'LACK OF DISCRETION' S OUTHEND Magistrates recently gave a conditional discharge
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to Alan Leslie White, of North Road. Southend, who. his solicitor claimed, had been brought before them by the authorities " with contemptible lack of discretion ".
White pleaded guilty to II offences of failing to keep current records of hours he spent driving a lorry, and he asked for 24 further matters to be considered. His solicitor, Mr. D. Lusty, said: "We cannot deny offences were committed, hut we feel this is a contemptuous and technical matter. Mr. White has a oneman business and in order to keep paperwork to a minimum he kept records of his driving stapled together in a pile with all the relevant information on the uppermost sheet, leaving all the repetitious material on the sheets underneath."
Mr. Lusty went on to say that a prosecution of this kind was likely to bring the courts into contempt because if every technical breach of the law were brought before magistrates. Benches would be sitting all day and night. "Discretion is usually used by the people in authority when dealing with such a case, but the Ministry has not used discretion here ", he stated.