It's August

You know it's slow-news-time August when croquet appears in a half page spread in the Times. The deck [technical term - look it up] says "The game has taken a mallet to its aristocratic image to make a global impact". What a load of guff; I played croquet for many years and the total number of aristocrats I encountered was precisely zero. Why do they have to be so ignorant and patronising? It's an elite sport, of course - only super clever people can even understand it let alone play it. When have you ever met a clever aristocrat?

To be fair, the article talks about the growth of the game in Hong Kong, Mexico and Estonia - it's always had an Anglocentric base (including the Americans although typically they play their own rules) so maybe it's us croquet players who are the patronising ones, surprised that third world countries can embrace it. I have played croquet in almost as many countries as I have visited racecourses but my score in Hong Kong is currently Racecourse 1 croquet 0.

The August haul of important news includes the Cornish Seaweed Company ("spaghetti seaweed" is a gluten-free pasta alternative), a Labour MP has created a chatbot so that he doesn't need to bother with a face to face surgery, Wallace and Gromit are back with MasterChef and Italy is planning to build the world's longest suspension bridge to connect Sicily to the mainland. The distance is 2 miles. The shortest distance between the Scilly Isles and the Cornish mainland is 25 miles. We should go for it! Boris would do it, but I hear he's holidaying in Sicily.

Just don't expect daily blog posts in August. Although you could always write your own contribution.

Beyond Reasonable Doubt?

I watched an ITV documentary: Lucy Letby; Beyond Reasonable Doubt? It’s an analysis of the evidence used to prosecute the NHS neo-natal nurse for the murder of seven newborn babies and the attempted murder of eight more. She is serving 15 concurrent whole life sentences.

It's very disturbing for a number of reasons. It's told from the perspective of Letby's latest barrister, Mark McDonald and appears to be part of his strategy to draw attention to her defence case and to his application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. There is no pretence of balance but maybe that's not the intention of the programme; it's trying to balance what is suggested was an unbalanced prosecution.

The current problem is that the Criminal Cases Review Commission can only review a case if new evidence has come to light. McDonald's case is built on the (unstated but inferred) assertion that the defence team in the cases was at best incompetent, failing to call expert witnesses whose testimony would have contradicted the state's expert witnesses. Indeed they called only one witness in her defence, a plumber testifying to sewage issues. Further, evidence of two of the state's main witnesses now having rowed back on their statements is presented, which I guess you could argue is "new" evidence.

McDonald assembled a team of "world-renowned" (and to me, a lay person, convincing) experts who produced a substantial report which essentially claims the convictions were based on circumstantial ("she must have done this because she was around at the time") evidence and misleading medical and statistical claims and are therefore unsafe.

It's a powerful case but I found myself wondering how I, if I were on the jury, could make sense of the medical data as presented. If there were no alternative opinions presented by the defence, I would have to believe the doctors, wouldn't I? As a person with both a brain and a sceptical bent, I'd have liked to question some of the evidence but that isn't the role of a juror. Is a lay jury really the best way of deciding such a case? It it were a civil case and you were required to make a judgment on the balance of probabilities, perhaps. But I can't see how twelve lay persons, as "good and true" as they may be, can judge a prosecution's case proven beyond reasonable doubt in cases where medical evidence is the primary basis of the case. Section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 provides for a trial without a jury in serious fraud cases if "It would be too burdensome or unfair to expect a jury to follow the evidence." Are medical cases not similar?

There's more to this programme than I've written here but I came away feeling that there are questions that need to be answered and, if our justice system in the form of the CCRC is more concerned with following its rules rather than searching for truth and offering Lucy Letby a fair hearing, I don't like it at all.

Indian, Singaporean or Brazilian?

I woke up at 5am, went to the loo and checked my phone. My chess opponent had made a move. In the middle of the night? No, he's from Kazakhstan and it's 9am there. I go back to sleep and later - around 11am - make my move. I eventually checkmated him at 4pm Kazakh time.

I don't actually know whether he's from Kazakhstan, or even a 'he'. Here's his chess.com profile:

In common with many online games, you can select your own attributes to build your profile - choose your flag, upload a photo of your dog, whatever. For all I know I could have been playing a 10yo Swedish kid, although the time zone thing suggests his country may be correct.

Here's my profile:

Resplendent in my Ipswich Town gear, ready for the start of the new season on Friday. When I joined chess.com I didn't bother to set my profile so I had the default USA flag for a while. Didn't make me play any better,

I'm thinking of changing for a bit. This morning I watched  the fantastic ending to the England v India cricket series. When I was younger I followed cricket avidly but there was a period when the England team were a pretty unpleasant bunch of spoiled brats and the Australians were the world's leading sledgers and so I stopped. This test match has lasted four and a bit days and I switched on by accident - searching for something else- and I was gripped by a thrilling finish, which India won. That, combined with the fantastic results being posted by India's men and women chess players, makes me feel I should identify (we can all do that now, right?) as Indian for a while. Although I wouldn't be getting up at 5am to make a chess move. Maybe it'll confuse my opponents and I'll gain an edge.

But I'm also thinking about Brazilian. There's been a recent upsurge in my blog views from around the world:

I don't really know what this means. I suspect these aren't real people, since I've not received any Brazilian or Vietnamese comments, but even if they are bots scraping the web, why now and why Brazil? I tried to get some help from Google Analytics but - possibly because I've been nasty about Google recently - it was of no help. Nevertheless, I think I should perhaps identify as a Brazilian for a day - they did give us Pele, after all - to help the blog along.

