The Kingdom of Heaven's Secretary of State for Justice

Today has seen the news that Alan Turing, the man who cracked the Enigma Code, has been given a royal pardon.

This is technically an exercise of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy, which the Queen exercises on the advice of the Lord Chancellor/Justice Secretary - in this case Chris Grayling.

Turing's pardon is exceptional, as the Queen has only pardoned people who have been found innocent after they have been sentenced - and in two cases, these have been posthumously after the death penalty. Turing was never found innocent - although what he was sentenced for is no longer on the statute books.

This is one aspect of the justice system - you can be found guilty, and your only hope is mercy. And it is a Royal Prerogative - up to the Queen ultimately to grant or not to grant. You can't make her, you can't force her hand.

The Bible tells us that we have all fallen short of God's standards:

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it — the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His Grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Rom. 3:21-26)

The solution God has provided is a simple one - His exercise of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy. It is up to Him to decide whom he shows mercy to. We can't demand it.

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:1-2)

Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. (Rom. 8:34)

Now, you could argue that fair enough, Jesus is Heaven's Justice Secretary - albeit one who takes the punishment for us, which is not what Grayling ever does - but that God the Father could turn round and say "no". Or that we cannot be sure if Jesus will ask for the Royal Prerogative of Mercy to be exercised on our behalf.

Jesus Himself assures us:

The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honour the Son, just as they honour the Father. Whoever does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent Him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. (John 5:22-24)

So, judgment is entrusted to Jesus, and this is His criterion for deciding whether we have eternal life or not - whether we believe Him or not.

We are assured that:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Rom. 8:1)

While tomorrow the focus will be on the baby Jesus, remember why He was born. Remember that a third of a century later He was crucified for our sins.

Sorry Lefties, But It Was The Tories Who Gave Me The Chance To Go To University

I remember it was either 1989 or early 1990. The Chair of our college student council wanted to inform the rest of us that the Conservatives were going to abolish the student grant and replace it with a loan. By the time we would start university, there would be no grant.

I wrote to the late Michael Colvin, at the time the Conservative MP for Romsey & Waterside, and he replied to outline the plans:

• The grant would be frozen
• A student loan would be introduced, and over time increase
• A point will be reached where the loan equals the maximum student grant
• In future years after that, they would go up in line with inflation

At the following student council meeting I read out Colvin's letter. The Chair explained to the council that actually the Conservatives planned to abolish the student grant, while Labour would increase it.

Yesterday I had a Twitter debate with a couple of Labour people, who were worked up that the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Government tripled tuition fees. Well, asked the question which party/parties tripled tuition fees. I gave the correct reply - Labour.

The Teaching & Higher Education Act 1998 was introduced by Labour and did two things related to student finance:

1. Introduce upfront £1,000 pa tuition fees
2. Abolish the student grant and replace it a loan, to be repaid when earnings were above £10,000pa, at 9% of the amount earned above this

Funny that they had forgotten that.

Next, it was Labour who introduced variable top-up fees under the Higher Education Act 2004, breaching a manifesto commitment not to. The defence from these Tweeters can be summed up as:

• The universities forced this move onto a Government with a landslide majority of 167
• It's the universities who decide how much to charge
• "That's different" from the current Government

Well, how a Government with a triple-figure majority can be weak enough to be forced - by a group of academics - against its will to introduce something it has explicitly promised not to is beyond me.

As to it being the universities - rather than the Government - deciding how much to charge the BBC published a list of tuition fees for those starting last year, and, as you can see, there is a range in how much they charge. Indeed, my alma mater, the University of Oxford has decided to reduce its fees for people from low-income families.

Then, I am supposed to be grateful that Labour supports people from my sort of background going to university by having maintenance grants and scholarships. Well, firstly, Labour abolished the grants in the first place, so I can't get excited about them later bringing them back at a much lower level. Secondly, scholarships have been around for decades - so, sorry, not going to thank Labour for that.

