I don’t usually watch the ITN news but I caught the bulletin at 6.40 yesterday and was reminded why.

Their lead story was “Lockerbie Bomber Escapes Justice Again.”

Really?

Escapes justice?

Again?

Apparently the new Libyan regime will not extradite Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet Al Megrahi to the West.

And why should they?

ITN was peddling utter tosh. Twice over.

Even putting aside the fact that he is almost certainly innocent, Megrahi has not escaped justice. He was convicted, and served a term of imprisonment from which he was released on compassionate grounds under the terms of the justice system concerned.

So he did not “escape justice” even once: still less once more.

The BBC news earlier in the week wasn’t much better, though. A reporter knocked on his door in Tripoli and received no answer and on these grounds decided Megrahi had fled and had thereby broken the terms of his release.

Now, if you lived in Tripoli would you have answered your door this past week? And, if he has fled, wouldn’t you have in his place?

While he has survived way longer than we were led to expect he would, the man is still clearly ill. Given that he has already been duly processed, if under extraordinary provisions, it would be a crime to subject him to further detention.

And let’s have none of this “the victims want this to happen.” (That is to say the victims’ relatives.) They most certainly do not – or at least not all of them do.

That there is talk of US snatch squads apprehending him is an outrage. To do so would be a clear breach of international law and would put the perpetrators on an equal footing with any other law breaker.

Edited to add:-
It seems Megrahi is now at death’s door and has been found in his family home so perhaps we’ll hear an end of this.

So. It’s Russia.

Well done, comrades. (Or don’t you say that anymore?)

Fat lot of good having David Beckham, the Prince William and Mr Irresponsible presenting the England bid as part of the team did them.

But what an outpouring of bile we got from the commentariat on BBC news in the aftermath, saying that the process was flawed, not transparent enough and must be changed.

What? You lose the vote and that’s because of the system?

This display of sour grapes is profoundly unappealing. You were acting as if it were your divine right to have the tournament. I know God is supposed to be an Englishman but get a grip. No wonder you lost.

Where does this ridiculous sense of entitlement originate? You lucked out once and have been more or less mince ever since. You continually puff up your league as the best in the world. If it is – and that’s by no means a given – it would only be because it is stuffed full of foreign players who are more gifted technically, and more intelligent in the football sense, than your indigenous ones.

And before anyone points the finger, my poor little football country has no such delusions of grandeur. We cured ourselves of any vestige of that a long time ago.

It’s indicative of the desperation fans of England feel that they appear to think that only by hosting the World Cup will they ever win it again. (I would suggest that the way the England team is going now even being hosts wouldn’t guarantee that.)

Face it guys. Nobody likes you. You’re too arrogant.

I settled down last night at 9 pm to watch the second swatch of the latest BBC adaptation of John Wyndham’s The Day Of The Triffids only to find it wasn’t on. This was because Holby City had been bumped to an hour later by River City and so we in Scotland didn’t get to see The Day Of The Triffids until 10.20. I went and had a bath instead.

But… The main BBC news was on in Scotland at 10. The Day Of The Triffids lasted 1½ hours and so the news in the rest of the UK wasn’t till 10.30.

Was there a special news, for Scotland only, at 10? What did the (London) BBC news unit think of that? (The Scottish news opt out which normally follows the news – the “where you are” bit – came on as usual afterwards: it wasn’t a BBC Scotland main news.) Or did they just use the BBC 24 hour news feed for the fifteen minutes?

Anyway, The Day Of The Triffids adaptation itself was well done and, apart from some updating and an unnecessary emphasis on the hero, Bill Masen’s, family, (I blame Russell T Davies) reasonably true to the book as I remember it, with a fine performance by Eddie Izzard as the baddie, Torrence.

It was, however, – even the daylight scenes – filmed almost entirely in what I call Super Murk-O-Vision. This was probably to avoid too many shots with triffids in them as, no matter what you do, plants are not really that scary in appearance. Here, the book definitely scores over any possible visual version. The depiction of the triffid sting, showing it as a potent disabling weapon, was also much too late.

[Edited to add: the voice over was a mistake too.]

I doubt this version would have converted anyone that didn’t already have a penchant for it to SF, though.

For anyone who wants to see them, the iplayer reruns are here and here.