An exercise in hindsight?

GUILTY, innocent, guilty, innocent and Amanda Knox celebrates. Mamma mia, isn't it good to know another country has a legal system even weirder than our own?

AS my barber mentioned the Alps plane disaster, the bloke in the seat next to me said: "Look, mate, I'm depressed, but I don't go around killing people."

SO why did co-pilot Andreas Lubitz fly the Airbus into the mountain? Because he was suffering from a deep-rooted mental illness. And how do we know he was suffering from a deep-rooted mental illness? Why, because he flew the Airbus into the mountain. As the shrinks come up with silly, unconvincing, circular arguments to explain the Lufthansa disaster, it looks like nothing more than an exercise in hindsight. But then we knew that already, didn't we? Psychiatrists have a long history of declaring that serial killers are safe to be released from prison, only for the killers to kill again. Trying to predict what a human being will do next is like trying to guess when a leaf will blow off a tree.

A READER relates an experience which tells you all you need to know about gardening. He came across a long-abandoned bird feeder in an overlooked corner at the bottom of his garden. Left to their own devices, all the bird seeds had sprouted. Yet last autumn my reader carefully prepared the soil, sowed his grass seeds for his new lawn and lovingly fed them with growth pellets. And the result? "A patchwork of bare earth." It is proof once again that what some plants really enjoy is being left alone.

AS Labour's vote collapses in Scotland it is reported that the party's "big guns" are heading north. It is a curious decision. If there's one thing calculated to put Joe Public off voting, it is meeting politicians in the flesh. And you'd think Labour would have learned from last September's referendum that there's nothing more irritating for the average Scot than to be lectured in an English accent.

MEANWHILE, the joyous fallout from The League of Gentlemen goes on and on. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton wrote and star in a new series of Inside No. 9 (BBC2) which kicked off with an hilarious episode set in the cramped confines of a train sleeping compartment stricken by dark deeds and diarrhoea. Later, their old League partner Mark Gatiss was perfectly cast as the snakelike Peter Mandelson (with echoes of Mycroft from Sherlock) in James Graham's excellent Coalition (C4), a drama based on the threats, promises and horse-trading that led to the creation of the Con-LibDem government in 2010. Eighteen years after the uncertain debut of a radio show called On the Town with the League of Gentlemen, Shearsmith, Gatiss and Pemberton are sharper than ever.

COALITION, one of the best political dramas for ages, created the impression that politicians dance to a tune played by the Civil Service. As Brown, Cameron and Clegg dithered, the then Cabinet Secretary, Gus O'Donnell (David Annen) seemed the only one with a clue what to do next: "Gentlemen, the world is waiting." Is that what really happened? Probably. With good reason, O'Donnell was known around Whitehall by his initials: God.

REMEMBER the shirt I bought on the internet which generated no fewer than six emails from the makers? Make that eight. I've had two sales pitches, including one offering me the chance to "stay wrinkle-free all day." Frankly, that would take more than a shirt.