Trying to get hold of Donald Trumps weighing scales anyone know where I can get some. #215lb
Actually scrap that I have realised if you only put 1 foot on them and the other on the floor you can weigh the same as Donald no need to buy new scales.
I thought I was losing weight, but the scales were just rubbing against the wall.
Coincidentally, I was 215lbs (97.5kg) in early May before starting a sustained exercise/diet regime (I'm just under 6' 2")
As of this morning, I was 176 lbs (79.8kg), which was gratifying.
That's an amazing achievement. Don't be too hard on yourself going forward. Expect to put some back on but with luck and keeping an eye out for excess you will level off at a much lower weight.
Thanks. I will admit to feeling rather pleased with myself. (And I'm sleeping much better, not getting heartburn and indigestion when I lie down any more, much more energy... it's a great feeling)
My plan (after our holiday, which was my reason for having a target) is to try to set up a habit of continuing the exercise regime at a lower intensity and keep with the routine of the lower-calorie foods on which I've alighted (malt loaf is great for breakfast, for example, as it's nicely filling), and try to level off after we get back.
Having done all this, I don't want to throw it all away.
Sounds like a good plan. Nothing to say to improve on that and don't descend into a pit of self-hatred/despair if you put some weight on over the holiday.
There is a phenomenon of people doing, say, half an hour exercise precisely in order to be able to have a Mars Bar. Which might not be a viable way forward.
The payment for ex-MPs who lose their seats is going to be doubled from 2 months to 4 months.
And now its going to apply to MPs who voluntarily step down, not just those who lose their seats too.
What absolute grift.
For MPs who get voted out I can almost accept it. Sort of like redundancy. MPs stepping down should get nowt. Do the ones who have to stand down due to being crooks get the bung?
I remember the same debate back in 2010. The argument was that not giving the package to MPs standing down voluntarily gave them an incentive to hang on (maybe even stand on a token basis as an Independent) even when they were clearly tired or otherwise no longer suitable (whether through scandal or simply age).
IIRC I got 6 months' pay, or maybe it was 4, so I'm in no position to criticise. But MPs generally struggle to resume former careers (the idea of my going back to IT after 13 years out of it was clearly ridicuolous) so there's a case for not making seat loss - often for no particvular fault of their own - not instantly calamitous.
Nick, was this before or after the reforms to the system? I can't recall the exact date.
I sometimes get it in the neck on social media for pointing out how much better the current system is than the previous one, and how most of "Expenses" are actually office staff costs.
When I was last employed by someone else, the notice was iirc 4 weeks minimum or one week per year of service up until 12 weeks max. That comparison, unless it has changed, makes 4 months hard to justify.
I still stand by the basic principle I argued in 2009-2010 - that MPs should be treated exactly the same as everybody else.
When a company I was working for shut its office in the UK, they gave everyone 1 month per year of service, plus an extra month. That's not uncommon in high end IT.
The payment for ex-MPs who lose their seats is going to be doubled from 2 months to 4 months.
And now its going to apply to MPs who voluntarily step down, not just those who lose their seats too.
What absolute grift.
For MPs who get voted out I can almost accept it. Sort of like redundancy. MPs stepping down should get nowt. Do the ones who have to stand down due to being crooks get the bung?
Stepping down? It's like resigning. What redundo?
Standing down as a result opf petition = being sacked for not doing the job. Zero hope of redundo, I'd say.
My view is that winding up allowance is a sinecure - they are no longer the MP so the casework should hand over to the new one on Election Results Day ie the day after the General Election.
If they wish to continue campaigning on things as a private citizen, that is their own business, which is nothing to do with the rest of us.
In 1978 the Anti Nazi League was formed to counter the way the National Front & other far right parties scapegoated black people, obscuring the real problems of poverty, cuts in education and in social services etc. Among those who financed its launch - Michael Parkinson. https://twitter.com/Mr_Dave_Haslam/status/1692167314467430681
With John Arlott, was almost alone as a journalist against the MCC over the 1970 South African tour.
Yes I always liked Parkie but I hadn't realised that he was such a top bloke.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
Assuming the DNA evidence, unknown then but known now, was a true bill and not an accident or plant (and this seems vanishingly unlikely) then the evidence today would beat any alibi, ignoring identification evidence altogether.
His defenders today, while a very clever bunch, tend to be of the 'establishment is never right and we are never wrong' school. They are important elements in the justice mix, but need treating with caution.
Trying to get hold of Donald Trumps weighing scales anyone know where I can get some. #215lb
Actually scrap that I have realised if you only put 1 foot on them and the other on the floor you can weigh the same as Donald no need to buy new scales.
I thought I was losing weight, but the scales were just rubbing against the wall.
Coincidentally, I was 215lbs (97.5kg) in early May before starting a sustained exercise/diet regime (I'm just under 6' 2")
As of this morning, I was 176 lbs (79.8kg), which was gratifying.
That's an amazing achievement. Don't be too hard on yourself going forward. Expect to put some back on but with luck and keeping an eye out for excess you will level off at a much lower weight.
Thanks. I will admit to feeling rather pleased with myself. (And I'm sleeping much better, not getting heartburn and indigestion when I lie down any more, much more energy... it's a great feeling)
My plan (after our holiday, which was my reason for having a target) is to try to set up a habit of continuing the exercise regime at a lower intensity and keep with the routine of the lower-calorie foods on which I've alighted (malt loaf is great for breakfast, for example, as it's nicely filling), and try to level off after we get back.
Having done all this, I don't want to throw it all away.
Sounds like a good plan. Nothing to say to improve on that and don't descend into a pit of self-hatred/despair if you put some weight on over the holiday.
There is a phenomenon of people doing, say, half an hour exercise precisely in order to be able to have a Mars Bar. Which might not be a viable way forward.
Andy's is a great achievement. Keeping it all off might be a bit difficult at times, but a bit of up and down doesn't matter. The maintaining of a healthy routine, with a bit of wriggle room is the most important part, and over time gets easier.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
Assuming the DNA evidence, unknown then but known now, was a true bill and not an accident or plant (and this seems vanishingly unlikely) then the evidence today would beat any alibi, ignoring identification evidence altogether.
DNA evidence means these days exhibits are carefully handled and stored to avoid cross-contamination. Not so in 1961.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
Assuming the DNA evidence, unknown then but known now, was a true bill and not an accident or plant (and this seems vanishingly unlikely) then the evidence today would beat any alibi, ignoring identification evidence altogether.
DNA evidence means these days exhibits are carefully handled and stored to avoid cross-contamination. Not so in 1961.
That is true but:
1) The fact it wasn’t minor fragments but quite substantial patches of DNA that were found would tend to argue against accidental contamination;
2) The fact they were actual bodily fluids would also do so. It would more or less have had to be deliberate - and how, and why would that have happened?
3) The absence of any other DNA particularly in large quantities means any other explanation for their presence isn’t convincing;
4) Finally, even if you disagree with the judges that it was ‘certain proof’ (and I am not convinced by their reasoning) he would still have been the victim of a series of coincidences so bizarre and outlandish even Dickens wouldn’t have written it.
The real victim was not Hanratty but Storey, who was not only raped and then shot and left paralysed but was the target of a really nasty hate campaign for decades afterwards from the Hanratty family and his supporters, however well-meaning the latter were (and some weren’t). The best thing about the DNA evidence is it shut them up and let her live out her life in something akin to peace.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
Assuming the DNA evidence, unknown then but known now, was a true bill and not an accident or plant (and this seems vanishingly unlikely) then the evidence today would beat any alibi, ignoring identification evidence altogether.
His defenders today, while a very clever bunch, tend to be of the 'establishment is never right and we are never wrong' school. They are important elements in the justice mix, but need treating with caution.
Some of the "defenders" seem to mirror Lord Denning's remarks (quoted the other day) about the sacred reputation of the Justice System being more important. To them, the sacred reputation of the InJustice Correction System (themselves), is more important than the actual evidence.
On bathroom scales (someone mentioned it but I can't see who) I pursue a strategy of extremes:
1 - I have a set of Maple & Co cast iron scales from an antique shop, vintage 1900, that read up to 20 stone, of which I have seen an identical set in at least one National Trust property - Calke Abbey iirc.
Strangely after I bought these the next 4 places I lived in London were all walk-up (ie carry up) flats.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
Assuming the DNA evidence, unknown then but known now, was a true bill and not an accident or plant (and this seems vanishingly unlikely) then the evidence today would beat any alibi, ignoring identification evidence altogether.
DNA evidence means these days exhibits are carefully handled and stored to avoid cross-contamination. Not so in 1961.
Yes of course. But doing the best you can from the data which exists, you have to consider the possibilities with imperfect evidence. In particular if there is consistent DNA evidence from person X which can now be located on objects A and B from 1961 which was an unknowable achievement in 1961, then sometimes the best explanation is the simple one. More complex explanations (plant, accident) should be looked at but also need a plausible trail of facts upon which they can be based not just a bare assertion.
Also, in each case such as this there has already been a conviction from a jury who alone had all the evidence at the time, including that of the credibility of the defendant.
Why do infrastructure projects cost so many multiples more here than they do in any European country? Examples of road and rail projects given where the relative costs are astronomical.
Yes I get the "NIMBY tax" point they make. Some will say "our island is congested" - but we cost almost double the costs in Japan... Surely a lot of this is the Spiv tax. We pay a lot more than everyone else because fuck you. We don't have StateCo infrastructure companies like France so we get reamed by consortia who have a 47x markup on items as revenue earners. So HS2 costs 8x the cost per mile of the most recent LGV in France.
For all of the public vs private sector arguments, it is telling that countries where it is all done in the public sector have a lot more infrastructure than we do and at a lower cost.
The idea that it’s cheaper to get the private sector to do things rather than the “inefficient” public sector is one of the great myths of our era.
HS2 is being designed and managed at a high level by the public sector, and built by the private sector. The £1.5bn A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme, and was finished early (in part) despite Covid and more or less on budget. It too was designed and managed by the public sector at a high level, and built by the private sector.
There are many reasons why these projects can come in over budget and late; but decisions made early on in the project, and at a high level, can make a massive difference. As one example, who takes on risk for overruns, and how much do you set aside for such overruns?
The vast majority of large projects have both public and private involvement; partly because it is impossible to do anything large *without* governmental intervention at some level. And that's good; but it's easy for one side or the other to throw blame at the other side.
A very significant cost of HS2 relates to the contract. The government wants the consortium to be on the hook for decades for all kinds of unlikely scenarios. That has pushed the design into being built to withstand a 2012-style cataclysm with the costs for that as you might expect.
Had we built a high speed rail line at a spec and legal exposure that isn't insane, the cost would be a lot less.
Another example is the Great Western electrification fiasco. We had lost the industry knowledge to do such projects post-privatisation and had to start largely from scratch. So we ended up with ugly over-engineered masts supporting vastly overweight catenary which required very deep footers.
The cost of course was insane, hence having long sections of route where they did the drilling for the footers and bought the vastly over-engineered masts only for the DfT to scrap the scheme and literally scrap the metalwork. Worse is that there is still one point on the route where the catenary wire has to limbo under a bridge which wasn't raised and then over a level crossing that wasn't bridged. A nice 110mph restriction for no reason than crap design.
Putting it simply, we are egregiously shit at these projects. We spend stupid amounts of cash to get crapola infrastructure.
I generally agree with that; but as the Cambridge to Huntingdon project shows, we can do it well. There are dozens of large infrastructure projects going on at any time, and most don't have massive problems. We notice the ones that do.
I'd also point out the reason we had lost industry knowledge of railway electrification was utterly down to the Brown and Blair governments, who only electrified a few miles of new route in 13 years (Crewe to Kidsgrove). Compared to virtually continuous electrification projects in the 1980s and 1990s.
The GWML electrification mess had many causes; from Dft mismanagement to Network Rail's reliance on untested technology. Thankfully they appear to have learnt many lessons for newer projects.
On the A14, the screw up is that its the A14. Built to the new Expressway format connecting one motorway to another, we've ended up with a blue gap. Was built efficiently but we still can't plan for shit.
On electrification, the issue we had for a long time was the contracts. You say down to Blair and Brown, and they were definitely in office. But the infrastructure was Failtrack who bankrupted themselves by failing to spend enough on preventative maintenance. The franchises wouldn't do electrification at their own cost as most were on 7 year contracts. Labour should have scrapped the whole franchise system but decided they had bigger things to do.
Even after the network and increasingly the franchises were brought under DfT control we still didn't do it, despite having both a rapidly-ageing fleet of diseasal units and a fleet of newer electric units not being used. Because variance in the contract is Bad News for the DfT.
Its perculiarly British bullshit.
On railway electrification, the issue was that the Labour government under Brown and Blair did not invest in electrification. It's quite simple. They chose not to. It is nothing to do with franchises or Railtrack (which ceased to exist eight years before the end of the Labour government).
Compare and contrast with the massive mileage electrified under... (drum rolls) Thatcher and Major.
Labour chose not to electrify, and that led to the industrial knowledge gap that led to the GWML fiasco. It's not as simple as Labour=pro-railways and Conservatives=anti-railways.
The A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon scheme has, IMHO, been a massive success.
Have used it quite a bit this year and it does seem a decent bit of road, very useful for those of us hacking up to Norfolk.
It is a decent bit of road. The A14 was built on the cheap in the 1990s - much of it was just upgrades of existing roads. The western junction with the M6/M1 was an absolute mess until it as sorted out a few years ago; many of the junctions with small roads were and are, poor. The road at Huntingdon was also a real mess, with two major (and busy) roundabouts. The new scheme was alleviated the latter, and also improved it as far as Milton.
There are still issues: there really should be an A428/southbound M11 junction, which would make a big difference to Coton and Madingley. But the whole A14 from the M1/M6 to Cambridge is far better than it was a decade ago.
I was going to say "buy cheap, buy twice", except it wasn't that low cost at the time- just shoddy. Hence this jolly number by the then chaplain of Girton;
Neat illustration of the British Doom Loop, though. Because the act of building stuff is so difficult and expensive, we delay, skimp, faff and cut corners, which then require spending even more when we admit we have to do them properly.
I don't know how we fix that, but it would help an awful lot if we did.
Yes and no. The A14 (A1 Huntingdon to M1/M6) was completed in (I think) 1993. It was a massive game-changer over what was there before, making a brand-new cross-country route. It did its job well.
Thirty years later, the bits that were not new in 1991 - the old dual carriageway from Huntingdon to Cambridge, built in the 1970s - has required replacement.
Yes, Catthorpe Interchange with the M1/M6 was pants. But I don't think the 1990s project as a whole was 'shoddy' at all. It made a massive difference to journeys from the East Coast ports to civilisation.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
Is that true about Paul Foot? From the way Private Eye used to go on about him, you'd have thought he was a journalistic Jesus.
I'm in favour of relatively generous payoffs for MPs as long as they meet certain basic conditions including fulfilling the parliamentary term. I wouldn't distinguish between not standing for re-election and losing the re-election. MPs are elected for single terms.
I would also set their pay at senior civil servant levels while being strict on second jobs.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
Is that true about Paul Foot? From the way Private Eye used to go on about him, you'd have thought he was a journalistic Jesus.
Yes.
He could be both. He was a campaigning journalist who did many valuable things, including campaigning against the death penalty.
But sometimes his zeal led him to overreach. As in that case.
(He also paid for Alphon, who couldn't drive at all, to have driving lessons to make him a more plausible candidate for the murderer.)
Trying to get hold of Donald Trumps weighing scales anyone know where I can get some. #215lb
Actually scrap that I have realised if you only put 1 foot on them and the other on the floor you can weigh the same as Donald no need to buy new scales.
I thought I was losing weight, but the scales were just rubbing against the wall.
Coincidentally, I was 215lbs (97.5kg) in early May before starting a sustained exercise/diet regime (I'm just under 6' 2")
As of this morning, I was 176 lbs (79.8kg), which was gratifying.
That's an amazing achievement. Don't be too hard on yourself going forward. Expect to put some back on but with luck and keeping an eye out for excess you will level off at a much lower weight.
Thanks. I will admit to feeling rather pleased with myself. (And I'm sleeping much better, not getting heartburn and indigestion when I lie down any more, much more energy... it's a great feeling)
My plan (after our holiday, which was my reason for having a target) is to try to set up a habit of continuing the exercise regime at a lower intensity and keep with the routine of the lower-calorie foods on which I've alighted (malt loaf is great for breakfast, for example, as it's nicely filling), and try to level off after we get back.
Having done all this, I don't want to throw it all away.
Sounds like a good plan. Nothing to say to improve on that and don't descend into a pit of self-hatred/despair if you put some weight on over the holiday.
There is a phenomenon of people doing, say, half an hour exercise precisely in order to be able to have a Mars Bar. Which might not be a viable way forward.
Well done @Andy_Cooke - I am a little surprised that you express your weight in pounds. I don't know enough about kilos or pounds to really get a sense of how much you weighed, or now weigh, but it sounds like a significant loss, which is awesome, and I am glad you're feeling the health benefits too.
