Not cricket (3)

So the Pakistani captain has been found not guilty of ball-tampering, but guilty of bringing the game into disrepute by staging a protest against being accused of ball tampering - so he's been punished for defending himself against a charge of doing something which it has now been decided he didn't do. Does anybody else find this ludicrous??

Old wine in new bottles

I suppose, as someone staring 70 in the face, I should be all in favour of this new anti-age-discrimination legislation, but as someone who for many years ran and recruited for several offices, I can see things from both sides. There may be jobs where age doesn't matter, or even where it is a positive plus if you're looking for knowledge and experience, but if you're looking for someone for a post where you will have to invest a great deal of time and attention in training them, then you will want to try and ensure you get a good return for your efforts, and someone who may only have a few years of work left in them may not fit the bill simply because of that. There is also the question of health - older people may well be less likely than the young to take casual days off sick, but are far more likely to have long-term problems and absences, and perhaps to find certain aspects of a job too physically challenging. In my view, employers should be left to be able to choose who they consider the best person for the job, unfettered by legislation.

Go on - take a chance!

Lot been said and written over the past few days as a result of Richard Hammond's high-speed accident while driving a jet-powered car for a TV programme. I think there may be something in the view being put forward that TV programmers feel that they have to be continually "pushing the envelope" and outdoing what they did last time, and that this necessarily leads to more and more extreme things being attempted, but the phrase which keeps cropping up, and which I find annoying is "risk-analysis". Was a sufficiently full risk analysis carried out? Well, as far as I can see there were all sorts of emergency vehicles and personnel on hand, and indeed it seems probable that the fact that they were there and able to give their prompt attention quite possibly saved his life, so the only other factor would appear to be - should he have been allowed to do it? And what this comes down to is, should a mentally sound adult be prevented from doing something on the ground that he/she might get hurt or killed? On this basis, no mountain would ever have been climbed, the Channel would remain unswum, and we would still have men with red flags walking in front of our cars.

I know - let's remake "Casablanca"!

Just finished watching "The Flight of the Phoenix" - the new one that is. Not bad, not bad at all, but what kept running through my mind was - why did they bother? The original was and still is a classic. The new one really adds nothing to it, so WHY? When you think about it, all the remakes are of successful films, whereas logic suggests that if you're going to remake a film, you should look to a previously unsuccessful film with potential, otherwise what's the point? Perhaps the point is that people who remember the original will go and see the remake out of curiosity as much as anything - in other words you're trading on the success of the original to make money. Or am I just being cynical again?

Belt up!!

Well, in common I suspect with many other people, I've had to shell out for a booster seat in order to be able to continue to do the school run with my grandchildren. A couple of points arise from this. First, the publicity has been pathetic - if I (a) hadn't heard a rumour a few months ago, and (b) hadn't got access to the Internet, the first I would have heard about it would have been a news item in the last few days, giving me virtually no time to do anything about it. Second, if this is a safety issue, and apparently been under discussion for some years, why haven't car manufacturers taken it on board and come up with adjustable seats and/or seatbelts for children? Finally, my cynical side wonders whether there's any connection between those who have promulgated this law, and the manufacturers of child seats and boosters!

Simply the best?

Following Michael Schumacher's decision to retire from Formula 1 at the end of the current season, there is much discussion about his place in motor racing history, and in particular how he should be judged in the light of his various "bad boy" moments. For me, he is without doubt the best racing driver I have ever seen, if only because of his ability to get the best out of a bad car, or one with problems. There are many drivers who can shine when put in the fastest car, but Schumacher was and is the only driver I have seen who could shine when not in the fastest car. Who can forget 1994 in Spain, when he came a close second despite the car being stuck in 5th gear for most of the race. Who else could have done that? What I find slightly disturbing is that when talking about the ruthless side to his nature, comparisons are invariably made with Ayrton Senna - perhaps the only other driver worthy to be mentioned in the same breath - as though somehow Senna was whiter than white. Does nobody remember 1989/90 and what happened between him and Alain Prost? Fair do's, folks!

