PISTORIUS : MURDERER OR INNOCENT ?

Try as one might, it seems impossible to escape from the media's fascination with Oscar Pistorius. We are confronted with staged pictures of him appearing in court and looking sad; anyone with a heart would be on his side, wouldn't they ?

 

Perhaps my problem is that I don't have a heart and prefer to try to draw conclusions from facts. One fact in this case is that the South African police have put together a pretty poor argument; another is that the media is firmly on the side of poor, dear Oscar. What is undeniable and still to be determined is what really happened. What is going on at the moment is, after all, only a hearing to decide whether or not Pistorius should be granted bail.

 

The few facts I've been able to garner are these. Pistorius owned, quite legally, a hand gun and lived in a securely guarded and gated estate. According to him, immediately before the incident in question, he was in bed with his girlfriend and he rose on hearing a noise. Thinking he was being burgled, he 'walked' to the bathroom without attaching his prosthetic legs and fired several shots through the locked door of the toilet. He then returned to the bedroom where he discovered that his girlfriend was not in bed and, for the first time, realised that it may have been her in the toilet. In a panic, he went back to the bathroom and broke down the toilet door with an implement of some sort, possibly a cricket bat.

 

Exactly how one doesn't realise that their partner isn't in bed with them is the first question. If Pistorius did believe there was a burglar in the house, wouldn't he have tried to wake the woman and get her to safety before trying to tackle the intruder ? Why would a burglar have been in his bathroom or been locked in his toilet ? Did he not shout any sort of warning to his victim before firing ? If the supposed intruder was locked in the toilet, wouldn't it make sense to have called for help before firing; after all, Pistorius still had the gun and the intruder was contained. How would a burglar have entered the securely guarded property and had there been any other burglaries on the estate ?

 

What we've heard so far is mere window dressing; the real story is yet to come.

VICKY PRYCE : JURY FOUND WANTING.

Vasiliki Courmouzis, otherwise known as Vicky Pryce and the former wife of disgraced Liberal Democratic bigwig, Chris Huhne, has seen her trial for attempting to pervert the course of justice crumble around her. It seems that the jury or, at least some of them, were unable to understand the judge's instructions and the basic principles of how a jury works.

 

Exactly what happened in the jury room will probably never be known, but it's obvious from the list of questions that were passed to the judge that there was a shocking breakdown in the system. For a jury to feel it necessary to ask whether or not matters that were not presented in evidence, and for which there was no evidence, could be taken into account in arriving at their verdict is incredible; for them to have asked whether the defendant's religious beliefs, which also were not presented as evidence, could be considered is unbelievable. That they found it necessary to question the meaning of 'reasonable doubt' shows such an appalling lack of understanding of our legal system that one wonders if they were actually British at all.

 

The truth may be that there was one, perhaps 2, difficult jurors with whom the rest were trying to get to grips. If this is the case, how did these individuals get onto a jury in the first place ? If they were unable to follow the judge's directions or to grasp basic English language, what were they doing there ?

 

However, given that the jury was unable to reach even a majority verdict, one must assume that the problem went far deeper than 1 or 2 awkward jurors. The conclusion one then has to draw is that this was a particularly dreadful bunch of jurors, poorly educated, quite possibly mostly of recent immigrant origin and wholly unsuited to their task. The implication from this for our present system of justice is quite frightening.

 

In recent times, governments have made a few noises about the possible introduction of 'juryless trials' for certain particularly difficult, long or sensitive cases. While this would be a nonsense and wholly contrary to centuries of British jurisprudence, one can now, perhaps, see why they may have had such thoughts. If jurors in a simple case can be quite so stupid, how can they possibly be expected to deal with complex frauds, or to sit through months of detailed evidence in other cases such as those involving matters of national security ?

 

It may be that successive governments have been a little ahead of the rest of us on this particular issue. They, more than anyone else, know just how much our nation has changed in recent years with the vast influx of immigrants, many of whom bring their own culture, customs and language with them while having no desire whatsoever to assimilate ours. Such people are as liable to be called for jury service as anyone else and there must now be large parts of our major cities where there is no one else to be called. The Government also knows, only too well, how general educational standards have collapsed to a point at which huge numbers of younger people have little or no understanding of anything beyond what is needed to achieve the most basic of exam passes, allied with large dollops of left-wing training in subjects dressed up with fancy names, such as 'sociology' or 'PSE'.