What really pisses me off is this idea that I am supposed to be grateful as the Conservatives only support university education for the rich (hey, why not say "toffs" and "the 1%"?) while Labour supports education for all.

Under the Conservatives I was able to go to university with a student grant, no fees and leave without being in debt.

If I had been 10 years younger, I would have been put off by my family having to find £1,000pa upfront to pay for Labour's tuition fees and put off by Labour's abolition of the student grant.

I know which party helps people like me go to university.

They Don't Know What I Did Last Summer - 10 Weeks Missing From My Life

Finally, I had struck success with jobhunting. On Friday 13th, I was offered a job to start on 6 January, subject to compliance checks. And then yesterday the email confirmation that all the compliance checks had been completed and we were ready to roll. I had already stopped jobhunting - after all, if you've got a job in the pipeline, why waste your time applying? Not everyone takes that approach - in one job, a couple of colleagues had already, even when they started, accepted other jobs. In one case it was someone who had taken a graduate job from that September, so was there for a few months waiting to start that. The other guy was only with us a fortnight - it was just a two-week filler role as far as he was concerned, until he could start the better paid job he had also accepted.

I was brought up with the old "jobs for life" approach - my dad had over 45 years with the same firm. That was the era of the generation above. So you stuck jobs out. I have noticed that even when in a temporary job, I didn't start looking until the job had finished. Find a job with another employer and hand in your notice - well, that's just disloyalty.

The other thing that I was brought up to believe is that study hard at school, work hard, and you'll succeed. That, sadly is simplistic. Sometimes life throws you a blind side, something comes out of leftfield at you. And 2013 was that year for me.

Yesterday afternoon, I popped down to the city centre, caught up with a friend, and then got home to another email.

Apparently, I had not passed the compliance checks - there is the issue that I don't have a continuous documentable 3-year record.

Now, I know that already in the USA, some firms have things along the lines of "Unemployed persons need not apply". In my case, I am not expected to produce a 3-year record of continuous employment. What I have to provide is documentary evidence of what I have been doing the past 3 years - so basically times when I have not been employed, I need to provide evidence.

Due to my health, I didn't start jobhunting until I knew what was wrong - and so this wasn't until mid-September. And herein lies the problem. One bit of useful advice I got was that there is often downtime between jobs, and just say that I had done travel. And indeed, I did some - day trips to local places, a few days catching up with family in Yorkshire, visiting family in Devon etc.

But that's travel. It's not travel-travel. With the compliance, if you have a period of being out-of-work and you are travelling, they expect travel-travel. Documentary evidence from your passport and flight tickets and boarding passes, and ferry tickets etc. that you were off in exotic locations doing things. Day trips here and there in the United Kingdom don't count.

One thing that can document what you were doing is a letter from the Department for Work & Pensions, stating when you started claiming benefits. As I have mentioned, I didn't start to claim Jobseekers Allowance as I wasn't looking for work. I suppose, given that I didn't renew my contract due to my health, the Monday after leaving work, I could have made a claim for Employment & Support Allowance and when/if that got turned down, try for JSA. But I didn't think of it.

If I had done this, I would have had a continuous documentary record. But I didn't, and I haven't.

This then is the problem. I have 10 undocumentable weeks. I have no salary from then as I was unemployed. I have nothing from the DWP as I didn't contact them till mid-September. I have no passport stamps or plane tickets as I was in the UK throughout.

Technically, I have not failed the compliance checks, and can still start on 6 January - subject to having passed the compliance checks. The problem is that to pass them I need to provide documentary evidence relating to 10 undocumentable weeks.

A Christmas Mawkathon - It's On The Cards

I was staring at the collection of Christmas cards. With Our Love Across The Miles, You're Like A Mummy To Me, A Caring Message.

Feeling my breakfast making its way back up my throat, I dared not open the cards, lest I was confronted with the Helen Steiner-Rice-style purple prose, with the saccharine heaped on with a trowel.

