Bernard Dineen: Dogma is a prescription for medical chaos

The reply was that it couldn't be done because it would breach an EU regulation on the free movement of workers. As he says: "Political dogma won and was followed by a multitude of errors by visiting doctors." Welcome to the EU madhouse.

But when we are ascribing blame for the present mess, let's not forget the role of patients themselves. A GP says the general public should consider the extent to which their own behaviour has contributed to the reluctance of GPs to cover out-of-hours work.

If GPs only ever had to deal with genuine medical emergencies out of hours then the workload might just be manageable. But the Government has stoked up public expectations so that people expect full medical care 24 hours a day, irrespective of the urgency of the problem. This is one reason GPs are reluctant to cover out of hours, and why they practise defensive medicine.

Another GP says most doctors saw out-of-hours as accidents waiting to happen because of the volume of calls, often for trivial reasons, and the increasingly litigious nature of the work. Any GP could give you examples of being summoned for trivialities.

Egging patients on to demand more and more is politically attractive. The time-wasting nonsense of letting them "choose their own hospital", from a basis of total ignorance, is another example. The NHS in its present form is unsustainable but no politician dares say so.

The destruction of the grammar schools was one of the greatest acts of educational vandalism, carried out without the consent of the British people. When you remember that a single grammar school in Yorkshire won two Nobel Prizes for Science, it is an indication of what has been lost.

Now we have confirmation that ordinary people have more sense than their political rulers. No fewer than 85 per cent of people between 18 and 24 would like to see more grammar schools created. Seventy per cent of all age groups would support new grammar schools.

So here is the big question. Which of the three main political parties supports grammar schools? Answer: none. Rank-and-file Tories overwhelmingly do so but the party has refused to make the building of new grammar schools party policy. The 164 existing grammar schools face constant political hostility and threats to their very existence.

Every day we are seeing the results of Labour's disastrous handling of education. Only half of those who sit their GCSEs this year will get Grade C or above in English and maths. One in five adults cannot read to a level expected of an 11-year-old. Nearly a third cannot add up two three-figure numbers.

If Labour had deliberately set out to destroy British education, it couldn't have done a better job.

Lawyers are the most enthusiastic supporters of the jury system. They will lecture you about Magna Carta, hallowed tradition, and the sturdy common sense of jurors.

One reason might be that juries are easier to bamboozle than judges. A peer once commented: "Behind the pleas of lawyers for jury trials, I seem to hear the clink of cash."

A survey of 70,000 trials has shown that two-thirds of jurors do not fully understand a judge's legal directions. Yet two leading Yorkshire barristers say they "never found jurors out of their depths when considering evidence".

Really? I prefer to believe the late Sir Frederick Lawton, a former Lord Justice of Appeal, who said that both as a barrister and a judge he himself sometimes had difficulty in following the evidence and drawing inferences from it, particularly in fraud trials.

He said few people could concentrate on what is being said for more than an hour. "What can they make of complicated matters of which they have no experience?" The case for special juries is overwhelming. It is not surprising that some jurors resort to the internet, or in one case an Ouija board.

Ever since education, property or character qualifications were abolished, some juries have got worse, particularly in London and Liverpool.

Jury tampering has reached the level of scandal. Eleven police forces have reported attempts to interfere with trials. In Liverpool, the percentage of not guilty verdicts in contested cases reached the level of farce.

Sentimentalists like Lord Devlin thought everyone cared about justice and could be trusted with a part in its administration. But uneducated jurors are often at the mercy of one or two articulate members. Sometimes a verdict is reached not on the evidence but because some jurors don't trust the police in general.

The jury is a fine concept. The system could be reformed if the will were there. There should be qualifications on education, for a start. Property qualifications worked well and should be restored. But lawyers are in no hurry to have reform. So it won't happen.