Fallout over Suella Braverman’s speeding ticket will put people off public office - Sarah Todd

However, it’s completely understandable how she ended up allegedly asking a civil servant to help her swerve taking the group course; which is often offered as an alternative option to driving licence points. This is a woman who will work ridiculously long hours and just have seen it as something else to tick off her list to enable her to get on with her hugely demanding job.

She doubtless spends more time with these civil servants than anybody in her private life and they would have access to her diary and be able to book a convenient slot. Remember, she wasn’t not wanting to do the course - just to do it without others gawping at her.

Ms Braverman was caught speeding in a 50mph zone last summer. When civil servants refused to help arrange a one-to-one course she reportedly sought help from a political aide. When the course provider refused the request she took the three points on her licence. End of story. Well, it would have been if Whitehall wasn’t riddled with jobsworths.

There is no wonder former Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab has decided to throw in the towel on his political career and not stand for re-election. For expecting high standards of well-paid staff he has ended up being branded a bully.

The snitches stalking the corridors of power risk putting paid to anybody ever daring to raise their head above the parapet and take public office.

This correspondent has held her hand up to driving at 36mph on a stretch of road past an industrial area wrongly presumed to have a 40mph limit. It was a fair cop, although that doesn’t make it any less annoying.

The police should be catching real criminals instead of harmless middle-aged motorists who would never intentionally break the law. To have been found speeding in a village or other built-up area would have resulted in head-hanging shame. But pootling past nothing more than industrial wasteland, without a pedestrian in sight, is just Mean (with a deliberate capital M).

In a local supermarket, between the bakery counter and the baked beans, two lads traded drugs right in front of this shopper’s trolley. Their arrogance - a kind of high-five to each other’s chests with packet and cash transferred - was mind boggling. This modern-day Miss Marple shot down the tinned goods aisle as quick as a rat down a drainpipe to alert the ‘customer service kiosk’ expecting them to lockdown the store and phone the police.

The lady behind the counter explained there was no point; the police never come out. That, dear reader, is in a leafy North Yorkshire market town so heaven knows what it’s like in other parts of the country. Sometimes it seems the police don’t want to know about actually catching criminals - they’d rather sit at the side of the road with a speeding camera.

Sticking to the theme of road use, it’s this writer’s long-held view that cyclists should have number plates, pay road tax and be obliged to take out third party insurance. Nothing would give greater pleasure than seeing a few of their most militant number on the receiving end of one of those ominous brown police notification envelopes through the post.

Overtake a horse rider wide and slow and they raise their hand in thanks. Move to the left to let a motorbike overtake and nine times out of ten they give a friendly wave of appreciation but not cyclists. They must be the most ignorant group or road users. They can hold you up for ten minutes and not give so much as a nod.

Our offspring have both had harvest jobs over the years, driving trailers of corn back to farms from the fields, and they report cyclists seem to take pleasure in making life difficult. Stopping for water breaks on the brow of a hill or refusing to move into single file so the tractor can get safely by. Our generation learnt such common courtesies as primary school students doing the Cycling Proficiency Test.