On bathroom scales (someone mentioned it but I can't see who) I pursue a strategy of extremes:
1 - I have a set of Maple & Co cast iron scales from an antique shop, vintage 1900, that read up to 20 stone, of which I have seen an identical set in at least one National Trust property - Calke Abbey iirc.
Strangely after I bought these the next 4 places I lived in London were all walk-up (ie carry up) flats.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
It's a complex case, Ydoethur, and I haven't the time or the inclination to run through that lot right now. Maybe I'll come back to it later.
I will mention the DNA results, because they surprised me and rekindled my interest in the case long after I had first studied it.
DNA testing was of course unheard of at the time. It is not surprising therefore that the materials used for it had not been preserved in a way that would now be necessary. In fact very few physical items from the crime had been retained. The car, for example, in which the murder was committed had disappeared without trace. Bedforshire police came up with two items which were tested, and neither are terribly satisfactory for very different reasons.
The first item was Valerie Storey's panties which allegedly contained traces of the killer's sperm. The rape scene was part of the prosecution narrative but Hanratty was never accused of rape and it was little referred to at the trial. She did state however that the killer forced her at gunpoint to remove her panties before raping her on the back seat. It follows that she must have put them back on again in the brief moments before she herself was shot about ten yards away from the vehicle whilst attending to the dead body of her lover. This is possible, but unlikely. The many possible questions arising from the 'rape' scene were never asked at the trial because it was not a charge.
The second item,the hankerchief, is even less satisfactory. Hanratty was staying at the time with the family of Charles France, a petty criminal. Mrs France did Hanratty's laundry. It would be a simple matter for anybody wishing to implicate Hanratty to take a gun and wrap it in one of his hankies and hide it somewhere it would likely be found soon.
In these two matters, and the case generally, I think you have to apply a certain amount of common sense. For example, if most of the evidence had long been lost or destroyed, how is it that a pair of panties relevant only to the highly marginal and untested rape aspect was retained? Why would the killer have wrapped the murder weapon in an item of his personal belongings and hidden it where it was certain to be found quickly, rather than say chucking it in the local river or a skip?
In fact the more you know about the case the more the implausibility of Hanratty's guilt becomes evident, but for sure he didn't help himself, as some of your points indicate.
Trying to get hold of Donald Trumps weighing scales anyone know where I can get some. #215lb
Actually scrap that I have realised if you only put 1 foot on them and the other on the floor you can weigh the same as Donald no need to buy new scales.
I thought I was losing weight, but the scales were just rubbing against the wall.
Coincidentally, I was 215lbs (97.5kg) in early May before starting a sustained exercise/diet regime (I'm just under 6' 2")
As of this morning, I was 176 lbs (79.8kg), which was gratifying.
That's an amazing achievement. Don't be too hard on yourself going forward. Expect to put some back on but with luck and keeping an eye out for excess you will level off at a much lower weight.
Thanks. I will admit to feeling rather pleased with myself. (And I'm sleeping much better, not getting heartburn and indigestion when I lie down any more, much more energy... it's a great feeling)
My plan (after our holiday, which was my reason for having a target) is to try to set up a habit of continuing the exercise regime at a lower intensity and keep with the routine of the lower-calorie foods on which I've alighted (malt loaf is great for breakfast, for example, as it's nicely filling), and try to level off after we get back.
Having done all this, I don't want to throw it all away.
Sounds like a good plan. Nothing to say to improve on that and don't descend into a pit of self-hatred/despair if you put some weight on over the holiday.
There is a phenomenon of people doing, say, half an hour exercise precisely in order to be able to have a Mars Bar. Which might not be a viable way forward.
Well done @Andy_Cooke - I am a little surprised that you express your weight in pounds. I don't know enough about kilos or pounds to really get a sense of how much you weighed, or now weigh, but it sounds like a significant loss, which is awesome, and I am glad you're feeling the health benefits too.
Thanks.
The only reason I went for pounds was because Trump's weight had been given in pounds and was the exact same number as my starting weight.
Kilos were added because I also tracked my BMI and you start with that.
I'm in favour of relatively generous payoffs for MPs as long as they meet certain basic conditions including fulfilling the parliamentary term. I wouldn't distinguish between not standing for re-election and losing the re-election. MPs are elected for single terms.
I would also set their pay at senior civil servant levels while being strict on second jobs.
MP should be a serious job with serious pay IMO
Sort of like a fixed term contract? I agree it should be a serious job with serious pay, but it's become a lifestyle, in a decrepit old building that's not fit for purpose, with arcane traditions and silly outfits and ceremonies. Modern MPs mostly do what's best for the Party, not the people (Not that know if it was any different back in the day)
Why do infrastructure projects cost so many multiples more here than they do in any European country? Examples of road and rail projects given where the relative costs are astronomical.
Yes I get the "NIMBY tax" point they make. Some will say "our island is congested" - but we cost almost double the costs in Japan... Surely a lot of this is the Spiv tax. We pay a lot more than everyone else because fuck you. We don't have StateCo infrastructure companies like France so we get reamed by consortia who have a 47x markup on items as revenue earners. So HS2 costs 8x the cost per mile of the most recent LGV in France.
For all of the public vs private sector arguments, it is telling that countries where it is all done in the public sector have a lot more infrastructure than we do and at a lower cost.
The idea that it’s cheaper to get the private sector to do things rather than the “inefficient” public sector is one of the great myths of our era.
HS2 is being designed and managed at a high level by the public sector, and built by the private sector. The £1.5bn A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme, and was finished early (in part) despite Covid and more or less on budget. It too was designed and managed by the public sector at a high level, and built by the private sector.
There are many reasons why these projects can come in over budget and late; but decisions made early on in the project, and at a high level, can make a massive difference. As one example, who takes on risk for overruns, and how much do you set aside for such overruns?
The vast majority of large projects have both public and private involvement; partly because it is impossible to do anything large *without* governmental intervention at some level. And that's good; but it's easy for one side or the other to throw blame at the other side.
A very significant cost of HS2 relates to the contract. The government wants the consortium to be on the hook for decades for all kinds of unlikely scenarios. That has pushed the design into being built to withstand a 2012-style cataclysm with the costs for that as you might expect.
Had we built a high speed rail line at a spec and legal exposure that isn't insane, the cost would be a lot less.
Another example is the Great Western electrification fiasco. We had lost the industry knowledge to do such projects post-privatisation and had to start largely from scratch. So we ended up with ugly over-engineered masts supporting vastly overweight catenary which required very deep footers.
The cost of course was insane, hence having long sections of route where they did the drilling for the footers and bought the vastly over-engineered masts only for the DfT to scrap the scheme and literally scrap the metalwork. Worse is that there is still one point on the route where the catenary wire has to limbo under a bridge which wasn't raised and then over a level crossing that wasn't bridged. A nice 110mph restriction for no reason than crap design.
Putting it simply, we are egregiously shit at these projects. We spend stupid amounts of cash to get crapola infrastructure.
I generally agree with that; but as the Cambridge to Huntingdon project shows, we can do it well. There are dozens of large infrastructure projects going on at any time, and most don't have massive problems. We notice the ones that do.
I'd also point out the reason we had lost industry knowledge of railway electrification was utterly down to the Brown and Blair governments, who only electrified a few miles of new route in 13 years (Crewe to Kidsgrove). Compared to virtually continuous electrification projects in the 1980s and 1990s.
The GWML electrification mess had many causes; from Dft mismanagement to Network Rail's reliance on untested technology. Thankfully they appear to have learnt many lessons for newer projects.
On the A14, the screw up is that its the A14. Built to the new Expressway format connecting one motorway to another, we've ended up with a blue gap. Was built efficiently but we still can't plan for shit.
On electrification, the issue we had for a long time was the contracts. You say down to Blair and Brown, and they were definitely in office. But the infrastructure was Failtrack who bankrupted themselves by failing to spend enough on preventative maintenance. The franchises wouldn't do electrification at their own cost as most were on 7 year contracts. Labour should have scrapped the whole franchise system but decided they had bigger things to do.
Even after the network and increasingly the franchises were brought under DfT control we still didn't do it, despite having both a rapidly-ageing fleet of diseasal units and a fleet of newer electric units not being used. Because variance in the contract is Bad News for the DfT.
Its perculiarly British bullshit.
On railway electrification, the issue was that the Labour government under Brown and Blair did not invest in electrification. It's quite simple. They chose not to. It is nothing to do with franchises or Railtrack (which ceased to exist eight years before the end of the Labour government).
Compare and contrast with the massive mileage electrified under... (drum rolls) Thatcher and Major.
Labour chose not to electrify, and that led to the industrial knowledge gap that led to the GWML fiasco. It's not as simple as Labour=pro-railways and Conservatives=anti-railways.
The A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon scheme has, IMHO, been a massive success.
Have used it quite a bit this year and it does seem a decent bit of road, very useful for those of us hacking up to Norfolk.
It is a decent bit of road. The A14 was built on the cheap in the 1990s - much of it was just upgrades of existing roads. The western junction with the M6/M1 was an absolute mess until it as sorted out a few years ago; many of the junctions with small roads were and are, poor. The road at Huntingdon was also a real mess, with two major (and busy) roundabouts. The new scheme was alleviated the latter, and also improved it as far as Milton.
There are still issues: there really should be an A428/southbound M11 junction, which would make a big difference to Coton and Madingley. But the whole A14 from the M1/M6 to Cambridge is far better than it was a decade ago.
Fun fact:
You can (theoretically) drive from the M11/A406 junction near Redbridge all the way to the M8/M74 junction in Glasgow without changing lanes, via the M11, A14, M6, M6 Toll, M6, A74 (M), and M74. It's basically one big dual carriageway!
The bit I like is going north along the M6, when the satnav says over 100 miles until the next junction/new motorway. Always makes me smile. Haven't done it since before Covid, so I don't know if that's changed.
Yes and no. The A14 (A1 Huntingdon to M1/M6) was completed in (I think) 1993. It was a massive game-changer over what was there before, making a brand-new cross-country route. It did its job well.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
It's a complex case, Ydoethur, and I haven't the time or the inclination to run through that lot right now. Maybe I'll come back to it later.
I will mention the DNA results, because they surprised me and rekindled my interest in the case long after I had first studied it.
DNA testing was of course unheard of at the time. It is not surprising therefore that the materials used for it had not been preserved in a way that would now be necessary. In fact very few physical items from the crime had been retained. The car, for example, in which the murder was committed had disappeared without trace. Bedforshire police came up with two items which were tested, and neither are terribly satisfactory for very different reasons.
The first item was Valerie Storey's panties which allegedly contained traces of the killer's sperm. The rape scene was part of the prosecution narrative but Hanratty was never accused of rape and it was little referred to at the trial. She did state however that the killer forced her at gunpoint to remove her panties before raping her on the back seat. It follows that she must have put them back on again in the brief moments before she herself was shot about ten yards away from the vehicle whilst attending to the dead body of her lover. This is possible, but unlikely. The many possible questions arising from the 'rape' scene were never asked at the trial because it was not a charge.
The second item,the hankerchief, is even less satisfactory. Hanratty was staying at the time with the family of Charles France, a petty criminal. Mrs France did Hanratty's laundry. It would be a simple matter for anybody wishing to implicate Hanratty to take a gun and wrap it in one of his hankies and hide it somewhere it would likely be found soon.
In these two matters, and the case generally, I think you have to apply a certain amount of common sense. For example, if most of the evidence had long been lost or destroyed, how is it that a pair of panties relevant only to the highly marginal and untested rape aspect was retained? Why would the killer have wrapped the murder weapon in an item of his personal belongings and hidden it where it was certain to be found quickly, rather than say chucking it in the local river or a skip?
In fact the more you know about the case the more the implausibility of Hanratty's guilt becomes evident, but for sure he didn't help himself, as some of your points indicate.
Also, I'm not happy about the general argument that any malicious/deliberate contaminator of the evidence would not know about DNa avant la lettre. It doesn't wholly work, because there have for decades been equivalent if much cruder genetic tests for bodily fluids - basically, blood groups and whether secreted into other body fluids (I forget the details, but the principle stands).
Trying to get hold of Donald Trumps weighing scales anyone know where I can get some. #215lb
Actually scrap that I have realised if you only put 1 foot on them and the other on the floor you can weigh the same as Donald no need to buy new scales.
I thought I was losing weight, but the scales were just rubbing against the wall.
Coincidentally, I was 215lbs (97.5kg) in early May before starting a sustained exercise/diet regime (I'm just under 6' 2")
As of this morning, I was 176 lbs (79.8kg), which was gratifying.
That's an amazing achievement. Don't be too hard on yourself going forward. Expect to put some back on but with luck and keeping an eye out for excess you will level off at a much lower weight.
Thanks. I will admit to feeling rather pleased with myself. (And I'm sleeping much better, not getting heartburn and indigestion when I lie down any more, much more energy... it's a great feeling)
My plan (after our holiday, which was my reason for having a target) is to try to set up a habit of continuing the exercise regime at a lower intensity and keep with the routine of the lower-calorie foods on which I've alighted (malt loaf is great for breakfast, for example, as it's nicely filling), and try to level off after we get back.
Having done all this, I don't want to throw it all away.
Sounds like a good plan. Nothing to say to improve on that and don't descend into a pit of self-hatred/despair if you put some weight on over the holiday.
There is a phenomenon of people doing, say, half an hour exercise precisely in order to be able to have a Mars Bar. Which might not be a viable way forward.
Well done @Andy_Cooke - I am a little surprised that you express your weight in pounds. I don't know enough about kilos or pounds to really get a sense of how much you weighed, or now weigh, but it sounds like a significant loss, which is awesome, and I am glad you're feeling the health benefits too.
Thanks.
The only reason I went for pounds was because Trump's weight had been given in pounds and was the exact same number as my starting weight.
Kilos were added because I also tracked my BMI and you start with that.
15 stone 5 to 12 stone 8.
I'm the same height as you, and I find it really hard to keep below 85-90kgs, even with lots of exercise, so well done.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
It's a complex case, Ydoethur, and I haven't the time or the inclination to run through that lot right now. Maybe I'll come back to it later.
I will mention the DNA results, because they surprised me and rekindled my interest in the case long after I had first studied it.
DNA testing was of course unheard of at the time. It is not surprising therefore that the materials used for it had not been preserved in a way that would now be necessary. In fact very few physical items from the crime had been retained. The car, for example, in which the murder was committed had disappeared without trace. Bedforshire police came up with two items which were tested, and neither are terribly satisfactory for very different reasons.
The first item was Valerie Storey's panties which allegedly contained traces of the killer's sperm. The rape scene was part of the prosecution narrative but Hanratty was never accused of rape and it was little referred to at the trial. She did state however that the killer forced her at gunpoint to remove her panties before raping her on the back seat. It follows that she must have put them back on again in the brief moments before she herself was shot about ten yards away from the vehicle whilst attending to the dead body of her lover. This is possible, but unlikely. The many possible questions arising from the 'rape' scene were never asked at the trial because it was not a charge.
The second item,the hankerchief, is even less satisfactory. Hanratty was staying at the time with the family of Charles France, a petty criminal. Mrs France did Hanratty's laundry. It would be a simple matter for anybody wishing to implicate Hanratty to take a gun and wrap it in one of his hankies and hide it somewhere it would likely be found soon.
In these two matters, and the case generally, I think you have to apply a certain amount of common sense. For example, if most of the evidence had long been lost or destroyed, how is it that a pair of panties relevant only to the highly marginal and untested rape aspect was retained? Why would the killer have wrapped the murder weapon in an item of his personal belongings and hidden it where it was certain to be found quickly, rather than say chucking it in the local river or a skip?
In fact the more you know about the case the more the implausibility of Hanratty's guilt becomes evident, but for sure he didn't help himself, as some of your points indicate.
I agree you have to apply common sense.
I'm not sure you are...
How, for example, even if you were right on those points, do you account for the evidence of identification by three witnesses including the victim? None of the doubts raised about it stand up to even fairly cursory scrutiny.
To give you another example, a number of modern documentaries claim Herbert Armstrong was innocent. Did the forensic science of the time match up to modern standards and was it as conclusive as claimed at the time? No, and no. Was the trial mishandled? Yes. Was the investigation botched? Undoubtedly.
Was he therefore not guilty? Almost certainly not. Because while his conviction for murdering his wife was probably unsound and could be explained by a suicide, we therefore have to ask ourselves why Martin was also poisoned with arsenic. And, quite probably, several other people who died mysteriously within a short while of annoying Armstrong.
Is it impossible there is another explanation? No, in both cases. Does Occam's Razor point the way of the verdict, however flawed the process? Yes.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
It's a complex case, Ydoethur, and I haven't the time or the inclination to run through that lot right now. Maybe I'll come back to it later.
I will mention the DNA results, because they surprised me and rekindled my interest in the case long after I had first studied it.
