PRIDE AND PREJUDICE..

Mrs. Snopper has been called up for jury service at the end of this month.   Just a couple of weeks after that, she won`t mind me whispering quietly that she will turn 70.   A close run thing.   In February, 1960, I was called up for  National Service only to discover that the last National Serviceman of all was called up just one month later.   Another close run thing.   We seem to have a habit of just being caught in time.

Now depending on one`s attitude towards civic duties, I have either been lucky or unlucky  never to have been called for jury service and now that I`m well past 70, I can`t be called anyway.   It`s a bit of the legal process I`ve not only failed to understand but actually find a little offensive.    Provided you still have most of your marbles in place beyond 70, I would have thought the legal system would welcome jurors with the benefit of decades of experience in the University of Life, the enhanced powers of perception those years have brought and the unfailing ability to distinguish between opinion and evidence.   But it seems not.   The scrapheap beckons.

But it all makes me wonder whether it is the jury selection system itself that might be infringing the law of the land by displaying such overt discrimination, not to say prejudice, against a section of society who might not only be perhaps best qualified to serve but also have the time and take pride in doing so.

I rest my case.