
MP Sir Edward Leigh fined for opening car door on police officer
An MP has been fined for injuring a police officer by opening his car door.Sir Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, pleaded guilty to a charge of opening a vehicle door so as to injure or endanger a person.The officer was riding a bike at the time of the incident in Horseferry Road, Westminster, on 6 August last year.Sir Edward, 74, who is the Father of the House, was ordered to pay a fine of £120 by Bromley Magistrates' Court.
He was also ordered to pay £110 to the Metropolitan Police and a surcharge of £48.The force confirmed the officer was injured in the collision. The BBC has contacted Sir Edward's office for comment.Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.

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Telegraph
4 hours ago
- Telegraph
Tory MP chases down would-be thief
A Tory MP has been praised for getting 'stuck in' after he chased a suspected thief down a London high street and secured his arrest. Gareth Davies, a Conservative shadow minister, witnessed a man taking an item from a vehicle in north-west London on Saturday morning. He followed the man for 15 minutes through the streets of Maida Vale, an affluent area of the capital, in the hope he could be arrested. The suspect did not know he was being watched during the low-speed pursuit, but Mr Davies had called the police to report what he'd seen and tell officers where the man was located. The man tried to board a bus but was apprehended by officers at the bus stop. A Metropolitan Police spokesman told The Telegraph that a 'member of the public' had called the police to report a man had stolen an item from the back of the car. 'Officers quickly attended and a 48-year-old man was arrested near the scene,' the spokesman said. 'He was taken into custody and has since been bailed while further inquiries are carried out.' The victim's belonging was later returned. It comes after a series of vigilante law enforcement stunts in London, including from Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary. Mr Jenrick filmed a video chasing fare dodgers through a Tube station, asking them why they had not paid for tickets. One would-be fare evader told the Tory MP to 'f--- off', while another claimed he had a knife. Mr Jenrick accused Sir Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, of ' driving a proud city into the ground ', adding: 'Lawbreaking is out of control. He's not acting. So, I did.' Reacting to Mr Davies' pursuit of the suspect, he told The Telegraph: 'Good for Gareth. Sometimes you have to get stuck in and sort things out.' Other campaigners have taken to the Tube to clean off graffiti, after reports that Bakerloo line trains in London had been defaced and not cleaned by Transport for London (TfL) staff. TfL said last month that the uptick in graffiti was caused by the breakdown of an automatic train washer. 'We were only able to clean trains by hand, which takes a significantly longer amount of time,' a spokesman told the BBC.


Glasgow Times
5 hours ago
- Glasgow Times
Constance Marten victim of ‘relentless and dogged' smears, court told
Marten, 38, and convicted rapist Mark Gordon, 51, are on trial at the Old Bailey accused of the manslaughter of their newborn baby Victoria, who died in a tent on the South Downs. In a closing speech on Wednesday, Marten's barrister, Tom Godfrey, said: 'The persistent attempts to tarnish the defendants' names have been relentless and dogged. It really boils down to what happened in that tent.' He rejected the prosecution case that Victoria died from hypothermia or was smothered, saying it was a 'tragic accident' and no-one can be sure how she died. Marten gave birth to Victoria in 'secret' after four other children were taken into care, the Old Bailey was told. At the time, the defendants mistakenly believed they were 'being watched', as Marten's parents had deployed private investigators in a 'menacingly' named Operation Lynx in 2021, Mr Godfrey said. It was against this background that the couple opted to go off grid and live in a tent, after their car burst into flames near Bolton, Greater Manchester, jurors heard. CCTV footage of Constance Marten holding baby Victoria under her coat in East Ham, east London, which was shown in court during their trial (Metropolitan Police/PA) Mr Godfrey told jurors: 'Why do they flee and hide as they did? The prosecution seem to be saying it was because they cared not a jot for Victoria and they focused on their selfish needs? Can that be right? 'You may think their greatest fear was they would lose her. Constance Marten feared the baby would be taken from her so they fled. 'Did they behave sensibly and rationally? They could have sought assistance from police, explained their predicament. 'We can all criticise decisions, and there are many decisions by Constance Marten that are open to criticism. 'This case is not about what could have been done differently.' Mr Godfrey said the police appeal to find the baby made 'instant headline news around the country' and the 'country became obsessed'. He told jurors: 'It was from this moment on, Constance Marten and Mark Gordon determined the only way to keep Victoria to themselves was to avoid detection. 'Irrespective of the rights and wrongs, the net effect was to drive Constance Marten and Mark Gordon further underground.' Screen grab taken from body worn camera footage of the moment Constance Marten was arrested in the street (Metropolitan Police/PA) After Victoria's death, they were reduced to a 'state of near derangement', and a 'feeling of hopelessness and guilt', Mr Godfrey said. He rejected any suggestion the defendants had made a 'nefarious pact' not to answer questions, having each cut short their evidence before they could be cross-examined. Mr Godfrey suggested Gordon's decision was sparked by the jurors being told about his 1989 rape conviction in the United States, and two assaults on police officers at a maternity unit in 2017, where Marten gave birth to their first child. He said: 'Why did you hear about those matters? Because Mark Gordon sought to mislead you about his character by telling you he had empathy and respect for the law. 'We say these convictions, and ones from Wales from 2017, are of no assistance whatsoever in determining how baby Victoria died. 'We ask you to ignore them, as with a lot of smoke and mirrors put up, and focus on the issue in this case. How did baby Victoria die? That is what this case is about. 'If there was a wall of silence being maintained they would say nothing at all. Nothing in interview and nothing in evidence. That is not the position here.' Marten and Gordon, of no fixed address, have denied the gross negligence manslaughter of their daughter and causing or allowing her death between January 4 and February 27 2023. Jurors have been told the defendants were convicted at an earlier trial of concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice. The trial continues.