DNA testing was of course unheard of at the time. It is not surprising therefore that the materials used for it had not been preserved in a way that would now be necessary. In fact very few physical items from the crime had been retained. The car, for example, in which the murder was committed had disappeared without trace. Bedforshire police came up with two items which were tested, and neither are terribly satisfactory for very different reasons.
The first item was Valerie Storey's panties which allegedly contained traces of the killer's sperm. The rape scene was part of the prosecution narrative but Hanratty was never accused of rape and it was little referred to at the trial. She did state however that the killer forced her at gunpoint to remove her panties before raping her on the back seat. It follows that she must have put them back on again in the brief moments before she herself was shot about ten yards away from the vehicle whilst attending to the dead body of her lover. This is possible, but unlikely. The many possible questions arising from the 'rape' scene were never asked at the trial because it was not a charge.
The second item,the hankerchief, is even less satisfactory. Hanratty was staying at the time with the family of Charles France, a petty criminal. Mrs France did Hanratty's laundry. It would be a simple matter for anybody wishing to implicate Hanratty to take a gun and wrap it in one of his hankies and hide it somewhere it would likely be found soon.
In these two matters, and the case generally, I think you have to apply a certain amount of common sense. For example, if most of the evidence had long been lost or destroyed, how is it that a pair of panties relevant only to the highly marginal and untested rape aspect was retained? Why would the killer have wrapped the murder weapon in an item of his personal belongings and hidden it where it was certain to be found quickly, rather than say chucking it in the local river or a skip?
In fact the more you know about the case the more the implausibility of Hanratty's guilt becomes evident, but for sure he didn't help himself, as some of your points indicate.
This sounds like 2 + 2 = 5 logic
I do not see how you go from 'someone could have maybe tried to frame him' and 'why were the panties kept' to guilt is 'implausible'.
The Court of Appeal ruled that his guilt was now settled 'beyond doubt' after the DNA evidence - I think its more fair to say that its been proven 'beyond reasonable doubt'. There's unreasonable doubt if you stretch everything to say "maybe this was a frame, maybe these panties were contaminated" and so forth but its a stretch and its certainly not implausible that he's guilty.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
It's a complex case, Ydoethur, and I haven't the time or the inclination to run through that lot right now. Maybe I'll come back to it later.
I will mention the DNA results, because they surprised me and rekindled my interest in the case long after I had first studied it.
DNA testing was of course unheard of at the time. It is not surprising therefore that the materials used for it had not been preserved in a way that would now be necessary. In fact very few physical items from the crime had been retained. The car, for example, in which the murder was committed had disappeared without trace. Bedforshire police came up with two items which were tested, and neither are terribly satisfactory for very different reasons.
The first item was Valerie Storey's panties which allegedly contained traces of the killer's sperm. The rape scene was part of the prosecution narrative but Hanratty was never accused of rape and it was little referred to at the trial. She did state however that the killer forced her at gunpoint to remove her panties before raping her on the back seat. It follows that she must have put them back on again in the brief moments before she herself was shot about ten yards away from the vehicle whilst attending to the dead body of her lover. This is possible, but unlikely. The many possible questions arising from the 'rape' scene were never asked at the trial because it was not a charge.
The second item,the hankerchief, is even less satisfactory. Hanratty was staying at the time with the family of Charles France, a petty criminal. Mrs France did Hanratty's laundry. It would be a simple matter for anybody wishing to implicate Hanratty to take a gun and wrap it in one of his hankies and hide it somewhere it would likely be found soon.
In these two matters, and the case generally, I think you have to apply a certain amount of common sense. For example, if most of the evidence had long been lost or destroyed, how is it that a pair of panties relevant only to the highly marginal and untested rape aspect was retained? Why would the killer have wrapped the murder weapon in an item of his personal belongings and hidden it where it was certain to be found quickly, rather than say chucking it in the local river or a skip?
In fact the more you know about the case the more the implausibility of Hanratty's guilt becomes evident, but for sure he didn't help himself, as some of your points indicate.
I agree you have to apply common sense.
I'm not sure you are...
How, for example, even if you were right on those points, do you account for the evidence of identification by three witnesses including the victim? None of the doubts raised about it stand up to even fairly cursory scrutiny.
To give you another example, a number of modern documentaries claim Herbert Armstrong was innocent. Did the forensic science of the time match up to modern standards and was it as conclusive as claimed at the time? No, and no. Was the trial mishandled? Yes. Was the investigation botched? Undoubtedly.
Was he therefore not guilty? Almost certainly not. Because while his conviction for murdering his wife was probably unsound and could be explained by a suicide, we therefore have to ask ourselves why Martin was also poisoned with arsenic. And, quite probably, several other people who died mysteriously within a short while of annoying Armstrong.
Is it impossible there is another explanation? No, in both cases. Does Occam's Razor point the way of the verdict, however flawed the process? Yes.
Nobody knows if Hanratty did it, Ydoethur, and I don't think anybody ever will but your first point is easily answered.
The killer wore a mask throughout the long ordeal, even the alleged rape. Storie only ever claimed to have a good sight of his eyes and even that in poor light. She clearly and definitely pickedout the wrong man at the first line-up, despite the fact that PeterAlphon was in it and he much more closely resembled the description of the killer than Hanratty ever did.
Now, some common sense, please. If Hanratty did it, you have to ask yourself why a petty criminal and car thief with no previous record of violence and who had never used or owned a gun would travel to Slough by train, wander around for a few hours before apprehending a courting couple in their car and subjecting them to a long, meandering car journey until the early hours of the next morning for no obvious reason before shooting one of them dead, raping the other and shooting her and leaving her for dead before driving off in a way that suggested he was a non-driver.
While talking crime, the Tony Parsons case came to a conclusion today. Drink driving, hit cyclist, failed to render first aid or call 999, buried him in a stink pit and hid the body for three years. Culpable homicide, 12 years.
Big questions for the police too, with the key witness now fearing for her life after possible leaks.
My only objection to the new A14 is its status, because it shows a DfT caught like a rabbit in the headlights. They decided that motorway style roads no longer need a hard shoulder, so the "expressway" concept was born. The new A14 was to be one of the first new builds to this standard and open as A14(M) - a continuous motorway from the M11 to the A1(M).
And then...? They don't have a clue what to do. Too many crashes on too many motorways converted to the new expressway format (no hard shoulder).
Would any other major European government make such a hash of it?
On bathroom scales (someone mentioned it but I can't see who) I pursue a strategy of extremes:
1 - I have a set of Maple & Co cast iron scales from an antique shop, vintage 1900, that read up to 20 stone, of which I have seen an identical set in at least one National Trust property - Calke Abbey iirc.
Strangely after I bought these the next 4 places I lived in London were all walk-up (ie carry up) flats.
On bathroom scales (someone mentioned it but I can't see who) I pursue a strategy of extremes:
1 - I have a set of Maple & Co cast iron scales from an antique shop, vintage 1900, that read up to 20 stone, of which I have seen an identical set in at least one National Trust property - Calke Abbey iirc.
Strangely after I bought these the next 4 places I lived in London were all walk-up (ie carry up) flats.
No one needs "bathroom scales" unless they are competing.
Hmmm. I appreciate why you are saying that but there can be lots of reasons for needing them. Here are a few for us:
a) My wife has the same back issue Mike has. Can't remember the name now. The travel insurance wanted to know her height and weight before insuring her. I guess they are ensuring she isn't over weight (which she isn't at all) with that condition
b) Weighing your luggage before a flight. Weigh you with and without bag
c) We have been asked the weight of the dog before for various requirements. Same process as b)
d) For my Pitts Special flight I had to lose weight - 90 kg limit
e) I also wanted to lose weight for my cycle trip. Weighing myself daily was a real motivator. I went from 96 kg to 88 kg. Sadly several kg have gone back on.
Why do infrastructure projects cost so many multiples more here than they do in any European country? Examples of road and rail projects given where the relative costs are astronomical.
Yes I get the "NIMBY tax" point they make. Some will say "our island is congested" - but we cost almost double the costs in Japan... Surely a lot of this is the Spiv tax. We pay a lot more than everyone else because fuck you. We don't have StateCo infrastructure companies like France so we get reamed by consortia who have a 47x markup on items as revenue earners. So HS2 costs 8x the cost per mile of the most recent LGV in France.
For all of the public vs private sector arguments, it is telling that countries where it is all done in the public sector have a lot more infrastructure than we do and at a lower cost.
The idea that it’s cheaper to get the private sector to do things rather than the “inefficient” public sector is one of the great myths of our era.
HS2 is being designed and managed at a high level by the public sector, and built by the private sector. The £1.5bn A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme, and was finished early (in part) despite Covid and more or less on budget. It too was designed and managed by the public sector at a high level, and built by the private sector.
There are many reasons why these projects can come in over budget and late; but decisions made early on in the project, and at a high level, can make a massive difference. As one example, who takes on risk for overruns, and how much do you set aside for such overruns?
The vast majority of large projects have both public and private involvement; partly because it is impossible to do anything large *without* governmental intervention at some level. And that's good; but it's easy for one side or the other to throw blame at the other side.
A very significant cost of HS2 relates to the contract. The government wants the consortium to be on the hook for decades for all kinds of unlikely scenarios. That has pushed the design into being built to withstand a 2012-style cataclysm with the costs for that as you might expect.
Had we built a high speed rail line at a spec and legal exposure that isn't insane, the cost would be a lot less.
Another example is the Great Western electrification fiasco. We had lost the industry knowledge to do such projects post-privatisation and had to start largely from scratch. So we ended up with ugly over-engineered masts supporting vastly overweight catenary which required very deep footers.
The cost of course was insane, hence having long sections of route where they did the drilling for the footers and bought the vastly over-engineered masts only for the DfT to scrap the scheme and literally scrap the metalwork. Worse is that there is still one point on the route where the catenary wire has to limbo under a bridge which wasn't raised and then over a level crossing that wasn't bridged. A nice 110mph restriction for no reason than crap design.
Putting it simply, we are egregiously shit at these projects. We spend stupid amounts of cash to get crapola infrastructure.
Another issue is Government continually changing the specs of projects. Euston HS2 station has more than doubled in cost from £2.4 billion to £4.8 billion largely because the Government kept changing the plans.
For HS2 as a whole the simple truth is the original project was massively under costed because that was the only way to get approval.
Bart likes to blame NIMBYism for these things because that is his pet obsession but that is rarely the reason. Crossrail was £4 billion over budget and 3 years late in part because of design and execution flaws in signalling and safety testing.
NIMBYism isn't the reason projects cost so much in this country. Poor planning and management, a lot of it due to short termism and changing priorities resulting from changing political climates which developers want to be insulated against financially play a massive part especially when so many people see some of these projects as costly and unnecessary white elephants.
Nimbyism is definitely not the sole reason for problems. But it is the easiest and quickest to fix.
The US chose to take ab initios only - no Fulcrum/Flanker drivers. Probably wise. There are 6 of them in the UK now learning English (hopefully not in the North East) then they are going to Cazaux in France to fly the Alpha. Adl'A presumably have this capacity as they are switching to PC-21.
F-16 'B' Course is 40 weeks which qualifies you to be the wingman of somebody who knows what they are doing. The US lavishes a lot of time on trainees with survival training etc. Presumably Ukraine don't give a fuck about any of that so they might be able to chop 5-6 weeks out of the program.
Start to finish F-16 training for US crew is about 950 days elapsed which is amazingly fast. It takes the RAF 6-7 years to get an acne strewn oik combat ready on a Typhoon gun squadron.
They actually get them ready at all? I'm impressed.
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
On bathroom scales (someone mentioned it but I can't see who) I pursue a strategy of extremes:
1 - I have a set of Maple & Co cast iron scales from an antique shop, vintage 1900, that read up to 20 stone, of which I have seen an identical set in at least one National Trust property - Calke Abbey iirc.
Strangely after I bought these the next 4 places I lived in London were all walk-up (ie carry up) flats.
No one needs "bathroom scales" unless they are competing.
Hmmm. I appreciate why you are saying that but there can be lots of reasons for needing them. Here are a few for us:
a) My wife has the same back issue Mike has. Can't remember the name now. The travel insurance wanted to know her height and weight before insuring her. I guess they are ensuring she isn't over weight (which she isn't at all) with that condition
b) Weighing your luggage before a flight. Weigh you with and without bag
c) We have been asked the weight of the dog before for various requirements. Same process as b)
d) For my Pitts Special flight I had to lose weight - 90 kg limit
e) I also wanted to lose weight for my cycle trip. Weighing myself daily was a real motivator. I went from 96 kg to 88 kg. Sadly several kg have gone back on.
I'm sure others can add to the list.
Weighing heavy parcels eg of books so one can book them for collection by Postie Pat - the digital scales these days seem accurate enough where my Lakeland cooking and letter scales won't weigh over 5kg.
On bathroom scales (someone mentioned it but I can't see who) I pursue a strategy of extremes:
1 - I have a set of Maple & Co cast iron scales from an antique shop, vintage 1900, that read up to 20 stone, of which I have seen an identical set in at least one National Trust property - Calke Abbey iirc.
Strangely after I bought these the next 4 places I lived in London were all walk-up (ie carry up) flats.
No one needs "bathroom scales" unless they are competing.
Hmmm. I appreciate why you are saying that but there can be lots of reasons for needing them. Here are a few for us:
a) My wife has the same back issue Mike has. Can't remember the name now. The travel insurance wanted to know her height and weight before insuring her. I guess they are ensuring she isn't over weight (which she isn't at all) with that condition
b) Weighing your luggage before a flight. Weigh you with and without bag
c) We have been asked the weight of the dog before for various requirements. Same process as b)
d) For my Pitts Special flight I had to lose weight - 90 kg limit
e) I also wanted to lose weight for my cycle trip. Weighing myself daily was a real motivator. I went from 96 kg to 88 kg. Sadly several kg have gone back on.
I'm sure others can add to the list.
Lost 15kg a few years ago, daily measurements (and lots of data analysis with Garmin etc) is the best motivator for me.
The payment for ex-MPs who lose their seats is going to be doubled from 2 months to 4 months.
And now its going to apply to MPs who voluntarily step down, not just those who lose their seats too.
What absolute grift.
For MPs who get voted out I can almost accept it. Sort of like redundancy. MPs stepping down should get nowt. Do the ones who have to stand down due to being crooks get the bung?
I remember the same debate back in 2010. The argument was that not giving the package to MPs standing down voluntarily gave them an incentive to hang on (maybe even stand on a token basis as an Independent) even when they were clearly tired or otherwise no longer suitable (whether through scandal or simply age).
IIRC I got 6 months' pay, or maybe it was 4, so I'm in no position to criticise. But MPs generally struggle to resume former careers (the idea of my going back to IT after 13 years out of it was clearly ridicuolous) so there's a case for not making seat loss - often for no particvular fault of their own - not instantly calamitous.
There's no easy answer, it just doesn't play well with people struggling to pay the mortgage. MPs, rightly or wrongly, all seem like they're on the gravy train, not subject to the same stresses and rules the rest of us follow. We're all told we have to look after ourselves, put a bit away for a rainy day, plan for retirement, have an emergency fund. Can't afford your bills, even though youre working, or lost your job? Tough shit. MPs? Just milk it for as long as you can, then when you've had enough or get voted out, the old boys/girls network will sort you out. Here's a few grand to tide you over until the directorship/charity job/ company you lobbied for job kicks in. Might be harsh, but it's how it appears.
Certainly true that frontbenchers often go onto lucrative directorships and advisor roles. Far less so for the backbenchers.
I don't have an issue with MP "redundancy" packages, but people who leave their job of their own free will don't get paid off. I hear the cries of " MPs deserve special treatment as they give up their lives to serve us". I don't subscribe to that, but let's be generous, but they still should have to do what the rest of us do. Plan. Save. Keep your skills up, retrain. Live a normal life, with the same jeopardy of employment as the rest of us. If I left my job after 14 years of my own violition I'd get nothing. Why should an MP get a payoff?
MPs are different in some ways, and that's fine, but if they choose to go at a time they want? Don't get why they need more, feels like they can get everything in order
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
It's a complex case, Ydoethur, and I haven't the time or the inclination to run through that lot right now. Maybe I'll come back to it later.
I will mention the DNA results, because they surprised me and rekindled my interest in the case long after I had first studied it.
DNA testing was of course unheard of at the time. It is not surprising therefore that the materials used for it had not been preserved in a way that would now be necessary. In fact very few physical items from the crime had been retained. The car, for example, in which the murder was committed had disappeared without trace. Bedforshire police came up with two items which were tested, and neither are terribly satisfactory for very different reasons.
The first item was Valerie Storey's panties which allegedly contained traces of the killer's sperm. The rape scene was part of the prosecution narrative but Hanratty was never accused of rape and it was little referred to at the trial. She did state however that the killer forced her at gunpoint to remove her panties before raping her on the back seat. It follows that she must have put them back on again in the brief moments before she herself was shot about ten yards away from the vehicle whilst attending to the dead body of her lover. This is possible, but unlikely. The many possible questions arising from the 'rape' scene were never asked at the trial because it was not a charge.