Put your own house in order.

I seem to be doing an awful lot of posts about the law lately, but I can't let the recent comment by the Police that they are going to target "reckless drivers who use legal loopholes to avoid conviction" pass without comment. Let's be clear - if an accused person is acquitted, whatever the charge, it is because the prosecution have failed to prove their case. This may be for lack of sufficiently cogent evidence, or it may be because some necessary procedure was not complied with, but either way, it is for the prosecution to come up with the goods, and if they don't, the defendant walks. To suggest that somehow when this happens the defendant is at fault is farcical. If the law is too complex then it is for Parliament to sort it out, otherwise it's up to the Police and prosecution to do their job properly. We still do work on the presumption of innocence, don't we?

A bad move?

So a man has been convicted of a murder of which he had been previously acquitted, thanks to a new law ending the long-held double jeopardy principle which says you can't be tried twice for the same offence. Much understandable rejoicing by the family of the victim, but there's an old saying "hard cases make bad law", meaning that when you bend, or even worse, change the law to produce what you perceive to be justice in a particular case, you have to bear in mind that English law is founded on precedent, and that the change you have made will have repercussions well beyond the case in question. I hope that, sometime in the future, we don't regret what we have done.

Knee-jerk policing?

"Police have stepped up patrols in the Moss Side area of Manchester following the fatal shooting of a teenage boy yesterday". Why do the words "stable-door" and "bolted" spring to mind?

Rough justice.

Did Barry George kill Jill Dando? is the question being asked in some of the papers following the BBC's recent programme. Wrong question. There are only two ( or maybe three) people who possibly know the answer to that, and one of those is dead. No, the question is - should Barry George have been convicted of the killing of Jill Dando? We have a system - imperfect as all human systems are - whereby the prosecution lay their evidence before a group of impartial people - the jury - and if that evidence, having been tested under cross-examination, convinces the jury, they will find the accused guilty, otherwise not guilty. So the question is, was there sufficient evidence that a jury, doing its job properly, could say "we are convinced he did it". The evidence looked weak at the time, and the fact that the verdict was only by a majority of 10-2 certainly suggests that the case was far from clear-cut. But that's the way the system works. Like I say it's not perfect, and we have to accept that people will be convicted who didn't do what they are accused of, just as there will be people acquitted who did do what they are accused of. The thing is, what do we do when we think something might have gone wrong? The BBC programme didn't really come up with anything new - it basically simply highlighted the weaknesses of the original case, on which a jury has already delivered a verdict, a verdict which has been upheld on appeal. So where do we go from here? Tricky one, this.

A green cheese factory?

Space exploration is in the news again as a result of the deliberate crashing into the moon of a space probe that had ended its useful life - in an attempt to establish a better understanding of the moon's composition. This, one report suggested, might help in the eventual construction of a manned colony on the moon. What on earth for? Why would we want to spend billions of pounds (or dollars more like) on such a project? It's not as if we haven't got better things to spend that sort of money on. There was perhaps some dubious merit in the original race to the moon - back in the days when the US and USSR were playing the "my rocket's bigger than your rocket" game, and the moon was simply a prize to be gained and displayed in your trophy cabinet. But those days are gone, thank goodness, and with them that sort of reasoning. So any future attempt to put a man on the moon has I think to be looked at on a cost-benefit basis. We know the cost will be enormous, so will someone please explain what the benefits will be?

Reality check.

A film due out shortly suggests that Queen Elizabeth was unable to comprehend the outpouring of public grief at Princess Diana's death in 1997. Well - so was I, and I still am. It is obviously a tragedy for anyone of her age to die in that way, but this ongoing attempt to make her into some sort of modern-day saint is repulsive. All the more so when you remember that a few days following her death Mother Theresa of Calcutta died virtually unnoticed by comparison. I hold no particular brief for her either, but really folks - wake up and smell the coffee!