Well it’s 2 in the morning here and I’m just back from a bit of baby sitting in North Shore. This meant I had to drive over the coat hanger harbour bridge. What a fantastic sight, the lights of Auckland with the lilac lighted tower in the middle dominating the scene.
Well how did the day start? Whilst driving up to the airfield to work on the cub, an unmarked police car caused me to be pulled over, all lights blazing with the burly driver jumping out only to accuse me of committing, “an unsafe lane change” and, with little ado and a broad grin proceeded to issue a traffic ticket.
My thoughts were well ahead of his as to the seriousness of this act.
Their Lordships, just 9 months ago in the Privy Council, had indicated in their Judgment, apart from refusing my Appeal to remain a Member of the Veterinary College, that I was to re-apply in the minimum time period the law would allow i.e.10 months, next month, but leaving me with a £63,000 legal bill for the enormous team of lawyers and clerks to fight me, employed by the College’s Registrar, no less, a lawyer, of course, herself!
This traffic ticket had just about put pay to that idea.
I had been struck off for each and any of trivial motoring and 3 trumped up common assault convictions (SEE FORUMS) over the period of about 10 years when earlier charges and accusations of equally farcical claims of such things as Robbery, Attempted Robbery, Burglary, Theft and Child Abduction had never reached the starting gate but had, of course, had me in handcuffs and/or in a cell for days with the hope I would hit them. I NEED £500 to get to Auckland Court on the 15th March to fight it.
The greedy lawyers for the College had told the College Jury of Academics, for example, that the fact I had pleaded guilty to delivering my motor insurance to the wrong police station, a guilty plea for crossing a single white line, at no more than 4 mph to avoid a wobbling pensioner on a Fun Run and being fined £25 for a minor Building Regulation it rendered me, “unfit to practice”. They even relied on a 20 year old Guernsey Conviction from both a foreign but incestuous regime, for Contempt of Court altered, incidentally, in the face of the Jury by ACK DAY, part heard, from a written charge of Disorderly Conduct, with a maximum fine of only £50. The permanent jury, voted on by the prosecution and most in the same Masonic Lodge, awarded me with the record prison sentence of, effectively 13 months because ACK DAY had again lied about the time spent on Remand, for which there was no appeal.
Their Lordships heard that, contrary to my case, other professional people before them, were there usually because of allegations of either:
- Dishonesty
- Use or Abuse of Drugs or
- for Interfering with their Patients!
I took the traffic ticket thinking a £10,000 bribe there and then would have been worth it, but I didn’t think Paul, the policeman, would accept it by credit card.
Only last week an even friendlier policeman, if that was possible, had accused me of doing “a 90 in a 50 limit” and even had the audacity to breathalyse me so late at night!
I must now consider abandoning my flight to Norfolk Island and later return to New Zealand to fight this £60 ($150) on the spot fine, if I am to have any chance at all of working again as a veterinary surgeon.
But onto matters much more fun:
An invite to Sir Edmond Hillary’s house this afternoon where we reminisced over our stay, 11 years apart, in the P Y G Hotel, in Snowdonia, North Wales and of slabs of awkward granite we grappled with, was much more my cup of tea. He had trained for the Everest Assault while muggings was there as a very young climbing instructor. This afternoon’s meet was a truly memorable event in the Kirk calendar. My stay at the hotel in Wales was all due to the generosity of Jack Hampson, our then Physics Teacher who, by personal tuition, “had me an A level pass” in one year, in the days when an A level meant something, when in reality I could not do algebra, use a slide rule or even reliably add up!!