The second item,the hankerchief, is even less satisfactory. Hanratty was staying at the time with the family of Charles France, a petty criminal. Mrs France did Hanratty's laundry. It would be a simple matter for anybody wishing to implicate Hanratty to take a gun and wrap it in one of his hankies and hide it somewhere it would likely be found soon.
In these two matters, and the case generally, I think you have to apply a certain amount of common sense. For example, if most of the evidence had long been lost or destroyed, how is it that a pair of panties relevant only to the highly marginal and untested rape aspect was retained? Why would the killer have wrapped the murder weapon in an item of his personal belongings and hidden it where it was certain to be found quickly, rather than say chucking it in the local river or a skip?
In fact the more you know about the case the more the implausibility of Hanratty's guilt becomes evident, but for sure he didn't help himself, as some of your points indicate.
I agree you have to apply common sense.
I'm not sure you are...
How, for example, even if you were right on those points, do you account for the evidence of identification by three witnesses including the victim? None of the doubts raised about it stand up to even fairly cursory scrutiny.
To give you another example, a number of modern documentaries claim Herbert Armstrong was innocent. Did the forensic science of the time match up to modern standards and was it as conclusive as claimed at the time? No, and no. Was the trial mishandled? Yes. Was the investigation botched? Undoubtedly.
Was he therefore not guilty? Almost certainly not. Because while his conviction for murdering his wife was probably unsound and could be explained by a suicide, we therefore have to ask ourselves why Martin was also poisoned with arsenic. And, quite probably, several other people who died mysteriously within a short while of annoying Armstrong.
Is it impossible there is another explanation? No, in both cases. Does Occam's Razor point the way of the verdict, however flawed the process? Yes.
Nobody knows if Hanratty did it, Ydoethur, and I don't think anybody ever will but your first point is easily answered.
The killer wore a mask throughout the long ordeal, even the alleged rape. Storie only ever claimed to have a good sight of his eyes and even that in poor light. She clearly and definitely pickedout the wrong man at the first line-up, despite the fact that PeterAlphon was in it and he much more closely resembled the description of the killer than Hanratty ever did.
Now, some common sense, please. If Hanratty did it, you have to ask yourself why a petty criminal and car thief with no previous record of violence and who had never used or owned a gun would travel to Slough by train, wander around for a few hours before apprehending a courting couple in their car and subjecting them to a long, meandering car journey until the early hours of the next morning for no obvious reason before shooting one of them dead, raping the other and shooting her and leaving her for dead before driving off in a way that suggested he was a non-driver.
There's more, but other things to do now.
Shame, because it's a fascinating case.
Riiiight...
I'm not sure what you've been reading but it clearly isn't correct. Alphon definitely did not fit the profile of the killer more closely. That was claimed by Foot, but it wasn't true. Hanratty, for example, had blue eyes, not brown.
He also did not take 'a long meandering car journey.' That was a mistake by the Hanratty solicitors (possibly deliberate as they were claiming police withholding of the umpteen thousand 'sightings' of Morris Minors were significant). He travelled it would seem about 80 miles. Not crazily out of the direct way to where the car was found particularly when you include Gregsten's driving the day before.
The lack of motive is indeed a puzzle. But that applies to absolutely any candidate, including Alphon. The most plausible theory is that Hanratty (who by the way had talked of owning a gun before, whether truthfully or not) was planning to up his game in the crime stakes and start a career as an armed robber, because he was bored of car stealing and not making enough money from it.
As for the last, I agree that's one thing that's inconsistent (and said that at the start). However, it is possible his poor driving was was simply caused by stress. He had just murdered (as he thought) two people. As you note, previously he had not committed acts of violence. Maybe his hands and feet simply felt a bit odd.
You are also again overlooking that his hotel room had cartridge cases in it - this was claimed by the defence to be a plant, but seems more to have been a coincidence - and that he had boasted of using bus seats as a hiding place.
Put it this way, the chain of coincidence if he was innocent is too long to be coincidence. It would have to be a fit up and it seems to be a very odd one (would the police get Hanratty to toss himself off over exhibits, which is what must have occurred if he was innocent)? And you then ask yourself, what was their motive? True, many police then and now are crooks, but why pick on Hanratty?
The issue is that every single piece of evidence we have points to Hanratty, while anything that points away is either not compelling, not conclusive or fabricated.
The real issue in muddying the waters is that he became a poster boy for the abolish hanging brigade. Which had a noble cause that they didn't always follow in a noble fashion.
On bathroom scales (someone mentioned it but I can't see who) I pursue a strategy of extremes:
1 - I have a set of Maple & Co cast iron scales from an antique shop, vintage 1900, that read up to 20 stone, of which I have seen an identical set in at least one National Trust property - Calke Abbey iirc.
Strangely after I bought these the next 4 places I lived in London were all walk-up (ie carry up) flats.
No one needs "bathroom scales" unless they are competing.
Hmmm. I appreciate why you are saying that but there can be lots of reasons for needing them. Here are a few for us:
a) My wife has the same back issue Mike has. Can't remember the name now. The travel insurance wanted to know her height and weight before insuring her. I guess they are ensuring she isn't over weight (which she isn't at all) with that condition
b) Weighing your luggage before a flight. Weigh you with and without bag
c) We have been asked the weight of the dog before for various requirements. Same process as b)
d) For my Pitts Special flight I had to lose weight - 90 kg limit
e) I also wanted to lose weight for my cycle trip. Weighing myself daily was a real motivator. I went from 96 kg to 88 kg. Sadly several kg have gone back on.
I'm sure others can add to the list.
Lost 15kg a few years ago, daily measurements (and lots of data analysis with Garmin etc) is the best motivator for me.
Agreed. Whenever I've made a proper effort to lose weight that has really helped.
On bathroom scales (someone mentioned it but I can't see who) I pursue a strategy of extremes:
1 - I have a set of Maple & Co cast iron scales from an antique shop, vintage 1900, that read up to 20 stone, of which I have seen an identical set in at least one National Trust property - Calke Abbey iirc.
Strangely after I bought these the next 4 places I lived in London were all walk-up (ie carry up) flats.
No one needs "bathroom scales" unless they are competing.
Hmmm. I appreciate why you are saying that but there can be lots of reasons for needing them. Here are a few for us:
a) My wife has the same back issue Mike has. Can't remember the name now. The travel insurance wanted to know her height and weight before insuring her. I guess they are ensuring she isn't over weight (which she isn't at all) with that condition
b) Weighing your luggage before a flight. Weigh you with and without bag
c) We have been asked the weight of the dog before for various requirements. Same process as b)
d) For my Pitts Special flight I had to lose weight - 90 kg limit
e) I also wanted to lose weight for my cycle trip. Weighing myself daily was a real motivator. I went from 96 kg to 88 kg. Sadly several kg have gone back on.
I'm sure others can add to the list.
Lost 15kg a few years ago, daily measurements (and lots of data analysis with Garmin etc) is the best motivator for me.
You can add most sportspeople involved in competition, especially eg boxing or weight-lifting where it is categories by weight.
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
1. Stopping anyone even worse on the Conservative side being PM. 2. (More controversial this) Keeping Socialists Out Of Number Ten.
It's a dismal list, to be sure. But we have a government that has burnt through all its possible ideas for governing, but isn't yet ready to face its date with the firing squad.
Fag end governments are always a bit like this, I suspect. But this feels worse than the last days of Major or Brown. What was very late Callaghan like?
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
1. Stopping anyone even worse on the Conservative side being PM. 2. (More controversial this) Keeping Socialists Out Of Number Ten.
It's a dismal list, to be sure. But we have a government that has burnt through all its possible ideas for governing, but isn't yet ready to face its date with the firing squad.
Fag end governments are always a bit like this, I suspect. But this feels worse than the last days of Major or Brown. What was very late Callaghan like?
Does it feel instinctively like the end of Brown to you?
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
1. Stopping anyone even worse on the Conservative side being PM. 2. (More controversial this) Keeping Socialists Out Of Number Ten.
It's a dismal list, to be sure. But we have a government that has burnt through all its possible ideas for governing, but isn't yet ready to face its date with the firing squad.
Fag end governments are always a bit like this, I suspect. But this feels worse than the last days of Major or Brown. What was very late Callaghan like?
Does it feel instinctively like the end of Brown to you?
No. I liked Brown (I'm possibly the only person on here who does)
I'm in favour of relatively generous payoffs for MPs as long as they meet certain basic conditions including fulfilling the parliamentary term. I wouldn't distinguish between not standing for re-election and losing the re-election. MPs are elected for single terms.
I would also set their pay at senior civil servant levels while being strict on second jobs.
MP should be a serious job with serious pay IMO
Sort of like a fixed term contract? I agree it should be a serious job with serious pay, but it's become a lifestyle, in a decrepit old building that's not fit for purpose, with arcane traditions and silly outfits and ceremonies. Modern MPs mostly do what's best for the Party, not the people (Not that know if it was any different back in the day)
If it's a fixed term contract MPs would be paid at a much higher rate for the level of the job they are doing. I was thinking more of a senior civil service job at a senior civil service salary, where the bonus, subject to conditions, compensates for the lack of job security.
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
1. Stopping anyone even worse on the Conservative side being PM. 2. (More controversial this) Keeping Socialists Out Of Number Ten.
It's a dismal list, to be sure. But we have a government that has burnt through all its possible ideas for governing, but isn't yet ready to face its date with the firing squad.
Fag end governments are always a bit like this, I suspect. But this feels worse than the last days of Major or Brown. What was very late Callaghan like?
IIRC Life was getting better. The wave of strikes had stopped or at least quietened down. Indeed if Callaghan hadn't lost that vote of confidence due to the non-appearance of an Irish MP things would've gone on a few more months before the next election, which while the Tories would probably have won it would've been closer.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
It's a complex case, Ydoethur, and I haven't the time or the inclination to run through that lot right now. Maybe I'll come back to it later.
I will mention the DNA results, because they surprised me and rekindled my interest in the case long after I had first studied it.
DNA testing was of course unheard of at the time. It is not surprising therefore that the materials used for it had not been preserved in a way that would now be necessary. In fact very few physical items from the crime had been retained. The car, for example, in which the murder was committed had disappeared without trace. Bedforshire police came up with two items which were tested, and neither are terribly satisfactory for very different reasons.
The first item was Valerie Storey's panties which allegedly contained traces of the killer's sperm. The rape scene was part of the prosecution narrative but Hanratty was never accused of rape and it was little referred to at the trial. She did state however that the killer forced her at gunpoint to remove her panties before raping her on the back seat. It follows that she must have put them back on again in the brief moments before she herself was shot about ten yards away from the vehicle whilst attending to the dead body of her lover. This is possible, but unlikely. The many possible questions arising from the 'rape' scene were never asked at the trial because it was not a charge.
The second item,the hankerchief, is even less satisfactory. Hanratty was staying at the time with the family of Charles France, a petty criminal. Mrs France did Hanratty's laundry. It would be a simple matter for anybody wishing to implicate Hanratty to take a gun and wrap it in one of his hankies and hide it somewhere it would likely be found soon.
In these two matters, and the case generally, I think you have to apply a certain amount of common sense. For example, if most of the evidence had long been lost or destroyed, how is it that a pair of panties relevant only to the highly marginal and untested rape aspect was retained? Why would the killer have wrapped the murder weapon in an item of his personal belongings and hidden it where it was certain to be found quickly, rather than say chucking it in the local river or a skip?
In fact the more you know about the case the more the implausibility of Hanratty's guilt becomes evident, but for sure he didn't help himself, as some of your points indicate.
That won't do. You are pulling punches. The case for Hanratty has to deal with the toughest points. In questioning the DNA evidence on the clothing, what you appear to assert, without saying it, is that this evidence -clothing and forensic detail - has been manufactured. The idea that it is odd it was preserved is not relevant to the DNA findings from it if as a matter of fact it was preserved.
As this alone is enough for conviction, the point needs dealing with.
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
1. Stopping anyone even worse on the Conservative side being PM. 2. (More controversial this) Keeping Socialists Out Of Number Ten.
It's a dismal list, to be sure. But we have a government that has burnt through all its possible ideas for governing, but isn't yet ready to face its date with the firing squad.
Fag end governments are always a bit like this, I suspect. But this feels worse than the last days of Major or Brown. What was very late Callaghan like?
Does it feel instinctively like the end of Brown to you?
No. I liked Brown (I'm possibly the only person on here who does)
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
1. Stopping anyone even worse on the Conservative side being PM. 2. (More controversial this) Keeping Socialists Out Of Number Ten.
It's a dismal list, to be sure. But we have a government that has burnt through all its possible ideas for governing, but isn't yet ready to face its date with the firing squad.
Fag end governments are always a bit like this, I suspect. But this feels worse than the last days of Major or Brown. What was very late Callaghan like?
Does it feel instinctively like the end of Brown to you?
No. I liked Brown (I'm possibly the only person on here who does)
Worse than that. Brown had a genuine crisis and resulting fallout to deal with and that provided some sort of purpose. And he did a better than OK job at that, and it wasn't entirely down to him that the economy struck an iceberg.
The current government are running round with maximum entropy trying to fix problems which were largely caused by their predecessors. And politically, they're a bunch of pygmies.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
It's a complex case, Ydoethur, and I haven't the time or the inclination to run through that lot right now. Maybe I'll come back to it later.
I will mention the DNA results, because they surprised me and rekindled my interest in the case long after I had first studied it.
DNA testing was of course unheard of at the time. It is not surprising therefore that the materials used for it had not been preserved in a way that would now be necessary. In fact very few physical items from the crime had been retained. The car, for example, in which the murder was committed had disappeared without trace. Bedforshire police came up with two items which were tested, and neither are terribly satisfactory for very different reasons.
The first item was Valerie Storey's panties which allegedly contained traces of the killer's sperm. The rape scene was part of the prosecution narrative but Hanratty was never accused of rape and it was little referred to at the trial. She did state however that the killer forced her at gunpoint to remove her panties before raping her on the back seat. It follows that she must have put them back on again in the brief moments before she herself was shot about ten yards away from the vehicle whilst attending to the dead body of her lover. This is possible, but unlikely. The many possible questions arising from the 'rape' scene were never asked at the trial because it was not a charge.
The second item,the hankerchief, is even less satisfactory. Hanratty was staying at the time with the family of Charles France, a petty criminal. Mrs France did Hanratty's laundry. It would be a simple matter for anybody wishing to implicate Hanratty to take a gun and wrap it in one of his hankies and hide it somewhere it would likely be found soon.
In these two matters, and the case generally, I think you have to apply a certain amount of common sense. For example, if most of the evidence had long been lost or destroyed, how is it that a pair of panties relevant only to the highly marginal and untested rape aspect was retained? Why would the killer have wrapped the murder weapon in an item of his personal belongings and hidden it where it was certain to be found quickly, rather than say chucking it in the local river or a skip?
In fact the more you know about the case the more the implausibility of Hanratty's guilt becomes evident, but for sure he didn't help himself, as some of your points indicate.
That won't do. You are pulling punches. The case for Hanratty has to deal with the toughest points. In questioning the DNA evidence on the clothing, what you appear to assert, without saying it, is that this evidence -clothing and forensic detail - has been manufactured. The idea that it is odd it was preserved is not relevant to the DNA findings from it if as a matter of fact it was preserved.
As this alone is enough for conviction, the point needs dealing with.
It's also a bit of a puzzle that people think it's odd this evidence was preserved. Huge amounts of evidence relating to this case were preserved. The Hanratty solicitors claimed (with possible exaggeration) that they had to review over twelve thousand bundles of documents. Witness statements, notebooks, reports, photographs, physical objects. It was actually very carefully preserved which is one reason why appeals were possible.
It is possibly a point in favour of Hanratty that at least one of the DNA tested items was stored apart from this archive, but given that would actually make cross contamination more difficult not less not a particularly strong one.
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
1. Stopping anyone even worse on the Conservative side being PM. 2. (More controversial this) Keeping Socialists Out Of Number Ten.
It's a dismal list, to be sure. But we have a government that has burnt through all its possible ideas for governing, but isn't yet ready to face its date with the firing squad.
Fag end governments are always a bit like this, I suspect. But this feels worse than the last days of Major or Brown. What was very late Callaghan like?
Does it feel instinctively like the end of Brown to you?
No. I liked Brown (I'm possibly the only person on here who does)
Worse than that. Brown had a genuine crisis and resulting fallout to deal with and that provided some sort of purpose. And he did a better than OK job at that, and it wasn't entirely down to him that the economy struck an iceberg.
The current government are running round with maximum entropy trying to fix problems which were largely caused by their predecessors. And politically, they're a bunch of pygmies.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
It's a complex case, Ydoethur, and I haven't the time or the inclination to run through that lot right now. Maybe I'll come back to it later.
