Hopes For 2011

My biggest politicial hope for 2011 is that the Scottish electorate sends the soi-disant, ersatz 'Scottish Government' into the midden of history, hopefully stepping gaily as they go, heel for heel and toe for toe.

The regime of Alexander Salmond, Tartanissimo of Scotland, has been marked with a disregard for law and the rule of law almost unique in these islands. Following as he did on Tony Blair's heels, that's saying something.

They intend to mount the summit of their oppressive lawlessness by abolishing double jeopardy in Scotland. The argument advanced in support of this is the sophistication of modern forensic techniques.

As an admittedly lukewarm and occasional student of legal history, I do not recall ever reading of any such argument being advanced at the turn of the 20th Century, at the time when the Stratton brothers became the first persons to be subjected to capital punishment on the basis of fingerprint evidence (they hanged together). I do not ever recall ever reading of any such arguments being advanced with each new breakthrough in either toxicology or ballistics. But we've now got DNA fingerprinting, a wonderful science, for sure, but one still in its infancy, and one that can be confused by a fleck of spittle in the wrong place. It is on the basis of this magic bullet that 800 years of Scottish law is to be rewritten, with a substantial diminution in the freedom of Scots.

And the ones doing it are supposed to be on our side. You know, I really do wonder about that sometimes.