Three topics

It seems John Darwin has been just a bit too clever for his own good. The man charged by Cleveland Police for fraud and obtaining a false passport was brought down after claiming the life insurance on his 'death'. He must have realised that he was in trouble when he walked into a London Police station feigning amnesia. Ah well, he's had an interesting time in Central America with his wife, though I thought dodgy ships were registered in Panama, not dodgy husbands. Never mind, being a former prison officer, he's got bags of experience of what it's like being 'inside'. I think it's touching that his wife Ann claims to still love him, despite herself being charged with deception. One can see how such a story might have been covered in the USA had it been American citizens in the frame - "the name of Darwin has been darkened forever!" But really, John Darwin ought to go to prison for that crazy beard he grew as he went under the name of John Jones.

Talking of names, I spotted a name I knew quite well recently. The Kent Alumni magazine came to my house and as I flicked through, there were several interviews, one of which featured featured Professor Tim Luckhurst, a former editor of the Herald and currently the head of journalism at the University of Kent at Medway. I was thinking, "I know him. I clean out his office in the mornings!" Not many Kent alumni could claim that. Interestingly, he was in Romania Christmas 1989 for the overthrow of the communist tyranny and he was back in the Balkans a decade later for the NATO bombing campaign for Kosovo, whose result (achieved more by adroit Russian diplomacy) provided the impetus for the downfall of another communist tyrant.

The magazine Country Life can seem cheerfully old-fashioned, but in it's Novemer 22nd editorial, it expressed something I've thought for a long time - there "is a growing contempt for precedent on the part of the ruling political caste. Arguably, the process began under Mrs. Thatcher; it got worse under Mr. Blair; it is continuing under Mr. Brown." This is what Lord Hailsham meant in the 1970s, when he commented as part of his "Electoral Dictatorship" essay that Britain needed a written constitution to guarantee its checks and balances, in the event that someone came to power with few scruples at overturning centuries of accumulated tradition. I like the idea that we have an 'unwritten' constitution, but the last few decades have shown that it is open to abuse, to the personal glory of the prime minister of the day, but the general detriment of the country at large.