces of his shocking and selfish actions.

Apparently, the subject of his fatal text was to arrange a dog walk later that evening.

Words fail me.

Of course, it’s one thing having these measures in place, but it’s another policing them.

Let’s hope the police are given the tools and manpower to come down hard on these potential killers.

- What a mess the Labour Party is in.

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I never disclose my political allegiance in public, but let’s put it this way – if there was a General Election tomorrow, I wouldn’t have a clue who to vote for.

Jeremy Corbyn couldn’t lead a dog on a walk, and if Owen Smith is the best the party can put up against him, then it’s perhaps time Labour had a good hard luck at itself and decide whether it’s time to continue as one organisation.

Whatever the future holds, I’ll guarantee it will get messy.

- Staying with politics, what a mess America finds itself in too at the moment.

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The country, I’m told, has a population of about 320 million which makes you wonder how the hell can the world’s number one super power have a presidential contest featuring the two currently going head to head?

What with the mess in our country politically, and the US about to choose between Trump and Clinton, you really do have to fear the worst.

- A programme about baking moving to another TV channel was front page news last week. You couldn’t make it up!

- Seeing Red is a weekly column which appears in the Mansfield and Ashfield Chad every Wednesday.