Anyone heard of Rule 227?

No, it's not something from Leviticus (although the amount of attention it's given nowadays, it might as well be).

It's that section of the Highway Code that advises on driving in wet weather. You know, the part, alongside tackling mini roundabouts, that is probably unthumbed in the copies of approximately half of the town's population.

Allied advice comes from the gospel of the Road Safety Advisory Council in a section about 'Driving to the conditions'.

Apparently, according to the good folks at the Council this "is common sense. Change your speed that's safe for the road and weather conditions. A road's speed limit doesn't mean it is safe to drive at that speed the whole length of the road."

Dangerous even when not wet (Picture: Nub News)

This passage might as well be lodged in the Book of Revelations given recent evidence. A few weeks' worth of precipitation has resulted in an upsurge in road accidents, especially along the A1071's bendiest bends between Hadders and Hintlesham.

Reading 'driving to the conditions' as an invitational code for 'aquaplaning is a thrill: why not give it a go?', too many drivers of every age and gender imaginable seem to have ended up in ditches or had prangs, hence causing this vital artery to be shut or reduced to a gloopy go-slow.

Now, I'm not suggesting that every single mistake has been perpetrated by one of this town's denizens. But I'm sure that the IP7 postcode has come up in dishonourable mentions on at least a few occasions. 

I understand that the recent spate of such incidents has not, mercifully, resulted in outcomes more serious than feeling a bit of burke and having awkward and frustrating conversations with insurance company bots.

But that's no guarantee in the future. Don't be a headline, for all the wrong reasons,  in Hadleigh Nub News.

After all, that's currently the franchise of our slapstick district and county councillors. And especially of the 'look no hands' antics of Queenie Dawson.

Just as old media titles like to list the sentences handed out to various wrong 'uns under the heading 'Court News' or some such, so Father Derek has been musing that we should launch one specifically for Her Maj: 'Caught News'.

Yep, she's done it again. 

Not content with settling on a list of found-out misdemeanours that equals the total of everything the Metropolitan Police's cadre of bent coppers has clocked up since the turn of the millennium, Queenie has gone one better. 

She has failed to apologise, by the deadline given to her by Babergh's independent legal eagles,  for lying in public and in a most defamatory way about Father Derek. This is not entirely unexpected and in accordance with Rule 666 from Queenie's own self-help book ('Lies, Evasions and Wishful Thinking', remaindered at £00.99 from Random Thoughts Press) 

But what is shameful is less Hadleigh's answer to Donald S. Trump (not going so well for him now though, is it?), but the failure of her fellow Blues to call out this repeated bad behaviour. As someone who went to the pyre for speaking truth unto Popish power, I know silence can too often imply connivance.

So, Macadam Fraser, Bolter Ferguson (yes you, I haven't forgotten about you), Toad/Onan Barrett and Bottler Beer: do you condone Queenie's behaviour as listed in her charge sheet?