All I bought was one Baby's 1st Christmas - it's OK, an 11-month-old is unlikely to be able to read. Although if I, when a baby, had seen some of the stuff that is in Christmas cards, I would have made the there-and-then decision not to learn to read, so I would never have to endure reading the things that goes inside modern Christmas cards.

Went to another card shop and was confronted with the same. I asked one of the staff whether they sold non-mawkish cards, and had to explain that I am from the pre-Diana era, where you simply send people cards saying "Merry Christmas", without loads of OTT prose, and commented that if you wouldn't say something to someone's face, don't have it in a Christmas card. She didn't understand what I meant. I did eventually find, hidden away, boxes of standard Christmas cards, and bought a couple of these.

Isn't this a danger in the churches, where we allow the real news of Christmas - God sending His Son, Jesus - to be overshadowed by the soppy sentiment? Reducing God's love, which is tough and strong, to a matter of feelings and mawkishness?

Run, Gordon, Run

In November, there was the sad news that Labour's Helen Eadie, Member of the Scottish Parliament for Cowdenbeath, had passed away after a battle with cancer. She was one of the few Labour MSPs left from the original May 1999 intake, and the fact that she held onto her seat while safer ones were toppling to the Scottish National Party speaks volumes about her commitment to her constituents.

And on 23 January 2014, there will be a by-election. Curiously, the last by-election was in October, in next door's Dunfermline, which saw Labour win the seat from the SNP.

At the May 2011 elections to the Scottish Parliament, Labour made a mistake. They had failed to win the May 2010 election to the House of Commons, and so should have accepted they would be out of power in Westminster until at least May 2015, and hence have made recapturing Holyrood a real priority. There were Scottish politicians who would not hold office in Westminster again - so why not put former Home Secretary John Reid and former Scottish Secretary Helen Liddell at the top of the Scotland Central list, while giving Liddell the task of recapturing Falkirk West from the SNP and aiming for Reid to replace the former First Minister, Jack McConnell, in Motherwell & Wishaw? And in the Lothian region, let Edinburgh Pentlands see a battle between sitting Conservative MSP David McLetchie and Labour's Alistair Darling, MP for Edinburgh South West and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, with both of them guaranteed to become MSPs via being top of their regional lists.

Either the SNP would have led the Scottish Government - and Alex Salmond, the First Minister and MSP for Aberdeenshire East, would be facing Reid and Liddell - or else Labour would have led the Scottish Government, with Iain Gray, the MSP for East Lothian, having the option of bringing people with years of Westminster ministerial experience into his Cabinet.

In the same vein, seeing that the sitting Liberal Democrat MSP for Ross, Skye & Inverness, John Farquhar-Munro, was retiring, why shouldn't that party have run Charles Kennedy, its former leader and sitting MP for Ross, Skye & Lochaber, as its candidate in Skye, Lochaber & Badenoch?

Picture Scottish politics like that - Gray as First Minister, Kennedy as Deputy First Minister, with Darling, Liddell and Reid sitting at the Cabinet table.

I see that Labour have chosen Alex Rowley, leader of Fife Council as its by-election candidate. Good luck to him - as someone who is Unionist first, Conservative second, I genuinely mean that. But I wonder if, instead, he could have been held back for the House of Commons' Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath by-election?

At this point, you will ask - what Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath by-election?

Its sitting Labour MP is the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. If you look at the 2010 general election result in Scotland, you'll see he did well. He increased Labour's share of the vote, as well as increasing its number of MPs by 1 compared to the May 2005 general election (the BBC lists Labour as having 41 MPs at both, but in 2005, Glasgow North East was won by Mr Speaker seeking re-election.)

While in England and Wales, Labour lost seat after seat after seat, in Scotland Labour did not lose a single seat. Yes, Brown alientated Middle England - but Scotland isn't Middle England.

In Scotland, Brown is a winner.

Hence, Brown should contest the Cowdenbeath by-election. Now, to show he is serious about this, he should have to resign his Westminster seat and allow Rowley to stand as the Labour candidate in that by-election. Could it be possible to have both by-elections on 23 January?

