Peter Rhodes on bats, badgers - and the end of the road for juries?

What's this? A letter from the energy firm E.ON Next headed: “We're switching you to paper-free communications.” Oh, no you're not, pal.

Before the cyber industry submerges us all in a pile of passwords and apps, remember the true state of technology in this great nation, as reported by Age UK: More than a third of over-65s (4.7 million) lack the basic skills to use the internet successfully and a sixth (2.3 million) don't use it at all. In any case, paper documents are very useful, especially as nesting material for bats and badgers.

Texas is firmly in the Bible Belt so much of the online chat following the flash-flood disaster urged everyone to pray. A few couldn't resist adding Old Testament evidence that “the flood is a message". Well, perhaps it is. But maybe the wisest lesson would be to install flood warning sirens, as some citizens have reportedly been urging for the past ten years.

Sir Brian Leveson's proposals to reduce the backlog of cases in our criminal courts is a mixed bag but one proposal cries out to be adopted – hearing more cases by judges alone, without a jury.

Juries are a throwback to an age when the nation shared the same ethical code and a jury of “12 good men and true” could be guaranteed to agree on what is right or wrong. In today's fractured society many folk see nothing wrong with “victimless” crimes such as shoplifting or benefits theft. Getting 12 strangers to agree on a verdict has never been harder – and that's assuming they ever turn up.

There may once have been a time when being called for jury service was viewed as a privilege, an opportunity to serve one's community. Today, I bet the commonest reaction to receiving a jury summons is: “How do I get out of this?”

Facing a shameful backlog of 77,000 criminal cases, it is time to phase out unwilling and outdated juries, bring on the judges and crack on with the job.