It's time to lay down the law

So anyone else so badly injured through their appalling, risk-taking driving that they're paralysed will be hard-pressed to get the financial support they need to buy care for the rest of their life or provide for their families.

Why on earth do the courts not acknowledge that in their sentencing? Too often a lack of insurance seems to be considered a minor matter. When there's no injury involved the fine imposed is often less than the price of a year's insurance cover. Yet the potential for turning someone else's life into a double disaster - serious injury plus no financial recompense - exists with every uninsured motorist.

What are we to make, then, of the way Northallerton magistrates dealt with Iraqi asylum seeker Peshrau Mohammed, who tried to overtake a car and a tanker in one move on the A684 in North Yorkshire and crashed head-on into a car driven by 65-yar-old Vivian Sadler, from Bedale. Mrs Sadler has been in hospital for 11 months, can only breathe with the help of a ventilator, and is paralysed from the waist down.

Mohammed had had no licence for two years, since his Iraqi one expired and he failed to apply for a British one.

Why, after what he had done, was a decision taken not to charge him with dangerous driving and instead charge him merely with careless driving and driving a vehicle "otherwise than in accordance with a licence"?

He walked from the court a free man after being banned from driving for three years, placed under curfew order designed to keep him in his home between 6pm and 4.30am for 90 days, and told to pay £45 costs.

He gets 90 days during which he can't go out at night. Mrs Sadler gets a lifetime in which, if she can go out at all, she will only be able to do so in a wheelchair.

Doesn't seem right, does it?

It's time those who blighted the lives of others by reckless, impatient driving were more fittingly punished. I realise the courts are being told to ease pressure on the prisons by letting people off lightly, but this type of offence surely merits a custodial sentence.

Or in the case of asylum seekers it merits instant deportation. Why should British taxpayers keep people like that in our prisons? One strike and they should be out, back to where they fled from. Perhaps that might encourage others to drive more carefully, and legally.

No waste here!

It was good to learn this week that Bradford customers of Yorkshire Water are helping to conserve supplies of the precious stuff we take for granted. We do our bit with a water butt served by a six-foot length of guttering on the side of the shed (it catches enough during times of normal rainfall to rinse the car and water the tubs) and by flushing the loo only when necessary.

The conservation message is getting across, hopefully. So is the recycling one thanks to Bradford Council's campaign to persuade people to separate and save paper, plastic, glass, aluminium and garden refuse. We've now got it down to such a fine art that our wheelie bin usually only contains a couple of swing-bin bags of non-recyclable general waste. If they start fining people for throwing too much away and it works both ways, we might be in for a bonus!

However, we declined the offer of different bins for all these things, not wanting to clutter up the driveway with them. We fill the big green garden-refuse sacks and leave them out to be emptied, but we save the rest of the items in cartons in the shed and every few weeks take them to a recycling centre on one of the supermarket car parks.

On the last trip there were a couple of reminders of how some people have entered into the spirit of recycling but not got it quite right. Alongside the skip for aluminium cans, which you're supposed to squash and post through one of the holes in the side, stood two vast empty cooking-oil cans, industrial size and probably from some fast-food outlet.

Meanwhile dangling from one of the containers for plastic bottles, boxes and the like was a full black bin bag, its neck stuffed into the orifice and its contents hanging on the outside. Someone clearly couldn't be bothered to empty the bag and "post" its contents one item at a time.

Because a minority of people won't think things through and make a little effort, the people who come to collect the skips then have to sort all this out, adding to the cost of recycling - and many supermarket recycling centres are left looking a real mess!

Queen Helen rules

If you want a cinematic treat, take yourself off to see The Queen.

What an absorbing 103 minutes it is as it explores the Queen's reaction to the death of Princess Diana and the subsequent public upsurge of grief.

Helen Mirren, who gets better and better, is superb as Her Majesty, for once in her life unsure of how she should behave and eventually having to bow to the guidance of Prime Minister Blair (Martin Sheen), who is much more in touch with the touchy-feely mood of the nation.

This is a top-quality British picture, excellent in every way: meticulously researched, sensitively written by Peter Morgan and directed by Stephen Frears, and with some very fine acting indeed. If it doesn't scoop a mass of awards I'll be very surprised.

What a pity, then, that there were only about 20 people at the Tuesday teatime performance I attended at Cineworld - and at the bargain Monday/Tuesday price of £3.80 a ticket, too.

A film like this deserves queues round the block!