 

Should I be unfortunate enough to be put on trial, I would expect to be tried by a 'jury of my peers' and I would expect this to mean people such as myself, not a ragbag of socialist leaning, semi-literates with no understanding of the British way of life or legal system. Ms Pryce may count herself lucky that the jury in her case couldn't reach a verdict - on another day they may well have had her burned at the stake.

"RIPPER STREET" : A BBC PIECE OF NONSENSE.

How is it that the BBC can produce, on the one hand the quite outstanding 'Call the Midwife' and yet follow it with the quite dreadful 'Ripper Street' ?

 

'Call the Midwife' is so real as to be almost creepy; it shows some of the true horror of post-war life in a deprived area of London and is beautifully acted by a quality cast.

 

'Ripper Street' is so unreal as to be risible. It shows English police running around with a shady American, gun-toting, ex-Pinkerton detective who has a penchant for prostitutes. In today's episode this character engages in a gunfight on a London street, in front of an assembled crowd, which ends with him walking up to within a couple of feet of his opponent before shooting him in the head. The implausibility of this storyline seems to have been ignored by the programme makers, possibly because they think that very few of their audience will have any knowledge of how life was really lived at that time, the late 1880s.

 

In the US, it has long been the case that programmes and films have been produced which fly in the face of reality and history; films such as the 'Die Hard' series take implausibility to the very limit in pursuit of anything that will hold the attention of an increasingly puerile and simplistc audience. They think nothing of re-writing history and lauding the shocking behaviour of those who committed a genocide against the indigenous population of their land. The myth of the heroic gunfighting US marshall, à al Wyatt Earp, is all-embracing; the fact that such people were little more than terrorists and murderous is brushed under the carpet.

 

Such figures did not exist in the London of the 1880s; why the BBC finds it necessary to invent them is a mystery. This is not dssimilar to their ridiculous, though apparently successful amongst the unwashed masses, approach to the re-invention of Sherlock Holmes. We now seem to have entered a world in which historic costumes and sets are simply a means of providing an environment in which modern day fantasy, and rehashed storylines, can be acted out in a variety of different settings, conning the gullible public into believing they are seeing something new, revealing and wonderful.

 

If the public really are that gullible, what does it say about our vaunted education system ? "Not a lot", is the only possible answer.

TOYNBEE : ADVOCATE OF GAY GOBBLYDEGOOK.

Listening to the likes of Polly Toynbee is almost always a trial; hearing her utterly illogical support for the lunacy of 'Gay Marriage' is also a lesson in Orwellian gobblydegook.

 

On today's 'Daily Politics' the ultra left winger was, yet again, the 'guest of the day', being asked to pontificate on all manner of subjects of which she probably has no real understanding. Given that the House of Commons are due to vote later on the 'Gay Marriage' issue, this was a subject that was discussed and on which Toynbee gave her expert opinion : "most of the people aren't bothered by the issue, most actually support the proposal and they're all really confused as to why politicians are making such a fuss about it".

 

This is, of course, the typical view expressed by socialists when trying to curtail proper debate on any issue. The nebulous reference to 'most people' belies the true facts - there is a relatively small bias in favour of 'Gay Marriage' according to certain opinion polls, but we all know how wrong such polls can be. Certain sections of society, notably older people and many who hold religious beliefs, are quite strongly opposed to the plan. Toynbee's sweeping dismissal of such people is, again, typical of left wingers who simply want to impose their 'forward thinking' views on everyone else.

 

If the subject under discussion had been membership of the European Union or restoration of the death penalty, I'm pretty sure that Toynbee would have dismissed the results of opinion polls as irrelevant; she would have claimed that the people simply didn't understand the issues and that it was 'right' for her contrary views to prevail. Such is the way that left wing politics works.

 

'Gay Marriage' is an oxymoron. It is also of so little importance that one has to wonder why the Government, or more specifically David Cameroon, is insisting on wasting so much time on it when the country is faced with an ever-worsening financial crisis. One might, perhaps, come to the conclusion that while we're all arguing about the rights and wrongs of 2 men, 2 women or a mule and donkey getting married, we're not paying much attention to the other, and much greater, problems that surround us. Such is all politics.