The rules for the timing of by-elections to the House of Commons are based on a timetable in the Representation of the People Act 1983, which allows the Returning Officer some leeway. The by-election is the 8th, 9th or 10th "working day" after the deadline for the delivery of nomination papers. The gap between the moving of the writ in the House of Commons is from 3 to 7 "working days".

That Act had quite a broad definition of "working day" - it was tightened up by the Representation of the People Act 1985 by redefining a "working day" to be any day that wasn't one of these:

• Saturday
• Sunday
• Christmas Eve
• Christmas Day
• Maundy Thursday
• Good Friday
• A day of public thanksgiving or mourning
• A Bank Holiday in the part of the United Kingdom where the by-election takes place

There was a minor amendment due to the Electoral Administration Act 2006, which removed Maundy Thursday from this list.

So, for 23 January to be 8th, 9th or 10th working day after the deadline for the delivery of nomination papers, then this deadline has to be Thursday 9 January, Friday 10 January or Monday 13 January. If the deadline is as early as 9 January, and this is between 3 and 7 working days after the writ is moved in the House of Commons, then the writ could be moved as late as Monday 6 January or as early as Friday 27 December (remember that in Scotland, Thursday 2 January is a Bank Holiday). While for a 13 January deadline, the relevant dates are Wednesday 8 January and Tuesday 31 December.

This is where there is a slight snag. The House of Commons rises on Thursday 19 December and returns on Monday 6 January. There would be a tight - but do-able - timeline.

The simplest way for Brown to cease to be an MP, and to set the whole timetable in motion, would be for Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, to appoint him Steward & Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern - a post currently held by former Energy & Climate Change Secretary, the Liberal Democrats' Chris Huhne. There is no point in Huhne remaining in that role any longer.

With it being possible to do this, the question is why should Brown seek to become an MSP?

For the first reason, we need to look at the elections to the European Parliament next May. If we look at the current crop of Belgian Members of the European Parliament, we have Jean-Luc Dehaene of the Flemish Christian Democrats (who was Prime Minister from March 1992 to July 1999) and Guy Verhofstadt of the Flemish Liberal Democrats (who was Prime Minister from July 1999 to March 2008). Indeed, Verhofstadt is leader of the Alliance of Liberals & Democrats for Europe MEPs, and wants to be its candidate for the Presidency of the European Commission - the post for which Dehaene was vetoed by former Conservative Prime Minister John Major in 1994.

From July 2009 to January 2012, the President of the European Parliament was Jerzy Buzek, of Poland's Civic Platform. But go back to the period from October 1997 to October 2001, and Buzek was the Polish Prime Minister.

Now consider it's 2018, and the Conservative party is choosing its candidates for the following year's European elections. You are a Conservative member in South East England and through your letterbox drops a booklet with details of those Conservatives who want to be on the list for the region's MEPs. You flick through it, and one bio starts:

I was elected MP for Witney in June 2001. In December 2005 I was elected leader of the Conservative party, and following the May 2010 general election I was appointed Prime Minister.....

You couldn't imagine it, could you? In the United Kingdom, the European elections are treated as a bit of light-hearted fun, while in other countries they are so important that ex-Prime Ministers are happy to stand.

To run a big beast in an election is to say that this is important, that you are taking it seriously. In the political jungle, there is no beast bigger than a Prime Minister.

We go back to the European Union for the second reason. The letters page of the local paper often publishes letters from UK Independence Party activists, and then I have to write in to correct their facts and they respond with a pile of twaddle. But there is one thing I notice - the ad hominem comments. In their world, no-one can seriously think that the EU is in the United Kingdom's best interests, so anyone who supports membership must have some naked self-interest at play. Politicians who support membership - well, it is clear that they are only supporting membership because they are looking for a cushy Eurojob.

Prime Minister David Cameron has made clear he will not have a debate with Salmond, arguing that instead Salmond should debate with Darling, as chairman of Better Together. Of course, it would be in Salmond's interests to have the case for the Union made in the debate by an "English toff".