I will mention the DNA results, because they surprised me and rekindled my interest in the case long after I had first studied it.
DNA testing was of course unheard of at the time. It is not surprising therefore that the materials used for it had not been preserved in a way that would now be necessary. In fact very few physical items from the crime had been retained. The car, for example, in which the murder was committed had disappeared without trace. Bedforshire police came up with two items which were tested, and neither are terribly satisfactory for very different reasons.
The first item was Valerie Storey's panties which allegedly contained traces of the killer's sperm. The rape scene was part of the prosecution narrative but Hanratty was never accused of rape and it was little referred to at the trial. She did state however that the killer forced her at gunpoint to remove her panties before raping her on the back seat. It follows that she must have put them back on again in the brief moments before she herself was shot about ten yards away from the vehicle whilst attending to the dead body of her lover. This is possible, but unlikely. The many possible questions arising from the 'rape' scene were never asked at the trial because it was not a charge.
The second item,the hankerchief, is even less satisfactory. Hanratty was staying at the time with the family of Charles France, a petty criminal. Mrs France did Hanratty's laundry. It would be a simple matter for anybody wishing to implicate Hanratty to take a gun and wrap it in one of his hankies and hide it somewhere it would likely be found soon.
In these two matters, and the case generally, I think you have to apply a certain amount of common sense. For example, if most of the evidence had long been lost or destroyed, how is it that a pair of panties relevant only to the highly marginal and untested rape aspect was retained? Why would the killer have wrapped the murder weapon in an item of his personal belongings and hidden it where it was certain to be found quickly, rather than say chucking it in the local river or a skip?
In fact the more you know about the case the more the implausibility of Hanratty's guilt becomes evident, but for sure he didn't help himself, as some of your points indicate.
I agree you have to apply common sense.
I'm not sure you are...
How, for example, even if you were right on those points, do you account for the evidence of identification by three witnesses including the victim? None of the doubts raised about it stand up to even fairly cursory scrutiny.
To give you another example, a number of modern documentaries claim Herbert Armstrong was innocent. Did the forensic science of the time match up to modern standards and was it as conclusive as claimed at the time? No, and no. Was the trial mishandled? Yes. Was the investigation botched? Undoubtedly.
Was he therefore not guilty? Almost certainly not. Because while his conviction for murdering his wife was probably unsound and could be explained by a suicide, we therefore have to ask ourselves why Martin was also poisoned with arsenic. And, quite probably, several other people who died mysteriously within a short while of annoying Armstrong.
Is it impossible there is another explanation? No, in both cases. Does Occam's Razor point the way of the verdict, however flawed the process? Yes.
Nobody knows if Hanratty did it, Ydoethur, and I don't think anybody ever will but your first point is easily answered.
The killer wore a mask throughout the long ordeal, even the alleged rape. Storie only ever claimed to have a good sight of his eyes and even that in poor light. She clearly and definitely pickedout the wrong man at the first line-up, despite the fact that PeterAlphon was in it and he much more closely resembled the description of the killer than Hanratty ever did.
Now, some common sense, please. If Hanratty did it, you have to ask yourself why a petty criminal and car thief with no previous record of violence and who had never used or owned a gun would travel to Slough by train, wander around for a few hours before apprehending a courting couple in their car and subjecting them to a long, meandering car journey until the early hours of the next morning for no obvious reason before shooting one of them dead, raping the other and shooting her and leaving her for dead before driving off in a way that suggested he was a non-driver.
There's more, but other things to do now.
Shame, because it's a fascinating case.
Riiiight...
I'm not sure what you've been reading but it clearly isn't correct. Alphon definitely did not fit the profile of the killer more closely. That was claimed by Foot, but it wasn't true. Hanratty, for example, had blue eyes, not brown.
He also did not take 'a long meandering car journey.' That was a mistake by the Hanratty solicitors (possibly deliberate as they were claiming police withholding of the umpteen thousand 'sightings' of Morris Minors were significant). He travelled it would seem about 80 miles. Not crazily out of the direct way to where the car was found particularly when you include Gregsten's driving the day before.
The lack of motive is indeed a puzzle. But that applies to absolutely any candidate, including Alphon. The most plausible theory is that Hanratty (who by the way had talked of owning a gun before, whether truthfully or not) was planning to up his game in the crime stakes and start a career as an armed robber, because he was bored of car stealing and not making enough money from it.
As for the last, I agree that's one thing that's inconsistent (and said that at the start). However, it is possible his poor driving was was simply caused by stress. He had just murdered (as he thought) two people. As you note, previously he had not committed acts of violence. Maybe his hands and feet simply felt a bit odd.
You are also again overlooking that his hotel room had cartridge cases in it - this was claimed by the defence to be a plant, but seems more to have been a coincidence - and that he had boasted of using bus seats as a hiding place.
Put it this way, the chain of coincidence if he was innocent is too long to be coincidence. It would have to be a fit up and it seems to be a very odd one (would the police get Hanratty to toss himself off over exhibits, which is what must have occurred if he was innocent)? And you then ask yourself, what was their motive? True, many police then and now are crooks, but why pick on Hanratty?
The issue is that every single piece of evidence we have points to Hanratty, while anything that points away is either not compelling, not conclusive or fabricated.
The real issue in muddying the waters is that he became a poster boy for the abolish hanging brigade. Which had a noble cause that they didn't always follow in a noble fashion.
Furthermore if you really are 200 miles away at all relevant times you will produce one reasonably solid alibi instead of two not very good ones. Alarm bells start to ring when a person has more than one alibi for the same period of time even when they are a bit dim.
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
1. Stopping anyone even worse on the Conservative side being PM. 2. (More controversial this) Keeping Socialists Out Of Number Ten.
It's a dismal list, to be sure. But we have a government that has burnt through all its possible ideas for governing, but isn't yet ready to face its date with the firing squad.
Fag end governments are always a bit like this, I suspect. But this feels worse than the last days of Major or Brown. What was very late Callaghan like?
Callaghan's ending was like no other. The country was in real chaos and the Unions were out of control. "Sunny Jim" at one point went abroad and coming back was questioned by reporters about the crisis in the country, He was reputed to have responded "Crisis? What Crisis?" but it turned out just to be a headline in The Sun.
There was the feeling that the country was on its knees, quite literally the Sick Man of Europe and that a change of government was essential.
So we got PM Thatcher, a little known and much reviled politician whose biggest claim to fame at that point was literally taking food out of the mouths of Primary School Kids - thus her sobriquet "Thatcher, Thatcher, Milk Snatcher"
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
1. Stopping anyone even worse on the Conservative side being PM. 2. (More controversial this) Keeping Socialists Out Of Number Ten.
It's a dismal list, to be sure. But we have a government that has burnt through all its possible ideas for governing, but isn't yet ready to face its date with the firing squad.
Fag end governments are always a bit like this, I suspect. But this feels worse than the last days of Major or Brown. What was very late Callaghan like?
Does it feel instinctively like the end of Brown to you?
No. I liked Brown (I'm possibly the only person on here who does)
I liked Brown as well, although I think he was a bad PM outside of his work once the GFC started. He gets no credit for it here but he played a genuinely pivotal global role in preventing that crisis being worse than it was. Outside of that though I think he struggled to know what to do with the top job, and was clearly temperamentally unsuited to it. Compared to the run of crooks and charlatans that have followed him he seems like a real heavyweight, mind.
Trying to get hold of Donald Trumps weighing scales anyone know where I can get some. #215lb
Actually scrap that I have realised if you only put 1 foot on them and the other on the floor you can weigh the same as Donald no need to buy new scales.
I thought I was losing weight, but the scales were just rubbing against the wall.
Coincidentally, I was 215lbs (97.5kg) in early May before starting a sustained exercise/diet regime (I'm just under 6' 2")
As of this morning, I was 176 lbs (79.8kg), which was gratifying.
That's an amazing achievement. Don't be too hard on yourself going forward. Expect to put some back on but with luck and keeping an eye out for excess you will level off at a much lower weight.
Thanks. I will admit to feeling rather pleased with myself. (And I'm sleeping much better, not getting heartburn and indigestion when I lie down any more, much more energy... it's a great feeling)
My plan (after our holiday, which was my reason for having a target) is to try to set up a habit of continuing the exercise regime at a lower intensity and keep with the routine of the lower-calorie foods on which I've alighted (malt loaf is great for breakfast, for example, as it's nicely filling), and try to level off after we get back.
Having done all this, I don't want to throw it all away.
Sounds like a good plan. Nothing to say to improve on that and don't descend into a pit of self-hatred/despair if you put some weight on over the holiday.
There is a phenomenon of people doing, say, half an hour exercise precisely in order to be able to have a Mars Bar. Which might not be a viable way forward.
Well done @Andy_Cooke - I am a little surprised that you express your weight in pounds. I don't know enough about kilos or pounds to really get a sense of how much you weighed, or now weigh, but it sounds like a significant loss, which is awesome, and I am glad you're feeling the health benefits too.
Thanks.
The only reason I went for pounds was because Trump's weight had been given in pounds and was the exact same number as my starting weight.
Kilos were added because I also tracked my BMI and you start with that.
15 stone 5 to 12 stone 8.
So you've gone from looking like Trump to not looking like Trump. That's what I call a result.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
It's a complex case, Ydoethur, and I haven't the time or the inclination to run through that lot right now. Maybe I'll come back to it later.
I will mention the DNA results, because they surprised me and rekindled my interest in the case long after I had first studied it.
DNA testing was of course unheard of at the time. It is not surprising therefore that the materials used for it had not been preserved in a way that would now be necessary. In fact very few physical items from the crime had been retained. The car, for example, in which the murder was committed had disappeared without trace. Bedforshire police came up with two items which were tested, and neither are terribly satisfactory for very different reasons.
The first item was Valerie Storey's panties which allegedly contained traces of the killer's sperm. The rape scene was part of the prosecution narrative but Hanratty was never accused of rape and it was little referred to at the trial. She did state however that the killer forced her at gunpoint to remove her panties before raping her on the back seat. It follows that she must have put them back on again in the brief moments before she herself was shot about ten yards away from the vehicle whilst attending to the dead body of her lover. This is possible, but unlikely. The many possible questions arising from the 'rape' scene were never asked at the trial because it was not a charge.
The second item,the hankerchief, is even less satisfactory. Hanratty was staying at the time with the family of Charles France, a petty criminal. Mrs France did Hanratty's laundry. It would be a simple matter for anybody wishing to implicate Hanratty to take a gun and wrap it in one of his hankies and hide it somewhere it would likely be found soon.
In these two matters, and the case generally, I think you have to apply a certain amount of common sense. For example, if most of the evidence had long been lost or destroyed, how is it that a pair of panties relevant only to the highly marginal and untested rape aspect was retained? Why would the killer have wrapped the murder weapon in an item of his personal belongings and hidden it where it was certain to be found quickly, rather than say chucking it in the local river or a skip?
In fact the more you know about the case the more the implausibility of Hanratty's guilt becomes evident, but for sure he didn't help himself, as some of your points indicate.
That won't do. You are pulling punches. The case for Hanratty has to deal with the toughest points. In questioning the DNA evidence on the clothing, what you appear to assert, without saying it, is that this evidence -clothing and forensic detail - has been manufactured. The idea that it is odd it was preserved is not relevant to the DNA findings from it if as a matter of fact it was preserved.
As this alone is enough for conviction, the point needs dealing with.
It's also a bit of a puzzle that people think it's odd this evidence was preserved. Huge amounts of evidence relating to this case were preserved. The Hanratty solicitors claimed (with possible exaggeration) that they had to review over twelve thousand bundles of documents. Witness statements, notebooks, reports, photographs, physical objects. It was actually very carefully preserved which is one reason why appeals were possible.
It is possibly a point in favour of Hanratty that at least one of the DNA tested items was stored apart from this archive, but given that would actually make cross contamination more difficult not less not a particularly strong one.
There was a case in Northern Ireland where a killer was recently caught. He'd left a thumbprint on the front door of the victim, many years back (80's IIRC). Decades later, finger print technology had evolved to be able to get a usable print off it. The door was in storage in a police evidence facility....
People have been talking about MPs casework, and what happens when MP is defeated. In 2005 the then Labour MP for Braintree had been working on a case for me.
However he lost his seat and I raised the matter with his Conservative successor, had to start from square one again, and was told that my problem was all to do with the last Labour government. I pointed out that it wasn't; it was due to action taken under the Major government, and he wasn't interested.
Just when you think the cruelty of this government has reached rock bottom they plumb new depths .
Requiring Afghan women who are supposed to be allowed to join their legally resident husbands in the UK to pass English language tests when all the English language centres in Afghanistan are closed and women’s education is banned .
It just means lawyers and other Tory chums will line their pockets for years , trouser a fortune and it will be the normal , "lessons have been learned" till the next time it happens. They may as well save the millions they will fork out to grifters.
Looks lovely , but you are not giving us as much output as our previous travel consultant , more pictures please.
Ha, I’ll see what I can do!
Just had breakfast, and will go and explore the city. The hotel was advertising tours to Auswitch, which wasn’t what we had in mind for a fun day in Poland! Local museums and bars, much better.
The Auschwitz tour is a grim day out, and even though we know the reality to see it firsthand makes an incredible impact.
The stroll along the river to where the dragon lives is a pleasant day. Skip the salt mines.
Yes, perhaps if we were here for a week, Auschwitz might be a sobering day of contemplation. But not when we arrived late last night, and leave back to the sandpit tomorrow. A nice walk around the old city and along the river, with the occasional stop for beer, beckons.
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
1. Stopping anyone even worse on the Conservative side being PM. 2. (More controversial this) Keeping Socialists Out Of Number Ten.
It's a dismal list, to be sure. But we have a government that has burnt through all its possible ideas for governing, but isn't yet ready to face its date with the firing squad.
Fag end governments are always a bit like this, I suspect. But this feels worse than the last days of Major or Brown. What was very late Callaghan like?
Does it feel instinctively like the end of Brown to you?
No. I liked Brown (I'm possibly the only person on here who does)
I liked him better than Blair, on a presentational level. Less smarm and false bonhomie.
Kraków’s entry into the Beer Index. Very touristy Old City, probably as expensive as beer is going to get outside a 5* hotel. 20 zlotys a pint, just under £4. Cheers! 🍻
The US chose to take ab initios only - no Fulcrum/Flanker drivers. Probably wise. There are 6 of them in the UK now learning English (hopefully not in the North East) then they are going to Cazaux in France to fly the Alpha. Adl'A presumably have this capacity as they are switching to PC-21.
F-16 'B' Course is 40 weeks which qualifies you to be the wingman of somebody who knows what they are doing. The US lavishes a lot of time on trainees with survival training etc. Presumably Ukraine don't give a fuck about any of that so they might be able to chop 5-6 weeks out of the program.
Start to finish F-16 training for US crew is about 950 days elapsed which is amazingly fast. It takes the RAF 6-7 years to get an acne strewn oik combat ready on a Typhoon gun squadron.
All of which is interesting, but the point stands that the process ought to have started early last year.
The US chose to take ab initios only - no Fulcrum/Flanker drivers. Probably wise. There are 6 of them in the UK now learning English (hopefully not in the North East) then they are going to Cazaux in France to fly the Alpha. Adl'A presumably have this capacity as they are switching to PC-21.
F-16 'B' Course is 40 weeks which qualifies you to be the wingman of somebody who knows what they are doing. The US lavishes a lot of time on trainees with survival training etc. Presumably Ukraine don't give a fuck about any of that so they might be able to chop 5-6 weeks out of the program.
Start to finish F-16 training for US crew is about 950 days elapsed which is amazingly fast. It takes the RAF 6-7 years to get an acne strewn oik combat ready on a Typhoon gun squadron.
All of which is interesting, but the point stands that the process ought to have started early last year.
I have to agree with the reaction of this US vet fighting in Ukraine.
Ramaswamy is a fucking retard. He has 0 military knowledge, 0 geopolitical experience and in general is completely off on shit.
If he wants to put Americans first, that includes helping our allies and fledgling democracies from invasions. The more countries aligned with democratic values, the stronger America becomes. We need internal and external geopolitical strategies to move America forward, and those strategies shouldn't include appeasement to Russia, China, Iran or any other fucking authoritarian or despot country. https://twitter.com/IhateTrenches/status/1695019445188436475
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
It's a complex case, Ydoethur, and I haven't the time or the inclination to run through that lot right now. Maybe I'll come back to it later.
I will mention the DNA results, because they surprised me and rekindled my interest in the case long after I had first studied it.
DNA testing was of course unheard of at the time. It is not surprising therefore that the materials used for it had not been preserved in a way that would now be necessary. In fact very few physical items from the crime had been retained. The car, for example, in which the murder was committed had disappeared without trace. Bedforshire police came up with two items which were tested, and neither are terribly satisfactory for very different reasons.