New Statesman
6 hours ago
- New Statesman
The Gold loses its shine
Photo by BBC / Tannadice Pictures The BBC's second series of its crime drama The Gold, about the 1983 Brink's-Mat heist, picks up where things left off: about half the loot that the robbers stole from a security depot near Heathrow remains unaccounted for. The gold – worth over £110m in today's money – turned out to be rather more than the six lads could handle, and in the first series they all (more or less) ended up paying for their greed. The show's creator, Neil Forsyth, took a calculated risk in choosing to concentrate on the robbery's aftermath, rather than the theft itself – which was dealt with in about five propulsive minutes. Instead, he homed in on the gangsters' increasingly convoluted attempts to convert the bars into the lavish lives they'd always dreamed of. This time round, the investigation is being led again by DCI Boyce (a sturdy but rather dull Hugh Bonneville), with help from perky DIs Jennings (Charlotte Spencer) and Brightwell (Emun Elliott), plus a new addition, DI Lundy (a classy Stephen Campbell Moore). In the last series, Boyce was sceptical of the talents of his underlings but came round; now, they get along famously. Still, the investigation is under threat from paper-pushers higher up, who feel it's dragging on too long, costing too much and failing to produce any wins that can be published in the newspapers. Amid a few irritating tics is the series' insistent use of the word 'villain'. Do criminals really self-identify as villains, as they do here? Do coppers chasing such villains also refer to them as villains? It seems unlikely, but they do here, over and over. On that note, the villains in our sights are John Palmer (Tom Cullen), a gold-dealer-turned-fraudster living it large in Tenerife, and Charlie Miller (Sam Spruell), a run-of-the-mill crook who, unlike Palmer, isn't a real person but an amalgam of various people. Also in play, most enjoyably, is disgraced lawyer Douglas Baxter, a fictional character played with delicious waspishness by Joshua McGuire. Baxter has been struck off, we learn, after being caught taking cocaine at a steakhouse, and he is soon persuaded by Miller to start laundering huge wodges of cash for him. More than any other character, Baxter feels decidedly imaginary: he is, he believes, one of the finest legal minds of his generation; aged eight, he was accepted into Mensa. It's hard to believe such a clever-clogs would ever consort with a low-life so obviously doomed as Miller – but Baxter is excellent company, so his lack of credibility is quickly forgiven. The series is, like its predecessor, easy on the eye, with an invigorating soundtrack and solid performances. But the script tends towards the grandiose (DCI Boyce loves a little speech), and as the action flits between London, the Caribbean, the Isle of Man, Cornwall and Tenerife, it can be hard to follow. When a bunch of dead-eyed Russians turn up in Tenerife, wanting their money laundered too, you just want them to go away and stop complicating things. After being criticised for presenting gangsters with a rosy tint in the first series, particularly the robber and killer Kenneth Noye (played with dash by Slow Horses'Jack Lowden), the second series tries to darken Noye's portrayal. In the first, Lowden's Noye was a Robin Hood type inclined to see his trade in class terms: 'That's how England works,' he remarked at one point. 'That lot have it and us lot nick it.' Noye's killing of a police officer was covered but felt random and underpowered, and the series didn't go up to 1996, when he murdered a 21-year-old on an M25 slip road. Even so, Palmer comes across as rather appealing: a 'villain', to be sure, but a warm and handsome one, who bids his colleagues goodbye at the end of the working day, loves his kids and gives his wife thoughtful presents. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Forsyth has confirmed that there will not be a third series, and the Brink's-Mat lemon does feel sucked dry by the end of this one. Still, taken together, both series are a real achievement: not particularly innovative television, but dependable and made with palpable craft and commitment. The Gold BBC One [See also: The People's Republic of iPhone] Related