Now, Darling is an MP (although if Labour had had the foresight to take the strategy I outlined earlier on, he would be an MSP), and so he takes his pay from Westminster. He has much to lose, financially, if Scotland becomes independent. Let's face it, if Better Together puts forward any MP or peer, then the critics can say, "well, they would support the Union, wouldn't they? Just think what happens to their bank account if we break away."

Consider instead Brown - having resigned from the House of Commons and having won the Cowdenbeath by-election - facing Salmond in the debate. He - unlike Darling, or indeed anyone that Better Together could produce - has experience of these sort of debates (remember the leaders' debates in the run-up to the last general election). He could point to the letters MSP after his name and state that he is a Scottish politician, that he has no "selfish, strategic or economic interests" in remaining in the UK, but that he passionately believes that this is in Scotland's best interests.

And there is no way that Brown could be described as English, Tory or toff.

The third reason is to do with Cameron. A major case made by Labour for devolution was that the Conservatives were running Scotland from May 1979 to May 1997 with not much support in Scotland. Parts of the SNP argument for independence rests on a democratic deficit, namely that decisions are made in some areas by a Conservative/Liberal Democrat Government with only 12 of Scotland's 59 MPs, with independence being a long-term solution to a short-term issue.

Brown's presence would remind Scottish voters that there have been, in recent memory, Labour Governments, and - as much as it pains me to say this - there could be Labour Governments again. As Shadow Foreign & Commonwealth Secretary, Douglas Alexander, recently wrote:

This coalition government will have less than eight months of its mandate left to run on referendum day. The polls indicate that the prospect of a change of UK government is real. And on that referendum day a 16-year-old voting for the first time will have had a UK Labour government for three-quarters of their life. As Scots, we understand the difference between anger with a transient Tory government and supporting the permanent break-up of Britain. The Nationalists say "walk away and all will be well". Yet while the clear majority of Scots, myself included, want change, we do not judge independence as the route to achieve those changes

Running Brown would be a bold move, and a real game-changer in the run-up to the referendum.

Which Classic Doctor Who Adventures Would Fail The RTD Test?

Last Saturday saw Doctor Who's golden anniversary, and with it the adventure The Day of the Doctor. When the programme returned in 2005, I remember reading that the then-showrunner, Russell Davies, had a simple rule - namely that adventures had to be about humans.

In the programme, we do get a broad sweep of human future history. Some point in the mid third millennium, humans expand across the Milky Way, form colonies and then there are solar flares - and we see the consequences in The Ark in Space and The Beast Below. Humans evacuate Earth, and prepare to return, but in The Sontaran Experiment we see that humans have already returned - these are colonists, for whom Earth is simply where their ancestors came from, in the same way an Australian isn't going to get all that nostalgic about "Mother England" and doesn't see independence from the United Kingdom as a temporary measure.

We then get the interesting Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways at the end of Season 27 - a season from which one thing becomes clear. Well two things, which are the flip side of each other. Humans abandon Earth and Earth abandons humanity.

What we see in that story is that by the year 200,100, most humans are living off Earth, and so using the delta wave would only kill the humans still living on Earth. Earth, by that point, had become simply one planet with humans on it.

And earlier that season we have The End of the World - and it seems that humanity are not the only civilisation to come from Earth. After all, Jabe could trace her ancestry back to the Amazon rain forest. In this we are simply a species which existed on Earth for a couple of million years, tops, a blink of an eye in the long story of our planet.

So, what adventures from the classic era would fail the RTD Test?

In Season 1, we have The Daleks, The Edge of Destruction (maybe) and The Keys of Marinus. To misquote the Master from The Five Doctors, a Doctor Who without the Daleks scarcely bears thinking about.

But I am sure if the RTD Test had been in place then, there would be a workaround. Skaro as a human colony planet, with two groups that slowly diverged and ended up at nuclear war with each other? The Thals being human colonists oppressing the native Kaleds (not yet named) who chose to fight back? - well, imagine what the third Doctor would make of that, considering his stories like The Mutants.

