The judgment dismayed all I know who followed the saga over the years and it destroyed our belief in the British legal system. To those who follow moral principles in their businesses and lives, the sentence is an insult and an offence.

Why someone who, to finance his opulent lifestyle in Donington Hall and grounds as his home and reportedly up to eight Aston Martins parked there plus the odd Range Rover, all financed by pensioners’ money, gets but eight months sentence suspended for two years is simply beyond me.

The man was hailed by somewhat simple “Norton enthusiasts” and “Norton Clubs” until the very end of his charade pretending to “revive Norton”. A smokescreen everybody ever involved in the motorcycle industry who knew what it needs to run a company profitably looked through immediately. Garner caught the judge, as he had various British politicians before, with his story he selflessly tried to “save a British icon”..

The British taxpayer and many pensioners who, unasked, financed the grand front of the homeopathic production of unreliable and often dangerous motorcycles were not considered in the judgement. I wish the judge had a close relative who lost his life’s savings in the scam.

I have met a long line of unpleasant characters in my decades in the Norton game. The remark of an old friend comes to mind who once asked me: “How come every time Norton changes hands the next boss is a worse crook than the one before?”