A friend and client of ours had a moment of madness whilst the snow had deeply covered the ground in Market Harborough this February and towed his son 500 yards behind his pick up truck. This may sound to most as utterly stupid and irresponsible and if you’d believe the media frenzy he should be hung, drawn and quartered. However what perturbs me is the sensationalism that inevitably follows s very small moment of stupidity.

The dad in question is not a moronic, unthinking, idiot, rather he’s a good bloke who thought he’d do as people in snow covered countries do for their kids every day and give his son a tow behind his car. Now, here is where the media go to town. Admittedly the act was done at rush hour traffic time but there were no cars on the road except those that were parked, thses were the cars that he ‘overtook’. If you’d believe the press he was weaving in and out of traffic, dragging his lad within inches of speeding wheels. The bloke went 500 yards at 8mph.

He thought the act so insignificant that he drove past the local Police station. Again the press would believe a high speed chase took place to catch him. The reality is a policeman ran out of the station and caught him on foot, that was the speed at which he was dragging his son who was wearing more protective clothing than any of the skateboarder kids who skate yards from oncoming traffic.

So, was it a stupid act? Yes most definitely but what really gets my goat is how it’s blown up out of all proportion.

UPDATE: I’m glad to see no custodial sentence was given Market Harborough man spared jail

This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 9:28 am and is filed under Market Harborough, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.