VIRUSES WILL GET US ALL.

Watching a recent television programme about winter viruses makes me wonder just how stupid many of our supposedly brilliant doctors and medical researchers actually are.

 

The programme looked at infections such s the common cold, influenza and norovirus and asked why these are so prevalent and how we can control them. Experts showed how far viruses can spread when we cough, sneeze and vomit; they showed how easily a single child can spread an infection simply by moving around a room in ordinary activity.

 

What they did not discuss was the extent to which viruses live in an ecosystem, exactly as do other organisms. That ecosystem is stable as long as there are no external influences; sadly, human beings are just the wrong sort of external influence. Humans, in their infinite wisdom have been busily finding ways of killing, or at least reducing the affect of, lots of viruses; is it not to be expected that other viruses, or bacteria or even fungi, might take advantage of the void thus created ?

 

Scientists talked with enthusiasm about their apparently enlightening statistics, showing where and when infections had occurred and who had been infected. They were clearly excited by their research and yet all they had was numbers. They had no understanding or solutions. None of them seemed to consider the possibility that the recent spread of previously unknown, or harmless, viruses might be a result of the continuing attack by humans upon a whole range of viruses and bacteria.

 

Medical and biomedical scientists are, without doubt, the greatest danger facing the human race. Global warming and the threat of nuclear catastrophe pale into insignificance beside the shocking arrogance of these scientific experts who merrily coerce us to seek immunization against anything and everything while totally ignoring the one really important fact - that nature abhors a vacuum. What this means is that every rime we eliminate one threat another will take its place. Why can't they see this ? Do they see it but ignore it ? Is this just another case of government controlled bodies keeping the real facts from us ?

 

Today's children seem to suffer from diseases and conditions that were all but unknown when I was a child; this wasn't because they didn't exist, it was because we suffered from other things and, perhaps, gained immunity to some through our greater freedom to be 'dirty'. What I believe is that the effective elimination of diseases such as smallpox, polio and diphtheria from the calendar and the introduction of mass-immunisation programmes against many others, has simply opened up the way for other nasty bugs to move in. Thus we have newer and nastier strains of influenza, we have norovirus and we also have AIDS.

 

This seems to me to be so obvious and yet no one else seems to see it. As a former biochemist, I really do say 'Beware all doctors and their pals - they don't know as much as they pretend'.

'JAWS' IS JUST 'MOBY DICK' IN DISGUISE

I've just watched a great film for the umpteenth time and only just realised how much it owes to a much older classic story. This may simply show how slow I am to see such connections but then who knows ?

 

The film 'Jaws', based on a novel by Peter Benchley, is, on it's own account, a terrific, scary, semi-horror story. In many respects, it's much better than later 'sequels' as the monster is rarely seen and when it is seen the sightings are swift and partial. This is similar to the approach adopted by Ridley Scott in 'Alien', though the latter is actually vastly superior because of the almost total absence of the monster from the screen. 'Jaws' is scary because the  monster strikes unexpectedly and from below and it's a rather unknown quantity.

 

While the beast is swimming around devouring an assortment of unwary people, Quint, the shark hunter, offers to catch it. The man is clearly a bit demented and certainly fixated on catching and killing large sharks; eventually he falls victim to the beast he is hunting and is eaten by it.

 

Although the similarities are not total, 'Quint' is, without doubt, 'Captain Ahab' from Herman Melville's novel, 'Moby Dick' and the subsequent film starring Gregory Peck. The two characters who accompany 'Quint' on his final and fatal voyage, 'Martin Brodie' and 'Matt Hooper', are, just as clearly, 'Ishmael', the rather naive sailor, and 'Queequeg', the obsessive harpooner of whales.

 

I've read reviews that equate the character of 'Quint' with 'Ahab' but none that also see how 'Brodie and 'Hooper' are analogues of 'Ishmael'  and 'Queequeg'. It strikes me that Peter Benchley must have read 'Moby Dick', possibly watched the film and then decided that there was a modern updating available. Much of the film of 'Jaws' is simply a modern American tale of very little, but the dénouement owes everything to Herman Melville's brilliant originality and almost nothing to Peter Benchley.

 

The old ones are nearly always the best.