The first item was Valerie Storey's panties which allegedly contained traces of the killer's sperm. The rape scene was part of the prosecution narrative but Hanratty was never accused of rape and it was little referred to at the trial. She did state however that the killer forced her at gunpoint to remove her panties before raping her on the back seat. It follows that she must have put them back on again in the brief moments before she herself was shot about ten yards away from the vehicle whilst attending to the dead body of her lover. This is possible, but unlikely. The many possible questions arising from the 'rape' scene were never asked at the trial because it was not a charge.
The second item,the hankerchief, is even less satisfactory. Hanratty was staying at the time with the family of Charles France, a petty criminal. Mrs France did Hanratty's laundry. It would be a simple matter for anybody wishing to implicate Hanratty to take a gun and wrap it in one of his hankies and hide it somewhere it would likely be found soon.
In these two matters, and the case generally, I think you have to apply a certain amount of common sense. For example, if most of the evidence had long been lost or destroyed, how is it that a pair of panties relevant only to the highly marginal and untested rape aspect was retained? Why would the killer have wrapped the murder weapon in an item of his personal belongings and hidden it where it was certain to be found quickly, rather than say chucking it in the local river or a skip?
In fact the more you know about the case the more the implausibility of Hanratty's guilt becomes evident, but for sure he didn't help himself, as some of your points indicate.
I agree you have to apply common sense.
I'm not sure you are...
How, for example, even if you were right on those points, do you account for the evidence of identification by three witnesses including the victim? None of the doubts raised about it stand up to even fairly cursory scrutiny.
To give you another example, a number of modern documentaries claim Herbert Armstrong was innocent. Did the forensic science of the time match up to modern standards and was it as conclusive as claimed at the time? No, and no. Was the trial mishandled? Yes. Was the investigation botched? Undoubtedly.
Was he therefore not guilty? Almost certainly not. Because while his conviction for murdering his wife was probably unsound and could be explained by a suicide, we therefore have to ask ourselves why Martin was also poisoned with arsenic. And, quite probably, several other people who died mysteriously within a short while of annoying Armstrong.
Is it impossible there is another explanation? No, in both cases. Does Occam's Razor point the way of the verdict, however flawed the process? Yes.
Nobody knows if Hanratty did it, Ydoethur, and I don't think anybody ever will but your first point is easily answered.
The killer wore a mask throughout the long ordeal, even the alleged rape. Storie only ever claimed to have a good sight of his eyes and even that in poor light. She clearly and definitely pickedout the wrong man at the first line-up, despite the fact that PeterAlphon was in it and he much more closely resembled the description of the killer than Hanratty ever did.
Now, some common sense, please. If Hanratty did it, you have to ask yourself why a petty criminal and car thief with no previous record of violence and who had never used or owned a gun would travel to Slough by train, wander around for a few hours before apprehending a courting couple in their car and subjecting them to a long, meandering car journey until the early hours of the next morning for no obvious reason before shooting one of them dead, raping the other and shooting her and leaving her for dead before driving off in a way that suggested he was a non-driver.
There's more, but other things to do now.
Shame, because it's a fascinating case.
Riiiight...
I'm not sure what you've been reading but it clearly isn't correct. Alphon definitely did not fit the profile of the killer more closely. That was claimed by Foot, but it wasn't true. Hanratty, for example, had blue eyes, not brown.
He also did not take 'a long meandering car journey.' That was a mistake by the Hanratty solicitors (possibly deliberate as they were claiming police withholding of the umpteen thousand 'sightings' of Morris Minors were significant). He travelled it would seem about 80 miles. Not crazily out of the direct way to where the car was found particularly when you include Gregsten's driving the day before.
The lack of motive is indeed a puzzle. But that applies to absolutely any candidate, including Alphon. The most plausible theory is that Hanratty (who by the way had talked of owning a gun before, whether truthfully or not) was planning to up his game in the crime stakes and start a career as an armed robber, because he was bored of car stealing and not making enough money from it.
As for the last, I agree that's one thing that's inconsistent (and said that at the start). However, it is possible his poor driving was was simply caused by stress. He had just murdered (as he thought) two people. As you note, previously he had not committed acts of violence. Maybe his hands and feet simply felt a bit odd.
You are also again overlooking that his hotel room had cartridge cases in it - this was claimed by the defence to be a plant, but seems more to have been a coincidence - and that he had boasted of using bus seats as a hiding place.
Put it this way, the chain of coincidence if he was innocent is too long to be coincidence. It would have to be a fit up and it seems to be a very odd one (would the police get Hanratty to toss himself off over exhibits, which is what must have occurred if he was innocent)? And you then ask yourself, what was their motive? True, many police then and now are crooks, but why pick on Hanratty?
The issue is that every single piece of evidence we have points to Hanratty, while anything that points away is either not compelling, not conclusive or fabricated.
The real issue in muddying the waters is that he became a poster boy for the abolish hanging brigade. Which had a noble cause that they didn't always follow in a noble fashion.
Furthermore if you really are 200 miles away at all relevant times you will produce one reasonably solid alibi instead of two not very good ones. Alarm bells start to ring when a person has more than one alibi for the same period of time even when they are a bit dim.
iirc Hanratty's second alibi was that he was committing another crime somewhere else, so it is not surprising he did not offer that immediately.
Look, I think Hanratty done it but there are clearly problems with DNA evidence being susceptible to cross-contamination, which would likely be thrown out today, and identification from an eye-witness who had already identified someone else and who only saw the murderer with a mask.
The US chose to take ab initios only - no Fulcrum/Flanker drivers. Probably wise. There are 6 of them in the UK now learning English (hopefully not in the North East) then they are going to Cazaux in France to fly the Alpha. Adl'A presumably have this capacity as they are switching to PC-21.
F-16 'B' Course is 40 weeks which qualifies you to be the wingman of somebody who knows what they are doing. The US lavishes a lot of time on trainees with survival training etc. Presumably Ukraine don't give a fuck about any of that so they might be able to chop 5-6 weeks out of the program.
Start to finish F-16 training for US crew is about 950 days elapsed which is amazingly fast. It takes the RAF 6-7 years to get an acne strewn oik combat ready on a Typhoon gun squadron.
All of which is interesting, but the point stands that the process ought to have started early last year.
There are only two good times to do anything:
1: five years ago
2: today
The good thing about the F16 deals with the US and European allies is that they represent hard evidence of long term commitment to Ukraine's defence.
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
1. Stopping anyone even worse on the Conservative side being PM. 2. (More controversial this) Keeping Socialists Out Of Number Ten.
It's a dismal list, to be sure. But we have a government that has burnt through all its possible ideas for governing, but isn't yet ready to face its date with the firing squad.
Fag end governments are always a bit like this, I suspect. But this feels worse than the last days of Major or Brown. What was very late Callaghan like?
Does it feel instinctively like the end of Brown to you?
No. I liked Brown (I'm possibly the only person on here who does)
I liked him better than Blair, on a presentational level. Less smarm and false bonhomie.
Brown was utterly clueless when he got power. I remember driving with the now-Mrs J when Brown took over, and thanking God that all the arguments were over and Brown could just get on with it.
But it soon became clear he had no idea what he was doing, even before the GFC. There was the election-that-never-was, and he wrote nothing on his clean sheet of paper. He spent so long intriguing and fighting Blair for the job, that he forgot *why* he wanted it. Blairism may have been flawed, but it was a thing. Brownism was just a smear in his underpants.
As for him being nice: I doubt anyone who is truly nice would have done some of the things that he did in order to get power. Some of the people surrounding him were hideous - remember McBride and Red Rag, for instance.
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
1. Stopping anyone even worse on the Conservative side being PM. 2. (More controversial this) Keeping Socialists Out Of Number Ten.
It's a dismal list, to be sure. But we have a government that has burnt through all its possible ideas for governing, but isn't yet ready to face its date with the firing squad.
Fag end governments are always a bit like this, I suspect. But this feels worse than the last days of Major or Brown. What was very late Callaghan like?
Does it feel instinctively like the end of Brown to you?
No. I liked Brown (I'm possibly the only person on here who does)
I liked him better than Blair, on a presentational level. Less smarm and false bonhomie.
Brown was utterly clueless when he got power. I remember driving with the now-Mrs J when Brown took over, and thanking God that all the arguments were over and Brown could just get on with it.
But it soon became clear he had no idea what he was doing, even before the GFC. There was the election-that-never-was, and he wrote nothing on his clean sheet of paper. He spent so long intriguing and fighting Blair for the job, that he forgot *why* he wanted it. Blairism may have been flawed, but it was a thing. Brownism was just a smear in his underpants.
As for him being nice: I doubt anyone who is truly nice would have done some of the things that he did in order to get power. Some of the people surrounding him were hideous - remember McBride and Red Rag, for instance.
Just when you think the cruelty of this government has reached rock bottom they plumb new depths .
Requiring Afghan women who are supposed to be allowed to join their legally resident husbands in the UK to pass English language tests when all the English language centres in Afghanistan are closed and women’s education is banned .
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
He stands for people who don't want houses built, don't want action taken, don't want young people assisted.
He's a political bed blocker. There solely to prevent others from taking action.
People have been talking about MPs casework, and what happens when MP is defeated. In 2005 the then Labour MP for Braintree had been working on a case for me.
However he lost his seat and I raised the matter with his Conservative successor, had to start from square one again, and was told that my problem was all to do with the last Labour government. I pointed out that it wasn't; it was due to action taken under the Major government, and he wasn't interested.
When I took over from Sir Jim Lester he didn't (probably rightly) want to hand over all his files, but agreed to pass on info on specific cases where the constituent wished it - IIRC we did that a couple of times. I offered Anna Soubry the same but for whatever reason it wasn't taken up, and nowadays privacy rules make it harder (you're not supposed to sit on data for months in case your successor might want it). We did write to constituents who were in the middle of a case to tell hem how to contact her to pursue the issue further.
In short, I wouldn't expect the handover to be especially time-consuming.
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
1. Stopping anyone even worse on the Conservative side being PM. 2. (More controversial this) Keeping Socialists Out Of Number Ten.
It's a dismal list, to be sure. But we have a government that has burnt through all its possible ideas for governing, but isn't yet ready to face its date with the firing squad.
Fag end governments are always a bit like this, I suspect. But this feels worse than the last days of Major or Brown. What was very late Callaghan like?
Does it feel instinctively like the end of Brown to you?
No. I liked Brown (I'm possibly the only person on here who does)
I liked him better than Blair, on a presentational level. Less smarm and false bonhomie.
Brown was utterly clueless when he got power. I remember driving with the now-Mrs J when Brown took over, and thanking God that all the arguments were over and Brown could just get on with it.
But it soon became clear he had no idea what he was doing, even before the GFC. There was the election-that-never-was, and he wrote nothing on his clean sheet of paper. He spent so long intriguing and fighting Blair for the job, that he forgot *why* he wanted it. Blairism may have been flawed, but it was a thing. Brownism was just a smear in his underpants.
As for him being nice: I doubt anyone who is truly nice would have done some of the things that he did in order to get power. Some of the people surrounding him were hideous - remember McBride and Red Rag, for instance.
Sounds awfully like Sunak.
Brown spent ten years undermining Blair, especially from 2003 onwards. He also set up a large powerbase within the party against its leader. Sunak did nowhere near the same, and mostly just inherited a mess from his two predecessors.
As for the blank sheet of paper: yes. But Sunak inherited several crises, including the after-effects of Covid.
I have to agree with the reaction of this US vet fighting in Ukraine.
Ramaswamy is a fucking retard. He has 0 military knowledge, 0 geopolitical experience and in general is completely off on shit.
If he wants to put Americans first, that includes helping our allies and fledgling democracies from invasions. The more countries aligned with democratic values, the stronger America becomes. We need internal and external geopolitical strategies to move America forward, and those strategies shouldn't include appeasement to Russia, China, Iran or any other fucking authoritarian or despot country. https://twitter.com/IhateTrenches/status/1695019445188436475
Ramaswamy is dangerous.
He's politically like Trump, but less flagrantly self-serving, well spoken, clearly intelligent.
Its not that he's thick or corrupt, its that what he wants does not match what we should want. A free and sovereign Ukraine is in all our interests.
For the sake of Ukraine and the rest of the world, we have to hope he and other leading GOP contenders get nowhere near the Oval Office.
Which is a shame, there are many decent GOP people when it comes to the war in Ukraine. Haley for instance. The problem is, they're no hopers in this contest.
On bathroom scales (someone mentioned it but I can't see who) I pursue a strategy of extremes:
1 - I have a set of Maple & Co cast iron scales from an antique shop, vintage 1900, that read up to 20 stone, of which I have seen an identical set in at least one National Trust property - Calke Abbey iirc.
Strangely after I bought these the next 4 places I lived in London were all walk-up (ie carry up) flats.
No one needs "bathroom scales" unless they are competing.
Hmmm. I appreciate why you are saying that but there can be lots of reasons for needing them. Here are a few for us:
a) My wife has the same back issue Mike has. Can't remember the name now. The travel insurance wanted to know her height and weight before insuring her. I guess they are ensuring she isn't over weight (which she isn't at all) with that condition
b) Weighing your luggage before a flight. Weigh you with and without bag
c) We have been asked the weight of the dog before for various requirements. Same process as b)
d) For my Pitts Special flight I had to lose weight - 90 kg limit
e) I also wanted to lose weight for my cycle trip. Weighing myself daily was a real motivator. I went from 96 kg to 88 kg. Sadly several kg have gone back on.
I'm sure others can add to the list.
Lost 15kg a few years ago, daily measurements (and lots of data analysis with Garmin etc) is the best motivator for me.
You can add most sportspeople involved in competition, especially eg boxing or weight-lifting where it is categories by weight.
I said unless you are competing. Although your sports place is likely to have scales.
As for daily motivation I do see that but that is for a diet. Not normal life. Your clothes and your mirror will be sufficient for normal daily life living.
I have to agree with the reaction of this US vet fighting in Ukraine.
Ramaswamy is a fucking retard. He has 0 military knowledge, 0 geopolitical experience and in general is completely off on shit.
If he wants to put Americans first, that includes helping our allies and fledgling democracies from invasions. The more countries aligned with democratic values, the stronger America becomes. We need internal and external geopolitical strategies to move America forward, and those strategies shouldn't include appeasement to Russia, China, Iran or any other fucking authoritarian or despot country. https://twitter.com/IhateTrenches/status/1695019445188436475
This seems like an obvious example of someone starting with what they want to do - stop helping Ukraine in this case - and then scrambling around to come up with bollocks reasons for it afterwards.
He does seem pretty plausible in his manner of talking if you don't pay too much attention to the content. I can see why people like him.
I have to agree with the reaction of this US vet fighting in Ukraine.
Ramaswamy is a fucking retard. He has 0 military knowledge, 0 geopolitical experience and in general is completely off on shit.
If he wants to put Americans first, that includes helping our allies and fledgling democracies from invasions. The more countries aligned with democratic values, the stronger America becomes. We need internal and external geopolitical strategies to move America forward, and those strategies shouldn't include appeasement to Russia, China, Iran or any other fucking authoritarian or despot country. https://twitter.com/IhateTrenches/status/1695019445188436475
This seems like an obvious example of someone starting with what they want to do - stop helping Ukraine in this case - and then scrambling around to come up with bollocks reasons for it afterwards.
He does seem pretty plausible in his manner of talking if you don't pay too much attention to the content. I can see why people like him.
Maybe it's just me, but he sounds a loon/coked up.
On bathroom scales (someone mentioned it but I can't see who) I pursue a strategy of extremes:
1 - I have a set of Maple & Co cast iron scales from an antique shop, vintage 1900, that read up to 20 stone, of which I have seen an identical set in at least one National Trust property - Calke Abbey iirc.
Strangely after I bought these the next 4 places I lived in London were all walk-up (ie carry up) flats.
No one needs "bathroom scales" unless they are competing.
Hmmm. I appreciate why you are saying that but there can be lots of reasons for needing them. Here are a few for us:
a) My wife has the same back issue Mike has. Can't remember the name now. The travel insurance wanted to know her height and weight before insuring her. I guess they are ensuring she isn't over weight (which she isn't at all) with that condition
b) Weighing your luggage before a flight. Weigh you with and without bag
c) We have been asked the weight of the dog before for various requirements. Same process as b)
d) For my Pitts Special flight I had to lose weight - 90 kg limit
e) I also wanted to lose weight for my cycle trip. Weighing myself daily was a real motivator. I went from 96 kg to 88 kg. Sadly several kg have gone back on.
I'm sure others can add to the list.
Lost 15kg a few years ago, daily measurements (and lots of data analysis with Garmin etc) is the best motivator for me.
You can add most sportspeople involved in competition, especially eg boxing or weight-lifting where it is categories by weight.
I said unless you are competing. Although your sports place is likely to have scales.
As for daily motivation I do see that but that is for a diet. Not normal life. Your clothes and your mirror will be sufficient for normal daily life living.
Weight tends to creep up on you. The week-on-week changes, particularly to your face, are hard to notice. But the scales don't lie.