The Edge of Destruction - well, I suppose in the RTD Test there is an emphasis on humanity, and this is the one with the Doctor learning that Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright are useful to have around.

Near the end of Season 1, we have The Sensorites - the first one featuring humans to be based off-Earth and the first one featuring humans to be based in the future. This is actually the seventh story, while these days we are used to new companions having present-day (Rose, Smith & Jones, Partners In Crime, The Eleventh Hour), historical Earth (The Unquiet Dead, The Shakespeare Code, The Fires of Pompeii, Victory of the Daleks), and future humanity (The End of the World, Gridlock, Planet of the Ood, The Beast Below) as their first 3 adventures - interesting to note that both Martha Jones and Donna Noble have their first future adventure as a sequel to one of Rose Tyler's (New Earth and The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit) respectively. Interesting that by the time we get to Clara Oswald and Season 33, this pattern is broken as Clara's third and fourth adventures - Cold War and Hide - are in the recent past, her sixth (The Crimson Horror) is also in the past, and she has to wait until her seventh adventure (Nightmare in Silver) before travelling to see future humans. The RTD Test is also being broken by this point.

In Season 2, we have The Web Planet (one where the TARDIS crew are the only humanoids) and The Space Museum.

Season 3 gives us Galaxy Four and (potentially) The Celestial Toymaker - although the characters whom Steven Taylor and Dodo Chaplet encounter would be familiar to viewers, including the character who was not based on Billy Bunter. While not one about Earth or humans, it draws from British culture such as clowns, playing cards and Billy Bunter.

Season 4 is the one where Patrick Troughton takes over as the Doctor, and this is an all-human series. Even ones set off-Earth (Power of the Daleks and The Macra Terror) are human colonists, and Season 5 is the same, with the off-Earth ones being The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Wheel in Space - again, both featuring human explorers or scientists.

Season 6 sees a return to alien races on alien planets, with The Dominators (on Dulkis) and The Krotons (on the Gonds' home planet) being ones where Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot are the only humans. There is also the weird The Mind Robber, which - like The Celestial Toymaker - is in a fantasy world with figures from British culture.

Seasons 7 to 9 are Jon Pertwee's, with the Doctor exiled to Earth by the Time Lords. Despite this, in Season 8 (Colony in Space) and Season 9 (The Mutants), the Doctor and Jo Grant are sent by the Time Lords to Earth colony planets. Season 9's The Curse of Peladon has a more tenuous link, with Peladon preparing to join the Galactic Federation, and the Doctor being mistaken for the Earth ambassador. Easy mistake to make - after all, sometimes a Spanish ambassador will be mistaken for a Time Lord.

Season 10 sees the Doctor able to travel again. While Carnival of Monsters is not Earth-based, there are humans (namely, those on board the SS Bernice) trapped in the Miniscope. Planet of the Daleks is the first human-free one (apart from Jo) since The Krotons - even The Curse of Peladon had a cameo by the real Earth ambassador - although it does carry on directly from Frontier in Space which covered Earth's dealings with the Draconians.

Season 11 has The Monster of Peladon - although Sarah Jane Smith is the only human, we can put it in the same league as Planet of the Daleks in being a sequel to a Season 10 adventure.

Season 12 brings us to the Tom Baker era, where everything changes again. Genesis of the Daleks fails the RTD Test spectacularly, but it's such a great adventure, we can overlook it.

Season 13 has Planet of Evil, with a Morestran expedition in a story where Sarah is the only human. But it's The Brain of Morbius which introduces a change, with the character of Solon. Up till now, future human stories had been groups - colonists, explorers, scientists. But here is a human with no other humans around him.

Season 14 sees Sarah depart, ending a run of companions from Earth - we will have to wait over 4 years for the next, Tegan Jovanka. And indeed, marking the end of a run of companions, period, as we have The Deadly Assassin, set on Gallifrey and composed of Time Lords (and no Time Ladies).

