On trials and tribulations

The trial is underway of Josef Frtizl, the Austrian accused of holding his own daughter captive for 25 years and fathering at least seven children by her. The following link has the most recent report.

The BBC Report

Here's the thought - the claim of the prosecution yesterday was that he raped his daughter 3000 times. Under Austrian Law, however, unless they can make the charges of slavery and murder against him - the only two he denies, incidentally - into a successful prosecution, he will get a maximum sentence of about ten years. The number of counts he admits is irrelevant - the sentences for each one run concurrently, unlike the US.

Now, I believe in forgiveness, but when a man admits to what eh has done that forgiveness has to come with him paying an appropriate price - and ten years just does not seem enough. He claims he was made this way by his upbringing, and he was trying to protect his daughter.

As Robin Williams once put it, Bovine Excrement.

Can they win the case for the other two charges? That's the thing - it may not happen. Justice may not be seen to be done here, and that saddens me.



ACH - we need a cheer up, so how about looking at the Eurovision Song Contest in the year I was born - 1963.

The winner that year was a Danish couple called Grethe and Jorgen Ingmann with a song called Dansevise. This may sound familiar to some of you.



The UK entrant was the same as the previous year - Ronnie Carroll, with Say Wonderful Things.



Finally, this year saw the first famous example of a singer being brought in to represent another country - Luxembourg in this case, with a singer from Greece now better known as one of their leading politicians - Nana Mouskouri