Best Of

Listening to the news of continuing attacks by Iran, and Israel into Beirut, together with the highly dangerous straits I just cannot see an early end to the crisis

It is a dreadful position that is going to impact all of us and Starmer is finding out the hard way that the government of the day is held responsible for both the safety of its citizens and the economic effects

TWAO was highlighting the ever more serious economic consequences of this disastrous idiocy. Ships in an ever growing region cannot get their bunker fuel which nearly all comes from the Middle East. 3 ships have been damaged. None are getting through Hormuz. Oil production in the ME is grinding to a halt. A variety of essential products are simply not being produced or are being produced in much reduced quantities. Several eastern countries are already restricting the days on which you can use your vehicle. Some are down to a 4 day week. The urgency of bringing this madness to an end grows by the day. Its Washington and Israel that need regime change.

2024 - two years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine precipitated an inflation crisis - was a year where every incumbent government lost re-election, with the sole exception of the FF-FG coalition in Ireland.

On a similar basis I think we should expect every election in 2028 to see the defeat of the incumbent government, save those insulated from economic reality by a massive corporate tax windfall.

Are they really doing this?

"UK wildlife to replace historical figures like Churchill and Shakespeare on banknotes
King Charles' portrait will continue to appear on the next series of notes - but they will "showcase the UK's rich and varied wildlife"."

https://news.sky.com/story/uk-wildlife-to-replace-historical-figures-on-next-series-of-banknotes-13518137

That consultation is news to me, and a sample of 44k seems very low to make such a significant change.

How boring.

Might I suggest that nothing ever gets done in the country because of the attitude that bank note design is “such a significant change” and a consultation with 44,000 is insufficient?

Consultation culture is out of control.

Looks like the venerable and rightly respected David Davis may be about to get his break in the Letby case.

Police and CPS have confirmed that the Prosecution did not disclose that a key witness Professor Hindmarsh who worked at relevant Maternity Unit was himself under investigation for serious allegations of patient neglect and care from a period at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

This must raise ever further very serious doubts about the original conviction

Big bit in Private Eye last week on this. Its potentially massive. And they are still running an inquiry based on how did we miss a murderer on the ward, when there is a chance that there was NO murderer, just poorly babies on an unsafe ward.

No-one has ever explained where the insulin came from.

The inquiry is due to report soon.

The new news is second order stuff. It’s not directly about the evidence against Letby. This doesn’t change the witness evidence about Letby’s behaviour, that Letby stole medical records, the notes Letby wrote to herself, or the other expert witnesses’ statements.it doesn’t change that the babies died when Letby was on duty and not when she wasn’t.

I don’t find the idea that the babies all died because it was an unsafe ward plausible. The deaths were unexpected, not of the illest babies, which is who you would you’d expect to be affected if this was just poor care. The defence at trial accepted that some of the babies must have been killed.

Why is the source of the insulin some big mystery?

I don't disagree with any of this. However, I do think that (a) her defence team made some inexplicable (to me anyway) decisions at the first trial and (b) may be enough to push her under the bar of reasonable doubt. Disclosure failures, particularly in criminal trials, are amongst the most serious procedural failings. You can't have a fair trial without discovery/disclosure. It's impossible.

The Post Office Horizon scandal was not about a shite IT system it was about human malfeasance, of which disclosure failures were amongst the most serious.

Maybe her defence team were privy to a lot more information than we have…?

I know we disagree on this (to the extent that I am more open to this being a miscarriage of justice then you, I think). Have you read MD's reports on this in Private Eye? There is an awful lot that we DO know about how the trial unfolded and indeed on how the case against her came to be.
The media at the time portrayed the Letby shifts vs deaths chart as a slam dunk. It may not have been in the court room (I wasn't there). However the simple story of X babies' deaths were thought to be murder, the roster was checked and Lo! only Letby was on shift for all is not correct. When the case was being assembled deaths were added and removed, and ISTR some were removed because Letby wasn't on shift.

Time will tell and I hope for all concerned that justice is done. I don't think we are there yet, though. Cases like this are hard. There is an example from the Netherlands were a nurse was convicted of multiple accounts of murder and then later exonerated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_de_Berk_case

It’s very easy to sit here and go, ‘what about this, what about that, cases like this are hard,’ but at some point you have to make a decision. Guilty or not guilty. The way we do that is with a trial. Letby had a trial (and a second trial and multiple appeals). The (first) trial was of record length, about 10 months. The defence were able to challenge the list of babies thought to be murdered. As I understand it, the initial list of suspicious deaths was assembled blind to whether Letby was on shift and showed a clear pattern, backing up what local clinical staff had been saying for months, but of course you’re not going to charge Letby with murder in cases where you know she wasn’t there. The jury found her innocent with respect to some babies, so they clearly thought about the list of babies and the specifics of each charge.

The de Berk case involved the presentation, and misrepresentation, of statistical evidence. No statistical evidence was presented in Letby’s case. There are other similarities and dissimilarities, but ultimately Letby’s guilt or innocent has to be judged on her case, not on someone else’s.

Private Eye, or the Telegraph or the New Yorker are under no requirement to present the case fairly. I think a more interesting read is “Unmasking Lucy Letby” by Jonathan Coffey and Judith Moritz. They attended the trial. One of them thinks she’s guilty, the other has doubts. I think the resulting book gets closer to a fair representation of events.

A well reasoned response, thank you. The only quibble I have is that the chart IS statistical evidence (albeit by the back door). As in how likely is it that she would be the only one present for all these deaths?

I will look out the book. Are Coffey and Moritz under requirement to present the case fairly?