Obviously, one’s first instinct is to agree that parliament should step in and decree that all the hundreds of sub-postmasters convicted in the Post Office scandal should be exonerated without their appeals needing to be heard. But I suspect that instinct is wrong, for at least two reasons. The first is the precedent. These are individual criminal cases (though with strong common characteristics). If parliament feels it can interfere with such cases, it is usurping the process of law. Once MPs feel they can decide questions of individual guilt, where’s the end to it? Politicians cannot judge evidence to a legal standard. Justice will become politicised. The political proclamation of unproved innocence could be almost as noxious as that of unproved guilt. Think, for example, of what might happen to past terrorist cases in Northern Ireland. The second reason is that the sub-postmasters themselves deserve individual consideration of their claims. It should be established with proper evidence that their convictions were unsafe so that the world can see exactly how they were wronged. The problem with the existing appeals procedure is its slowness, justice delayed being justice denied. The hunt should start for justice speeded up, but still properly delivered.

Mr Bates vs the Post Office, the drama that has captured the public imagination, was made by ITV. Why not the BBC? It is the sort of thing it used to be good at. I wonder why they did not make it. I suggest a comparable drama about past wrongs revealed after many years of corporate cover-up. It would concern how Martin Bashir obtained and manipulated his 1995 television interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, how one of the ‘little people’ – Matt Wiessler – was pushed out after mocking up bank statements, and how the big people, one of whom went on to run the corporation, contributed to what had happened. Its hero would probably be Andy Webb, who has been pursuing this story for many a year. The corporation in question is the BBC.

Speaking of unproved guilt, aren’t the further allegations triggered by the release of ‘unsealed’ US court documents about Prince Andrew rather underwhelming? There is a claim, now withdrawn, about Jeffrey Epstein having made a ‘sex tape’ of him. There is also an accusation that he touched a woman’s breast. We already know that he was foolish ever to have associated with Jeffrey Epstein. Do we actually know anything else? Or do we just enjoy persecuting charmless princes? 

As the next general election comes into view, there is rising interest in what Sir Keir Starmer wants to do if he becomes prime minister. His is a blank canvas – or rather, one which he used to paint quite fully in the years before he was leader and is now painting over. One cannot blame him for being shy about his views, but one can and should try to prise more out of him. In the United States, there is an excellent political news website called RealClearPolitics. Someone – this paper, perhaps? – could start a short regular feature called RealKeirPolitics which produces any evidence it can find.

A correspondence is taking place in the Daily Telegraph about whether and in what way dogs should be accommodated in human hotels. There is a tricky dimension missing from the discussion. Many northern Europeans and Americans are unaware that many cultures regard dogs as dirty. This is particularly true in the Arab world and in the Indian subcontinent. Now that our countries have so many immigrants and visitors from such places, how long before they object to dogs in dining-rooms, hotel bedrooms etc? And how long before rebuttals of such objections are labelled ‘Islamophobic’? (By the way, my own feelings on this subject, though I am fond of dogs in my own house, are rather more oriental than western.)

I recently spent a delightful day shooting just north of the M25. On the last drive before lunch, I heard a frightful squawking among the trees on the bank behind me. It emanated from parakeets, the first time I had ever seen or heard them in an English rural scene. They already infest the Botanical Gardens at Kew. On New Year’s Day, the guest editor of the Today programme, Dame Emma Walmsley, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, drew attention to their shrieks in an item about the wonders of Kew. The director, Richard Deverell, explained that they came from the Himalayas, and described them, by implication favourably, as ‘a bit of tropical diversity in the middle of south-west London’. I wonder how much his gardens really welcome the invaders, though. Parakeets bite the buds and blossom off many trees and, according to my host at the shoot, mob other birds badly enough to drive them away. Indeed, I saw this happen: four of them flew out of the covert and started insulting a red kite which was circling nearby. Kew has, notoriously, embarked on a ‘decolonising’ mission. Time for it, surely, to expel these green imperialists.

Our granddaughter, who is five, recently discovered the joys of the wireless. To her, it is magic, because when you switch it on, a conversation is already taking place or a piece of music is already playing which you, the listener, have not selected. Until now, she has never heard anything broadcast or recorded which she or her parents have not chosen. She is entranced by what she thinks is an entrée into someone’s else world, a sort of eavesdropping. I think she has accidentally identified why I have never felt totally at ease with a multimedia, multi-channel world in which you pre-select what you hear. Choosing for yourself can be limiting and knowing what you are going to hear can be boring. I half-prefer the days when you just pressed the knob and took what came.