Everyone has a different way of doing it but I find measurements far easier than calorie counting, for example.
I have to agree with the reaction of this US vet fighting in Ukraine.
Ramaswamy is a fucking retard. He has 0 military knowledge, 0 geopolitical experience and in general is completely off on shit.
If he wants to put Americans first, that includes helping our allies and fledgling democracies from invasions. The more countries aligned with democratic values, the stronger America becomes. We need internal and external geopolitical strategies to move America forward, and those strategies shouldn't include appeasement to Russia, China, Iran or any other fucking authoritarian or despot country. https://twitter.com/IhateTrenches/status/1695019445188436475
Apart from disagreeing on Ukraine, Ramaswamy is Liz Truss magnified. I suppose that's the problem with libertarians. Because you argue anything goes, you have no discrimination for what makes sense and it ends up reductio ad absurdum
I have to agree with the reaction of this US vet fighting in Ukraine.
Ramaswamy is a fucking retard. He has 0 military knowledge, 0 geopolitical experience and in general is completely off on shit.
If he wants to put Americans first, that includes helping our allies and fledgling democracies from invasions. The more countries aligned with democratic values, the stronger America becomes. We need internal and external geopolitical strategies to move America forward, and those strategies shouldn't include appeasement to Russia, China, Iran or any other fucking authoritarian or despot country. https://twitter.com/IhateTrenches/status/1695019445188436475
It seems so obvious to me that we should prefer to see Russian soldiers fighting in East Ukraine than fighting in the Baltic States, Poland, or Moldova.
On bathroom scales (someone mentioned it but I can't see who) I pursue a strategy of extremes:
1 - I have a set of Maple & Co cast iron scales from an antique shop, vintage 1900, that read up to 20 stone, of which I have seen an identical set in at least one National Trust property - Calke Abbey iirc.
Strangely after I bought these the next 4 places I lived in London were all walk-up (ie carry up) flats.
No one needs "bathroom scales" unless they are competing.
Hmmm. I appreciate why you are saying that but there can be lots of reasons for needing them. Here are a few for us:
a) My wife has the same back issue Mike has. Can't remember the name now. The travel insurance wanted to know her height and weight before insuring her. I guess they are ensuring she isn't over weight (which she isn't at all) with that condition
b) Weighing your luggage before a flight. Weigh you with and without bag
c) We have been asked the weight of the dog before for various requirements. Same process as b)
d) For my Pitts Special flight I had to lose weight - 90 kg limit
e) I also wanted to lose weight for my cycle trip. Weighing myself daily was a real motivator. I went from 96 kg to 88 kg. Sadly several kg have gone back on.
I'm sure others can add to the list.
Lost 15kg a few years ago, daily measurements (and lots of data analysis with Garmin etc) is the best motivator for me.
You can add most sportspeople involved in competition, especially eg boxing or weight-lifting where it is categories by weight.
Joe Rogan said in a recent interview, that the UFC has now started doing the weigh-in for fights very early, usually the morning of the day before the fight, so 36 hours or so ahead. He said that the fighters can often get close to putting on 10% of their body mass in those 36 hours! They’ve starved themselves for a week beforehand, to make the required weight, and then go mad with food and water as soon as they’ve hit the scales. Basically, fighters who would usually weigh 180lb agree to fight at 160lb, and can get back pretty close to 180lb by the time they actually fight!
Not much movement on the Betfair GOP candidate market, though - Trump 1.5, Rama and de Santis 9, nobody else under 28. For overall winner Kamala Harris remains wildly underrated at 50 - if Biden didn't run she'd be favourite IMO.
The reason given by the CCRC for not proceeding is very strange. The comment was that there was "no certainty" that the other DNA found on the victim's clothing was "crime specific".
That makes it sound as though they were asking the wrong question entirely. Certainty that someone else's DNA was crime-specific would have proved that Malkinson was certainly innocent (given that there was only one assailant). Obviously, reasonable doubt of guilt is the correct criterion.
Depending on what they discovered, that conclusion might be reasonable. I think the bar is set quite high for a CCRC referral. ...
The criterion is just that "the Commission consider that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the reference to be made ..." https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/35/section/13
The point I'm making is that standard of proof of guilt is "beyond reasonable doubt", so new evidence raising reasonable doubt should result in the appeal being upheld. But the CCRC comment makes it sound as they were dismissing the new evidence because it didn't provide certainty of innocence.
Isn't it reversed after a conviction? You don't have the presumption of guilt any more, so you have to prove innocence?
Not sure about the details of the provisions in England but in Scotland the test applied is has there been a miscarriage of justice which is very different from has something gone wrong?
It is therefore not enough to show 1 strand of evidence has become suspect or even wrong if there is other compelling evidence indicating guilt. I don’t know enough about the case to comment but it is likely that the CCRC took that view, at least initially.
Well, I was thinking more of the Hanratty case, where AIUI the judges took the view that unless evidence proving him innocent was found, there was no reason to overturn the conviction. That's why the family took those DNA tests and were rather horrified when the results strongly suggested Hanratty was guilty.
I think also with Sion Jenkins once doubts had been cast on the evidence the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial not an acquittal, although I could be wrong about that.
The Hanratty DNA results were on inspection rather less compelling than you might suppose but it is certainly true that it was impossible to prove Hanratty innocent and that is likely to remain the case forever, mainly because of the complete mess the police made of the investigation at the time.
Personally I think it unlikely he did do it, but I am sure the verdict will now never be overturned.
Having looked into the case, I would disagree.
It wasn't maybe a brilliant police investigation, but the evidence against him is pretty much irrefutable. Just to run through it:
1) He was identified by the surviving victim who never wavered in her belief that he was the killer. Yes, she had wrongly identified somebody else in a different identity parade earlier, but she hadn't been told that if she didn't recognise anyone she didn't have to chose one. She thought they were asking 'what was the closest match to the person you saw?'
2) He stayed in a hotel room where two cartridge cases were found from the bullets used in the murders.
3) The gun used in the murder was found wrapped in a handkerchief that had mucus on it which matched his DNA profile. No other DNA was found on the handkerchief.
4) His semen was on Valerie Storey's knickers. There was some indication of a second sample of semen, but the question remains, why was his there?
5) He gave not one but two false alibis for the time of the murders.
6) About the only really odd feature of the case was that he told Gregston he couldn't drive, but there could be explanations for that including possibly laying a false trail.
7) Although Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder, leaving aside the fact he didn't match the description of the killer, wasn't identified in a parade and was well known as a psychotic attention seeker, he was paid to confess by Paul Foot as part of his campaign against the death penalty.
8) There was some confusion over the colour of the killer's eyes. However, Storey had in fact said 'blue' which was shortened to 'bl' and misread as 'br' ie 'brown' in the first press release.
Now it is impossible Hanratty was innocent? Not impossible, I suppose. In the sense it's not impossible that one day Boris Johnson might say something truthful.
But you are looking at not only a truly vast conspiracy but one which had knowledge of future DNA techniques to store his mucus and semen to be planted on the evidence at the right moment if he was innnocent.
He might have got away with it under today's rules (this being before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) but bluntly I think it unlikely. Killers have been convicted on far less (Adrian Prout springs to mind) and Storey's evidence on its own was pretty compelling. Staying at a hotel habituated by criminals under a false name and lying about it is also not the smartest idea in the world.
Hanratty himself was said to have been quite open about his guilt when not under caution. He just didn't think it could be proved.
It's a complex case, Ydoethur, and I haven't the time or the inclination to run through that lot right now. Maybe I'll come back to it later.
I will mention the DNA results, because they surprised me and rekindled my interest in the case long after I had first studied it.
DNA testing was of course unheard of at the time. It is not surprising therefore that the materials used for it had not been preserved in a way that would now be necessary. In fact very few physical items from the crime had been retained. The car, for example, in which the murder was committed had disappeared without trace. Bedforshire police came up with two items which were tested, and neither are terribly satisfactory for very different reasons.
The first item was Valerie Storey's panties which allegedly contained traces of the killer's sperm. The rape scene was part of the prosecution narrative but Hanratty was never accused of rape and it was little referred to at the trial. She did state however that the killer forced her at gunpoint to remove her panties before raping her on the back seat. It follows that she must have put them back on again in the brief moments before she herself was shot about ten yards away from the vehicle whilst attending to the dead body of her lover. This is possible, but unlikely. The many possible questions arising from the 'rape' scene were never asked at the trial because it was not a charge.
The second item,the hankerchief, is even less satisfactory. Hanratty was staying at the time with the family of Charles France, a petty criminal. Mrs France did Hanratty's laundry. It would be a simple matter for anybody wishing to implicate Hanratty to take a gun and wrap it in one of his hankies and hide it somewhere it would likely be found soon.
In these two matters, and the case generally, I think you have to apply a certain amount of common sense. For example, if most of the evidence had long been lost or destroyed, how is it that a pair of panties relevant only to the highly marginal and untested rape aspect was retained? Why would the killer have wrapped the murder weapon in an item of his personal belongings and hidden it where it was certain to be found quickly, rather than say chucking it in the local river or a skip?
In fact the more you know about the case the more the implausibility of Hanratty's guilt becomes evident, but for sure he didn't help himself, as some of your points indicate.
I agree you have to apply common sense.
I'm not sure you are...
How, for example, even if you were right on those points, do you account for the evidence of identification by three witnesses including the victim? None of the doubts raised about it stand up to even fairly cursory scrutiny.
To give you another example, a number of modern documentaries claim Herbert Armstrong was innocent. Did the forensic science of the time match up to modern standards and was it as conclusive as claimed at the time? No, and no. Was the trial mishandled? Yes. Was the investigation botched? Undoubtedly.
Was he therefore not guilty? Almost certainly not. Because while his conviction for murdering his wife was probably unsound and could be explained by a suicide, we therefore have to ask ourselves why Martin was also poisoned with arsenic. And, quite probably, several other people who died mysteriously within a short while of annoying Armstrong.
Is it impossible there is another explanation? No, in both cases. Does Occam's Razor point the way of the verdict, however flawed the process? Yes.
Nobody knows if Hanratty did it, Ydoethur, and I don't think anybody ever will but your first point is easily answered.
The killer wore a mask throughout the long ordeal, even the alleged rape. Storie only ever claimed to have a good sight of his eyes and even that in poor light. She clearly and definitely pickedout the wrong man at the first line-up, despite the fact that PeterAlphon was in it and he much more closely resembled the description of the killer than Hanratty ever did.
Now, some common sense, please. If Hanratty did it, you have to ask yourself why a petty criminal and car thief with no previous record of violence and who had never used or owned a gun would travel to Slough by train, wander around for a few hours before apprehending a courting couple in their car and subjecting them to a long, meandering car journey until the early hours of the next morning for no obvious reason before shooting one of them dead, raping the other and shooting her and leaving her for dead before driving off in a way that suggested he was a non-driver.
There's more, but other things to do now.
Shame, because it's a fascinating case.
Riiiight...
I'm not sure what you've been reading but it clearly isn't correct. Alphon definitely did not fit the profile of the killer more closely. That was claimed by Foot, but it wasn't true. Hanratty, for example, had blue eyes, not brown.
He also did not take 'a long meandering car journey.' That was a mistake by the Hanratty solicitors (possibly deliberate as they were claiming police withholding of the umpteen thousand 'sightings' of Morris Minors were significant). He travelled it would seem about 80 miles. Not crazily out of the direct way to where the car was found particularly when you include Gregsten's driving the day before.
The lack of motive is indeed a puzzle. But that applies to absolutely any candidate, including Alphon. The most plausible theory is that Hanratty (who by the way had talked of owning a gun before, whether truthfully or not) was planning to up his game in the crime stakes and start a career as an armed robber, because he was bored of car stealing and not making enough money from it.
As for the last, I agree that's one thing that's inconsistent (and said that at the start). However, it is possible his poor driving was was simply caused by stress. He had just murdered (as he thought) two people. As you note, previously he had not committed acts of violence. Maybe his hands and feet simply felt a bit odd.
You are also again overlooking that his hotel room had cartridge cases in it - this was claimed by the defence to be a plant, but seems more to have been a coincidence - and that he had boasted of using bus seats as a hiding place.
Put it this way, the chain of coincidence if he was innocent is too long to be coincidence. It would have to be a fit up and it seems to be a very odd one (would the police get Hanratty to toss himself off over exhibits, which is what must have occurred if he was innocent)? And you then ask yourself, what was their motive? True, many police then and now are crooks, but why pick on Hanratty?
The issue is that every single piece of evidence we have points to Hanratty, while anything that points away is either not compelling, not conclusive or fabricated.
The real issue in muddying the waters is that he became a poster boy for the abolish hanging brigade. Which had a noble cause that they didn't always follow in a noble fashion.
Furthermore if you really are 200 miles away at all relevant times you will produce one reasonably solid alibi instead of two not very good ones. Alarm bells start to ring when a person has more than one alibi for the same period of time even when they are a bit dim.
iirc Hanratty's second alibi was that he was committing another crime somewhere else, so it is not surprising he did not offer that immediately.
Look, I think Hanratty done it but there are clearly problems with DNA evidence being susceptible to cross-contamination, which would likely be thrown out today, and identification from an eye-witness who had already identified someone else and who only saw the murderer with a mask.
Not correct. His first alibi was he was with friends in Liverpool for three days including the time of the murder, but he couldn't identify who they were or where he had stayed.
He then claimed that he had been to Rhyl on the day of the murder itself and wandered around the amusement arcade. No witnesses could be found at the time who had seen him despite inquiries by the police and the defence. Four years later, the 'A6 Defence Committee' (who were not above bribing people to say what they wanted to, as I noted above) found several people who claimed they had seen him. None had come forward at the time (and AIR it later emerged one hadn't even lived in Rhyl at the time).
So he gave a false alibi. Twice.
Why would he do that? Obviously, he didn't want to admit where he was and what he was doing.
Could he have been committing a crime other than the A6 murder? Possibly. But if so, why didn't he admit to it particularly at his appeal? Five years for burglary (say) is a hell of a lot less than execution for murder.
It's not conclusive, in itself, but taken with the very large number of other pointers, it is to put it mildly highly suggestive.
I have to agree with the reaction of this US vet fighting in Ukraine.
Ramaswamy is a fucking retard. He has 0 military knowledge, 0 geopolitical experience and in general is completely off on shit.
If he wants to put Americans first, that includes helping our allies and fledgling democracies from invasions. The more countries aligned with democratic values, the stronger America becomes. We need internal and external geopolitical strategies to move America forward, and those strategies shouldn't include appeasement to Russia, China, Iran or any other fucking authoritarian or despot country. https://twitter.com/IhateTrenches/status/1695019445188436475
This seems like an obvious example of someone starting with what they want to do - stop helping Ukraine in this case - and then scrambling around to come up with bollocks reasons for it afterwards.
He does seem pretty plausible in his manner of talking if you don't pay too much attention to the content. I can see why people like him.
Maybe it's just me, but he sounds a loon/coked up.
I have to agree with the reaction of this US vet fighting in Ukraine.
Ramaswamy is a fucking retard. He has 0 military knowledge, 0 geopolitical experience and in general is completely off on shit.
If he wants to put Americans first, that includes helping our allies and fledgling democracies from invasions. The more countries aligned with democratic values, the stronger America becomes. We need internal and external geopolitical strategies to move America forward, and those strategies shouldn't include appeasement to Russia, China, Iran or any other fucking authoritarian or despot country. https://twitter.com/IhateTrenches/status/1695019445188436475
Ramaswamy is dangerous.
He's politically like Trump, but less flagrantly self-serving, well spoken, clearly intelligent.
Its not that he's thick or corrupt, its that what he wants does not match what we should want. A free and sovereign Ukraine is in all our interests.
For the sake of Ukraine and the rest of the world, we have to hope he and other leading GOP contenders get nowhere near the Oval Office.
Which is a shame, there are many decent GOP people when it comes to the war in Ukraine. Haley for instance. The problem is, they're no hopers in this contest.
And that they will mostly bow to Trump's will on the matter if he wins.
I have to agree with the reaction of this US vet fighting in Ukraine.
Ramaswamy is a fucking retard. He has 0 military knowledge, 0 geopolitical experience and in general is completely off on shit.
If he wants to put Americans first, that includes helping our allies and fledgling democracies from invasions. The more countries aligned with democratic values, the stronger America becomes. We need internal and external geopolitical strategies to move America forward, and those strategies shouldn't include appeasement to Russia, China, Iran or any other fucking authoritarian or despot country. https://twitter.com/IhateTrenches/status/1695019445188436475
This seems like an obvious example of someone starting with what they want to do - stop helping Ukraine in this case - and then scrambling around to come up with bollocks reasons for it afterwards.
He does seem pretty plausible in his manner of talking if you don't pay too much attention to the content. I can see why people like him.
Maybe it's just me, but he sounds a loon/coked up.
'Post-Zelensky warlord'? America is to Ukraine what the Soviet Union was to Afghanistan? Agreed. The guy's fizzing.
