Best Of

Didn't expect to read this in the Economist.

"It increasingly looks as if Lucy Letby’s conviction was unsafe
The case of a nurse jailed for killing babies exposes deep problems with British justice"

https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/02/10/it-increasingly-looks-as-if-lucy-letbys-conviction-was-unsafe

I wish instead of making these judgements in the print media, the papers asked the questions and then let the processes take their course.

I am not close enough to the case to know one way or the other, but clearly Letby’s representatives have a right to argue that and to go through the judicial process to have the case reviewed. If the conviction is unsafe then she should be freed, obviously.

But there’s something in this whole saga I find deeply unedifying, with commentators enjoying loudly playing judge and jury in the centre of a deeply troubling situation which involves an awful lot of bereaved parents.

There was an article in Guardian (yes, I know) earlier this week by Neena Modi, Professor of Neonatal medicine at Imperial College and past president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, in which she sets out her concern, notably that Countess of Chester wasn't equipped or staffed to deal with really seriously ill babies, and some at least of these children had been identified as such before their mothers went into labour.

If she's guilty then she is currently correctly incarcerated. It does no harm to re-investigate the evidence. If she is still found guilty she stays there. If she is innocent, then its in all our interests to have justice done.

I think the great danger about this case is that a lot of people have started taking an interest but without enough evidence. They were not in the court for the trial. They did not hear the witnesses. They are aware of previous failures on legal systems, such as the seemingly similar Dutch case. And so a lot of people are starting to question whether the outcome of the case was right.

I am always skeptical when statistics and juries meet. In general the great unwashed has little comprehension of statistics and is certainly not able to spot fallacies in the thinking. There was, allegedly, a chart showing that all the babies who died or were harmed happened when Letby was on duty. It has been alleged that other deaths happened when she was not there but were excluded from said chart. Some people suspect that the chart which seems so damning may in fact be an example of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. Others assert that it isn't.

Its surely only fair (to all concerned) to be robust in this.

@benrileysmith

Keir Starmer tells Zelensky that Ukraine **will** one day join Nato, despite Trump’s defence sec ruling it out this week.

Also appears to call for extra weapons for Ukraine (“further lethal aid”).

Readout of their call below. Very much not the Trump admin’s position.

https://x.com/benrileysmith/status/1890337756464689222

Which is all well and good but unless the European powers are willing to fully step up to the mark and replace all of the current US support so that Trump loses his whip hand it is an empty gesture. We cannot do this alone and I hope we are speaking urgently to France, Germany, Poland and the Baltic states together with anyone else who is willing to help.

We need to be in a position to tell Trump to piss off but words alone or modest additional quantities of armaments will not do it.