There was a recent upsurge in "views" from Singapore, so maybe that should be an option. Although I'm a bit worried I might get deported if I'm no longer British. But a free flight to Bangalore wouldn't be bad, right? And the UK has a new trade deal with India, which includes visas, so I could probably get back in.

What do my regular contributors think - should I try Indian, Brazilian or Singaporean? I'm not really feeling English today, after the cricket.

Platform Zero

This really should be in my “things I didn’t know” series. I was on a train from Whitstable to London St Pancras and approaching Gravesend. The train announcer calls “passengers for ....[I don’t remember where] should proceed to platform zero”. I assumed I had mis-heard but 30 seconds later it was repeated and now I assumed it was a joke. Apparently not; such a thing exists. Here it is in action:

The station was upgraded in 2013 and an extra platform added. It's not a through platform, just a termination bay. The powers that be didn't want to upset existing passengers who were "used to" the current platform announcements: "the train at platform 2 is the 3:45 for Ramsgate...". Could you actually find me one passenger who cares about the numbering of platforms? In any case, why not call it platform 3? or X? Or Malcolm? And what happens when they need another one; will it be Platform Minus 1?

There are another eight platform zeroes in the UK; I'm not going to bore you with a full list, although I find it interesting that King's Cross has one; I've never seen it but then I haven't travelled through King's Cross since the 19th century. Isn't that where Harry Potter's platform is?

We Brits are so unimaginative. I bet there's no other country in the world that does this.

Wait... ChatGPT to the rescue; there are a few (Australia has two, one in Newcastle where my Son#1 lives and through which I have often travelled without noticing). She says "most countries just renumber the platforms when they build a new one. The UK, however, often avoids that because Brits will riot if you move their platform without warning." I like a bot with a sense of humour.

Oh My Eye

I'm back in Cornwall after a short break. It's the school holidays and the tourists are on their way so, naturally...

...the council are digging the roads up.

I'm not a student of local politics so I don't know if this is the county council, district council, parish council, town council or some sort of national or subnational highways agency but please guys, do this in the winter! Are you trying to scare the tourists off?

On my more disturbing news, the BBC tells me:

An eye clinic at a community health centre in Cornwall is to close.

The clinic at Wheal Northey in St Austell has treated many people with serious eye conditions across mid and north Cornwall, but treatment is moving to the Royal Cornwall Hospital, Treliske, near Truro.

All glaucoma patients who attended Wheal Northey are being told that treatment has moved to the Royal Cornwall Hospital, with the rest of the clinic's services understood to be transferring within the next few weeks.

This is a 5 minute walk from my house (was 4 minutes until I got old) and I have a regular macular degeneration clinic every seven or eight weeks, during which a nurse sticks a needle in my eye (I know, it's fun). Presumably that will be part of "the rest of the clinic's services" but I have no notification as yet.

The Royal Cornwall Hospital is 18 miles away and I may not drive until 4 hours after the injection so I will have a choice of getting someone to take me, getting two buses each way or sitting in the car park for 4 hours until I can see to drive. Not only that but the procedures at Treliske are antiquated and waiting times horrendous.

I actually have a regular six monthly glaucoma checkup clinic tomorrow, as it happens, but that has always been scheduled for Treliske and there are no anaesthetic drops so I can drive straight after.

If this report is accurate, it will take me back to the time when my wet macular degeneration was diagnosed some 10 years ago and I had to traipse halfway across the county every 4 weeks. It was a great relief when the clinic round the corner opened. Now it looks like we return to the bad old days. My next clinics are scheduled for 30 August and 13 October and the NHS app still shows them for Wheal Northey. 🤞

I am not amused.

Old enough to join the Army

Should 16 and 17 year olds be given the vote? "no taxation without representation", a phrase dating from the American Revolution, is part of a compelling argument. Angela Raynor in the Times makes the case that 16 year olds can work and pay taxes, serve their country in the military, vote in elections for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and it's their futures that are most effected by the decisions of today's and tomorrow's politicians. It's hard to find anything to disagree with, although there will be some opposition parties who will resist it.

But, before I sign off for a week or so to take a bit of a vacation, I'd like to raise a question which I haven't seen anyone articulate: should there be a maximum age at which you are allowed to vote?

If you are a pensioner living on a state pension and (I think I'm correct) not paying tax on that, perhaps "no taxation without representation" works in reverse, i.e. no representation without taxation. Of course, these are people who have paid taxes throughout their lives and have earned some entitlements as a result, but isn't that a false equivalence? You've voted whilst you paid your taxes but now that you don't, should you cease doing so?

There will be those who say that we (I'm a pensioner, although I pay tax on my teacher's pension) have a wealth of life experience and are better able to decide the future of our country than a bunch of schoolkids with no such life experience. I find this (a) patronising (b) ignores the core argument that the future is theirs to decide on and (c) it's the oldies' votes that have given us Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Brexit and an unsustainable triple lock on pensions whilst making it harder for young people to get onto the housing ladder by forcing them to pay for their university education.

The government is fond of "one in, one out" schemes so here's my proposal. Allow those of pensionable age to voluntarily opt out of voting on the basis of "pairing" with a 16yo, provided the latter is obliged to vote by law. One out, one in. The future belongs to the young. Count me in.

Anyway, that'll be it for at least 11 days while I travel to visit families and spoil my grandkids. Just thought I'd exit stage left with a bit of controversy.