On bathroom scales (someone mentioned it but I can't see who) I pursue a strategy of extremes:
1 - I have a set of Maple & Co cast iron scales from an antique shop, vintage 1900, that read up to 20 stone, of which I have seen an identical set in at least one National Trust property - Calke Abbey iirc.
Strangely after I bought these the next 4 places I lived in London were all walk-up (ie carry up) flats.
No one needs "bathroom scales" unless they are competing.
Hmmm. I appreciate why you are saying that but there can be lots of reasons for needing them. Here are a few for us:
a) My wife has the same back issue Mike has. Can't remember the name now. The travel insurance wanted to know her height and weight before insuring her. I guess they are ensuring she isn't over weight (which she isn't at all) with that condition
b) Weighing your luggage before a flight. Weigh you with and without bag
c) We have been asked the weight of the dog before for various requirements. Same process as b)
d) For my Pitts Special flight I had to lose weight - 90 kg limit
e) I also wanted to lose weight for my cycle trip. Weighing myself daily was a real motivator. I went from 96 kg to 88 kg. Sadly several kg have gone back on.
I'm sure others can add to the list.
Lost 15kg a few years ago, daily measurements (and lots of data analysis with Garmin etc) is the best motivator for me.
You can add most sportspeople involved in competition, especially eg boxing or weight-lifting where it is categories by weight.
Joe Rogan said in a recent interview, that the UFC has now started doing the weigh-in for fights very early, usually the morning of the day before the fight, so 36 hours or so ahead. He said that the fighters can often get close to putting on 10% of their body mass in those 36 hours! They’ve starved themselves for a week beforehand, to make the required weight, and then go mad with food and water as soon as they’ve hit the scales. Basically, fighters who would usually weigh 180lb agree to fight at 160lb, and can get back pretty close to 180lb by the time they actually fight!
I could buy that - weighed myself first thing and before bed on a day I'd had quite a bit to eat, and was up 4lbs over the day (you usually go down 0.5-1 overnight).
Comments
There is a phenomenon of people doing, say, half an hour exercise precisely in order to be able to have a Mars Bar. Which might not be a viable way forward.
If they wish to continue campaigning on things as a private citizen, that is their own business, which is nothing to do with the rest of us.
His defenders today, while a very clever bunch, tend to be of the 'establishment is never right and we are never wrong' school. They are important elements in the justice mix, but need treating with caution.
1) The fact it wasn’t minor fragments but quite substantial patches of DNA that were found would tend to argue against accidental contamination;
2) The fact they were actual bodily fluids would also do so. It would more or less have had to be deliberate - and how, and why would that have happened?
3) The absence of any other DNA particularly in large quantities means any other explanation for their presence isn’t convincing;
4) Finally, even if you disagree with the judges that it was ‘certain proof’ (and I am not convinced by their reasoning) he would still have been the victim of a series of coincidences so bizarre and outlandish even Dickens wouldn’t have written it.
The real victim was not Hanratty but Storey, who was not only raped and then shot and left paralysed but was the target of a really nasty hate campaign for decades afterwards from the Hanratty family and his supporters, however well-meaning the latter were (and some weren’t). The best thing about the DNA evidence is it shut them up and let her live out her life in something akin to peace.
1 - I have a set of Maple & Co cast iron scales from an antique shop, vintage 1900, that read up to 20 stone, of which I have seen an identical set in at least one National Trust property - Calke Abbey iirc.
Strangely after I bought these the next 4 places I lived in London were all walk-up (ie carry up) flats.
2 - A modern hi-tec set of bathroom scales that have lasted fine for about 5 years so far, with an App on the phone that tells me BMI, %fat and other bits and pieces.
I'd probably recommend at £17.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/RENPHO-Bluetooth-Bathroom-Skeletal-Metabolic/dp/B077RXM292
Also, in each case such as this there has already been a conviction from a jury who alone had all the evidence at the time, including that of the credibility of the defendant.
Thirty years later, the bits that were not new in 1991 - the old dual carriageway from Huntingdon to Cambridge, built in the 1970s - has required replacement.
Yes, Catthorpe Interchange with the M1/M6 was pants. But I don't think the 1990s project as a whole was 'shoddy' at all. It made a massive difference to journeys from the East Coast ports to civilisation.
I would also set their pay at senior civil servant levels while being strict on second jobs.
MP should be a serious job with serious pay IMO
He could be both. He was a campaigning journalist who did many valuable things, including campaigning against the death penalty.
But sometimes his zeal led him to overreach. As in that case.
(He also paid for Alphon, who couldn't drive at all, to have driving lessons to make him a more plausible candidate for the murderer.)
I will mention the DNA results, because they surprised me and rekindled my interest in the case long after I had first studied it.
DNA testing was of course unheard of at the time. It is not surprising therefore that the materials used for it had not been preserved in a way that would now be necessary. In fact very few physical items from the crime had been retained. The car, for example, in which the murder was committed had disappeared without trace. Bedforshire police came up with two items which were tested, and neither are terribly satisfactory for very different reasons.
The first item was Valerie Storey's panties which allegedly contained traces of the killer's sperm. The rape scene was part of the prosecution narrative but Hanratty was never accused of rape and it was little referred to at the trial. She did state however that the killer forced her at gunpoint to remove her panties before raping her on the back seat. It follows that she must have put them back on again in the brief moments before she herself was shot about ten yards away from the vehicle whilst attending to the dead body of her lover. This is possible, but unlikely. The many possible questions arising from the 'rape' scene were never asked at the trial because it was not a charge.
The second item,the hankerchief, is even less satisfactory. Hanratty was staying at the time with the family of Charles France, a petty criminal. Mrs France did Hanratty's laundry. It would be a simple matter for anybody wishing to implicate Hanratty to take a gun and wrap it in one of his hankies and hide it somewhere it would likely be found soon.
In these two matters, and the case generally, I think you have to apply a certain amount of common sense. For example, if most of the evidence had long been lost or destroyed, how is it that a pair of panties relevant only to the highly marginal and untested rape aspect was retained? Why would the killer have wrapped the murder weapon in an item of his personal belongings and hidden it where it was certain to be found quickly, rather than say chucking it in the local river or a skip?
In fact the more you know about the case the more the implausibility of Hanratty's guilt becomes evident, but for sure he didn't help himself, as some of your points indicate.
The only reason I went for pounds was because Trump's weight had been given in pounds and was the exact same number as my starting weight.
Kilos were added because I also tracked my BMI and you start with that.
15 stone 5 to 12 stone 8.
I agree it should be a serious job with serious pay, but it's become a lifestyle, in a decrepit old building that's not fit for purpose, with arcane traditions and silly outfits and ceremonies. Modern MPs mostly do what's best for the Party, not the people (Not that know if it was any different back in the day)
I'm not sure you are...
How, for example, even if you were right on those points, do you account for the evidence of identification by three witnesses including the victim? None of the doubts raised about it stand up to even fairly cursory scrutiny.
To give you another example, a number of modern documentaries claim Herbert Armstrong was innocent. Did the forensic science of the time match up to modern standards and was it as conclusive as claimed at the time? No, and no. Was the trial mishandled? Yes. Was the investigation botched? Undoubtedly.
Was he therefore not guilty? Almost certainly not. Because while his conviction for murdering his wife was probably unsound and could be explained by a suicide, we therefore have to ask ourselves why Martin was also poisoned with arsenic. And, quite probably, several other people who died mysteriously within a short while of annoying Armstrong.
Is it impossible there is another explanation? No, in both cases. Does Occam's Razor point the way of the verdict, however flawed the process? Yes.
I do not see how you go from 'someone could have maybe tried to frame him' and 'why were the panties kept' to guilt is 'implausible'.
The Court of Appeal ruled that his guilt was now settled 'beyond doubt' after the DNA evidence - I think its more fair to say that its been proven 'beyond reasonable doubt'. There's unreasonable doubt if you stretch everything to say "maybe this was a frame, maybe these panties were contaminated" and so forth but its a stretch and its certainly not implausible that he's guilty.
The killer wore a mask throughout the long ordeal, even the alleged rape. Storie only ever claimed to have a good sight of his eyes and even that in poor light. She clearly and definitely pickedout the wrong man at the first line-up, despite the fact that PeterAlphon was in it and he much more closely resembled the description of the killer than Hanratty ever did.
Now, some common sense, please. If Hanratty did it, you have to ask yourself why a petty criminal and car thief with no previous record of violence and who had never used or owned a gun would travel to Slough by train, wander around for a few hours before apprehending a courting couple in their car and subjecting them to a long, meandering car journey until the early hours of the next morning for no obvious reason before shooting one of them dead, raping the other and shooting her and leaving her for dead before driving off in a way that suggested he was a non-driver.
There's more, but other things to do now.
Shame, because it's a fascinating case.
Big questions for the police too, with the key witness now fearing for her life after possible leaks.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-66614488
Been an interesting few months for Highlands crime, with Renee & Andrew Macrae and rumoured developments in the Alastair Wilson case.
And then...? They don't have a clue what to do. Too many crashes on too many motorways converted to the new expressway format (no hard shoulder).
Would any other major European government make such a hash of it?
a) My wife has the same back issue Mike has. Can't remember the name now. The travel insurance wanted to know her height and weight before insuring her. I guess they are ensuring she isn't over weight (which she isn't at all) with that condition
b) Weighing your luggage before a flight. Weigh you with and without bag
c) We have been asked the weight of the dog before for various requirements. Same process as b)
d) For my Pitts Special flight I had to lose weight - 90 kg limit
e) I also wanted to lose weight for my cycle trip. Weighing myself daily was a real motivator. I went from 96 kg to 88 kg. Sadly several kg have gone back on.
I'm sure others can add to the list.
He's not growing the economy, he's not stopping the boats, he's not building houses, he's not tackling climate change, he's not resolving the cost of living crisis, he's not cleaning up politics, he's not helping young people, he's not reducing taxes, he's not doing anything.
I'm not sure what you've been reading but it clearly isn't correct. Alphon definitely did not fit the profile of the killer more closely. That was claimed by Foot, but it wasn't true. Hanratty, for example, had blue eyes, not brown.
He also did not take 'a long meandering car journey.' That was a mistake by the Hanratty solicitors (possibly deliberate as they were claiming police withholding of the umpteen thousand 'sightings' of Morris Minors were significant). He travelled it would seem about 80 miles. Not crazily out of the direct way to where the car was found particularly when you include Gregsten's driving the day before.
The lack of motive is indeed a puzzle. But that applies to absolutely any candidate, including Alphon. The most plausible theory is that Hanratty (who by the way had talked of owning a gun before, whether truthfully or not) was planning to up his game in the crime stakes and start a career as an armed robber, because he was bored of car stealing and not making enough money from it.
As for the last, I agree that's one thing that's inconsistent (and said that at the start). However, it is possible his poor driving was was simply caused by stress. He had just murdered (as he thought) two people. As you note, previously he had not committed acts of violence. Maybe his hands and feet simply felt a bit odd.
You are also again overlooking that his hotel room had cartridge cases in it - this was claimed by the defence to be a plant, but seems more to have been a coincidence - and that he had boasted of using bus seats as a hiding place.
Put it this way, the chain of coincidence if he was innocent is too long to be coincidence. It would have to be a fit up and it seems to be a very odd one (would the police get Hanratty to toss himself off over exhibits, which is what must have occurred if he was innocent)? And you then ask yourself, what was their motive? True, many police then and now are crooks, but why pick on Hanratty?
The issue is that every single piece of evidence we have points to Hanratty, while anything that points away is either not compelling, not conclusive or fabricated.
The real issue in muddying the waters is that he became a poster boy for the abolish hanging brigade. Which had a noble cause that they didn't always follow in a noble fashion.
2. (More controversial this) Keeping Socialists Out Of Number Ten.
It's a dismal list, to be sure. But we have a government that has burnt through all its possible ideas for governing, but isn't yet ready to face its date with the firing squad.
Fag end governments are always a bit like this, I suspect. But this feels worse than the last days of Major or Brown. What was very late Callaghan like?
I thought they were all front on, washed out and pasty faced.
Yet Mr Trump was allowed to pose one in the guise of a starving Labrador.
What happened?
Hanratty. Armstrong. Crippen. Richard III
Think of the fun we could have putting the opposing cases and then arguing about them!
Grammar and punctuation matters.
As AJP Taylor famously said, 'he was hanged for making a false statement on a passport application, the usual penalty for which is a small fine.'
But either is possible.
As this alone is enough for conviction, the point needs dealing with.
He was pro Nazi.
Just a pity that Edward VIII wasn’t put on trial for his pro Nazi work either.
The current government are running round with maximum entropy trying to fix problems which were largely caused by their predecessors. And politically, they're a bunch of pygmies.
It is possibly a point in favour of Hanratty that at least one of the DNA tested items was stored apart from this archive, but given that would actually make cross contamination more difficult not less not a particularly strong one.
Just what have you got against pygmies?
There was the feeling that the country was on its knees, quite literally the Sick Man of Europe and that a change of government was essential.
So we got PM Thatcher, a little known and much reviled politician whose biggest claim to fame at that point was literally taking food out of the mouths of Primary School Kids - thus her sobriquet "Thatcher, Thatcher, Milk Snatcher"
In 2005 the then Labour MP for Braintree had been working on a case for me.
However he lost his seat and I raised the matter with his Conservative successor, had to start from square one again, and was told that my problem was all to do with the last Labour government. I pointed out that it wasn't; it was due to action taken under the Major government, and he wasn't interested.
Requiring Afghan women who are supposed to be allowed to join their legally resident husbands in the UK to pass English language tests when all the English language centres in Afghanistan are closed and women’s education is banned .
https://twitter.com/OstapYarysh/status/1694799073600049639
I have to agree with the reaction of this US vet fighting in Ukraine.
Ramaswamy is a fucking retard.
He has 0 military knowledge, 0 geopolitical experience and in general is completely off on shit.
If he wants to put Americans first, that includes helping our allies and fledgling democracies from invasions.
The more countries aligned with democratic values, the stronger America becomes.
We need internal and external geopolitical strategies to move America forward, and those strategies shouldn't include appeasement to Russia, China, Iran or any other fucking authoritarian or despot country.
https://twitter.com/IhateTrenches/status/1695019445188436475
Look, I think Hanratty done it but there are clearly problems with DNA evidence being susceptible to cross-contamination, which would likely be thrown out today, and identification from an eye-witness who had already identified someone else and who only saw the murderer with a mask.
But it soon became clear he had no idea what he was doing, even before the GFC. There was the election-that-never-was, and he wrote nothing on his clean sheet of paper. He spent so long intriguing and fighting Blair for the job, that he forgot *why* he wanted it. Blairism may have been flawed, but it was a thing. Brownism was just a smear in his underpants.
As for him being nice: I doubt anyone who is truly nice would have done some of the things that he did in order to get power. Some of the people surrounding him were hideous - remember McBride and Red Rag, for instance.
He's a political bed blocker. There solely to prevent others from taking action.
In short, I wouldn't expect the handover to be especially time-consuming.
As for the blank sheet of paper: yes. But Sunak inherited several crises, including the after-effects of Covid.
He's politically like Trump, but less flagrantly self-serving, well spoken, clearly intelligent.
Its not that he's thick or corrupt, its that what he wants does not match what we should want. A free and sovereign Ukraine is in all our interests.
For the sake of Ukraine and the rest of the world, we have to hope he and other leading GOP contenders get nowhere near the Oval Office.
Which is a shame, there are many decent GOP people when it comes to the war in Ukraine. Haley for instance. The problem is, they're no hopers in this contest.
As for daily motivation I do see that but that is for a diet. Not normal life. Your clothes and your mirror will be sufficient for normal daily life living.
He does seem pretty plausible in his manner of talking if you don't pay too much attention to the content. I can see why people like him.
Everyone has a different way of doing it but I find measurements far easier than calorie counting, for example.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/24/vivek-ramaswamy-demagogue-in-waiting
Not much movement on the Betfair GOP candidate market, though - Trump 1.5, Rama and de Santis 9, nobody else under 28. For overall winner Kamala Harris remains wildly underrated at 50 - if Biden didn't run she'd be favourite IMO.
He then claimed that he had been to Rhyl on the day of the murder itself and wandered around the amusement arcade. No witnesses could be found at the time who had seen him despite inquiries by the police and the defence. Four years later, the 'A6 Defence Committee' (who were not above bribing people to say what they wanted to, as I noted above) found several people who claimed they had seen him. None had come forward at the time (and AIR it later emerged one hadn't even lived in Rhyl at the time).
So he gave a false alibi. Twice.
Why would he do that? Obviously, he didn't want to admit where he was and what he was doing.
Could he have been committing a crime other than the A6 murder? Possibly. But if so, why didn't he admit to it particularly at his appeal? Five years for burglary (say) is a hell of a lot less than execution for murder.
It's not conclusive, in itself, but taken with the very large number of other pointers, it is to put it mildly highly suggestive.