CHANCES...

I don`t know what it is about Gordon Brown but he seems to have a kind of morbid fear of elections. When he first crept into power as Prime Minister he refused to have an election which would at least have given his premiership some legitimacy. Then he refused to uphold his party`s manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on the European Constitution. And now he`s refusing to hold a General Election so we can wipe the slate clean and start again with a new set of MPs who will be terrified to put a foot wrong.

Now, `three strikes laws` are statutes enacted by state governments in the USA, which require the state courts to hand down a mandatory and extended period of imprisonment to persons who have been convicted of a serious criminal offence on three or more separate occasions. These statutes became very popular in the 1990s. They are formally known among lawyers and legal academics as `habitual offender laws.` A person accused under such laws is referred to in some jurisdictions as a "prior and persistent offender." The name comes, of course, from baseball, where a batter is permitted two strikes at the ball before striking out on the third.

And, of course, in this country the world of show jumping is familiar with the rules of three refusals leading to mandatory retirement from the competition. I wonder how many more chances does chancer Brown need before he does what`s right for the country, rather than what`s right for himself? Don`t worry - the question is entirely rhetorical.