Party Vibe

it may not be the original subject of the news report who flagged this.

He is from round my way and although it is unusual for East Anglians to directly apologise for anything; they do at least have the guts to accept their punishment if they have done something wrong.

The lad even said in Court that because he only got a Caution for the first DUI charge that he didn’t think the offence was that serious; although he shouldn’t have been behind the wheel in the first place our confusing and inconsistent classification rules are misleading to youngerpeople.

In any case if he applies for any job involving driving all these offences will be recorded somewhere; they would become apparent if he needs to use a works vehicle on their insurance. Even so many employers round here will give him a second chance if he’s honest and admits to the past offences and isn’t continuing to drive in this state; (in any case he will need to go through his driving test again).

OTOH if someone does apply for a job where their internet history is checked and it comes up with lots of “right to be forgotten” requests like this that makes folk more suspicious.

Especially as there has always been a “right to be forgotten” in Europe; long before Google ever existed; that has to be balanced against peoples right to know if someone they are giving employment to presents a risk to their organisation or wider society.

If there is any problem caused by Google searches that is from indexing of perfectly legitimate UK news reports which at present do publish a lot of info about suspects/offenders who are over age 18; more than most other EU nations but that is the current law in the UK (judges can still impose reporting restrictions).

They can request Google to remove anything that mentions them from search results (sites can still independently publish this info provided its not against the domestic law); which could include a message thread they participated in.

Google have themselves admitted they are struggling with it (although US companies tend to “struggle” with perfectly sensible European stuff like technical standards agreed with consensus). In any case this is a poor substitute for clearing up anomalies in domestic legislation across the 28 countries and/or folk just being careful about their reputation in the first place.

The UK does have a culture of relatively lenient traffic penalties but using the tactic of shaming offenders in the Press as part of the punishment; for instance had the lad committed the DUI offence in NL he wouldn’t have had his full name in the paper (he may not have got in the paper at all) and wouldn’t have got jail (as there wasn’t a crash) but would have got a few hundred Euros fine (exact amount would depend on his income/whether he was selling drugs as well) as well as his driving license suspended.