“I probably won’t write many features, actually,” said Sanchez, “but it’s nice to have a title isn’t it.”

Sanchez joins us from a defunct Citizen-style service elsewhere, and makes up the 6th member of the team, along with Thundopolous P. Staker, AJ Oke, Adam Douglas, our Flaming Reporter, and of course editor Tim C.

“I wouldn’t cross me though,” he continued, “as I am ratty as fuck.”

In the midst of all this, the Citizen is moving servers in the next few days, so may possibly be offline for a little bit. Just so you all know.

–The Editor

Katie was driving within the speed limit, not on the phone, didn’t even have the radio on – but she did not see the cyclist, hit him and unfortunately killed him.

This was, in my opinion, an accident. The fact that the jury convicted Hart of causing death by dangerous driving – rather than careless driving, which she pled guilty to – is neither here nor there as far as I am concerned. The issue here is that a young girl has been sent to prison for accidentally committing a crime.

Take the case of Anna Hibben as comparison. This girl was driving unlicensed, uninsured, at night without lights, over the speed limit. She crashed and killed her 17-year-old boyfriend who was illegally supervising her behind the wheel of his car. She also claimed she was not driving, until it was proven that she was.

So here we have driving otherwise in accordance to your license, driving without insurance, speeding, and – as far as I am concerned – dangerous driving in terms of not having her lights on at night. Add attempting to pervert the course of justice (or the slightly lesser police obstruction) and you have all the making of a prison sentence, yes?

No. Hibben was given a nine-month suspended sentence and a three year ban.

Katie Hart, who has no criminal record (I can’t comment whether Hibben has a record or not as this is not noted in any report) goes to prison for (half of) 21 months for one offence.

Both accidents resulted in a death. Both girls should be treated at least the same. In fact, Hibben should be treated more harshly as she has committed not one but five offences. The jury in Hart’s case was, as far as I am concerned, wrong to convict her of dangerous driving. But following this conviction, surely a long driving ban, suspended sentence and maybe community service would have been a more appropriate punishment than jail?

Nothing will bring back either of the dead men, and of course both girls must be punished. But the inappropriateness of these sentences along with the disparity between them is, frankly, shocking.

“I’ve finally got my arse into gear and eight quid out of my bank account,” he explained, “and registered stneotscitizen.com.

“This may lead to some temporary downtime as I migrate everything to the new address.”

The Citizen has experienced a leap in popularity recently, with up to 500 visits a week, which is probably due to the fact that the editorial team have been “bang on it” with their reporting.

“There hasn’t exactly been more news,” said the editor, “it’s just that we’ve been better at reporting the small amount that does occur.”

The Citizen’s head of IT suggested that readers update their bookmarks once the transition is complete, so they don’t have to skulk around on a redirection page.

The Citizen is expanding to bring your more local news, more often, and now there’s pictures and stuff too. In order to keep our promise to deliver all the gossip on local events we need you, dear reader, to join our growing army of loyal unpaid reporters.

Whatever your subject, whatever your style, the Citizen wants submissions from you! Breaking news, in-depth investigations, and even “lifestyle” features are all welcome – as long as it’s true (ahem ahem) and vaguely amusing.

If you want to try your hand and maybe even get famous, register now by clicking here, and get writing! You’ll be emailed a temporary password that lets you log in directly to our back-end (ooer missus, etc.) and we’ll send you all the information you need to get started.

Questions? Feel free to email the editor who will endeavour to answer your queries as quickly as he can be bothered.

In a statement posted to st-neots.co.uk, he said:

I really just want to say a massive thank you to all those who keep reading the Citizen regularly.

Since I have been able to update again following the, ahem, issues we had a couple of months back, I have been rather lax – when i’m extremely busy my creative brain vanishes. So it’s good to see the number of people who check in on a regular, in some cases daily, basis.

So far for August we have 549 pageviews, from a total of 312 unique visitors, of which 68% were previous visitors (upto 31 July 09)*. This is brilliant for a rather off-key month and I am really glad that you are enjoying it.

The Citizen will be offline for a short while tonight (Friday 14th Aug) while we carry out some essential maintenance.

Keep reading!

No need to worry though – any submissions will of course be processed.

So all that remains is to wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas.

“I’m delighted with the outcome,” said Citizen Editor Tim C after remaining tight-lipped – and unpublished – for the last week. “Obviously I’d love to tell you who was involved, but I’ll have to leave that to your imagination. Needless to say, I was able to talk some sense into the gentleman in question and he realised that he was taking things over the top.”

“After a couple of speed-bumps on the road to success, the Citizen will now be able to run a full news service as before. Although, what with the road to success being located in St Neots, there’ll probably be some more speed-bumps, some traffic lights, and a mini roundabout or three to negotiate before we truly become the town’s Premier News Resource.”

The Citizen Newsdesk Currently Unoccupied

“Don’t worry though,” he said, “Normal service will be resumed on Monday.”