I find it unfathomable that more than £11 million in court fines is outstanding across the Avon and Somerset area.

To my mind such a ludicrously high figure sends out a clear message – if you commit an offence, whether it be theft, drink-driving, not having motor insurance or a TV licence, and if you wish to avoid the consequences, there is a reasonable chance you'll get away with it.

And that's the real crime. Most folk in this country possess a sense of fairness about law and order; we might whinge and moan but we pay up when we're supposed to, whether it's taxes, insurance or parking fines. So when we discover payment dodgers are exploiting the system in such huge numbers the anger is directed not only toward the artful dodgers, but also at a breathtakingly incompetent justice system which allows it to happen.

Will these shocking figures finally force court officials to do something about getting their (our) money back? Don't hold your breath. A committee of MPs has concluded that criminals were treating fines as a "voluntary option" and called for new measures to allow bailiffs to seize property belonging to criminals who repeatedly refuse to pay fines. That committee met in 2002 – not much has changed, has it?

So when, last week, a spokesman for Her Majesty's Court Service announced: "The courts will do everything within their powers to trace those who do not pay", I felt like shouting "Why haven't you done it before now?" And when he added that money can be taken from an offender's earnings or from benefits if they are unemployed, I wanted to shout again "So why hasn't it then?"

The authorities have promised to improve collection rates, but with unpaid court fines in England and Wales currently totalling £541m they'll need to be a lot tougher than they've been in the past.

I like what the courts in the US city of Harrah are doing. The authorities there have declared a month-long amnesty period in which anyone with long-standing payment orders will have to pay not only the original fine, but late penalties too. If they take advantage of the amnesty, those costs could be reduced. After the amnesty period, Harrah police will launch a blitz to arrest all violators.

An ultimatum, with lines clearly drawn. Decisive action. Why can't we do it here? It's because Her Majesty's Court Service prefers instead to spout impenetrable jargon like this missive from 2008: "HMCS's strategic objective is for a proportionate enforcement system which primarily focuses on 'first time' compliance while continuing to apply the principles of rigorous enforcement to the hard core of fine dodgers."

Put simply: We want people to settle fines straight away, and we'll get tough on those who won't.

Let's hope so – because there's £11m in the Avon and Somerset area that says they haven't been anything like tough enough thus far.

Southern Electric must have it in for the people of Frome. Last week's power black-out comes only a couple of months after a loss of power affected the western side of the town for a few hours.

Doomsayers are warning of regular power cuts across Europe within a decade – are Frome folk being used as unwitting guinea pigs? I think we should be told.