After that we have the introduction of Leela, the first future human companion since Zoe. Her debut, The Face of Evil, was set on a future planet where the people were descended from an Earth expedition. Some of her adventures - The Robots of Death and Season 15's The Invisible Enemy (in the 51st century, the era of Jack Harkness and River Song, a time where cutting-edge design is robot dogs that are "disco") and The Sunmakers - involve future humans, however in Season 15 there are a couple (Underworld and The Invasion of Time) where she is the sole human.

Season 16 introduces us to Romana, the first non-human companion since Susan Foreman, and Earth and humanity play a smaller part. While The Ribos Operation has a couple of human conpersons, The Pirate Planet, The Androids of Tara and The Armageddon Factor are human-free. Things don't improve in Season 17, with Destiny of the Daleks, The Creature from the Pit and The Horns of Nimon being human-free.

Do things improve in Season 18? Well, The Leisure Hive opens on Brighton beach and did have a handful of humans on Argolis, while Meglos does have a human, we are then into the E-space trilogy of Full Circle (which could have been Earthified (??) by having the people on the Starliner believing they were from Earth originally and then learning they weren't), State of Decay and Warrior's Gate. In State of Decay, the three vampires (including Queen Camilla. Ahem) were originally from Earth. I'm not sure if Rorvik and his crew in Warrior's Gate were human or not, but the following adventure (The Keeper of Traken) is human-free, and the following one, Logopolis, is mainly set on Earth and finally sees a new human companion.

We now move on to Peter Davison's debut in Season 19. Castrovalva begins on Earth, but just ties up loose ends from Logopolis while there. The following, Four To Doomsday, at first glance appears to have humans, but they are androids. However, it is a very human-focussed adventure and deals with a threat to Earth. The rest of the season are all Earth-based, with The Visitation being the first trip to historic Earth since The Talons of Weng-Chiang 5 years earlier.

In Season 20, Arc of Infinity's action is split between Gallifrey and Amsterdam. Snakedance has no humans, other than Tegan, in it, but like Planet of the Daleks and The Monster of Peladon it is a sequel to a story (the previous season's Kinda) which does deal with humanity's future. In Terminus, I think Olvir, Kari and the Lazars are human. Enlightenment sees human sailors in space.

Davison's Season 21 adventures are almost all Earth-based. Frontios is a human colony, and Planet of Fire is one of those - like Logopolis and Castrovalva - where the action begins on Earth before going to another planet.

The final adventure of Season 21 is Colin Baker's debut The Twin Dilemma. Although mainly set on Jaconda, most of the non-Jacondan characters are human.

Now onto Season 22. Attack of the Cybermen follows what must by that stage have been a reasonably familiar pattern - the Doctor encounters something on Earth and that leads to him going to another planet. In Vengeance on Varos, Varos was a human colony. Timelash is primarily set on the non-human world of Karfel, although there is a scene in Victorian Scotland and a human (Herbert). Revelation of the Daleks was set on a human-colonised Necros.

Season 23 goes under the umbrella title of The Trial of a Time Lord. At first, The Mysterious Planet might appear to have nothing to do with humanity, but it emerges that Ravalox is a future Earth.Mindwarp is on Thoros Beta, and like The Brain of Morbius, has a rogue human scientist (Crozier). However, it falls into the same sequel category as Planet of the Daleks, The Monster of Peladon and Snakedance, featuring Sil from Vengeance on Varos.

The Ultimate Foe's action is split between the courtroom and the Matrix.

Now on to Sylvester McCoy's first season, Season 24. Time and the Rani - again a non-human world with non-human characters we cannot relate to. In Paradise Towers, the inhabitants might have been human, and it is possible that in Dragonfire, Iceworld had human customers.

Season 25 has two Earth-based stories - Remembrance of the Daleks and Silver Nemesis. The Happiness Patrol is clearly on a human colony planet and some of the members of the Psychic Circus in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy could have been human.

Season 26 - the end of the classic era - was more simple, with every adventure exclusively or primarily set on Earth.

So, we can identify a number of adventures which would definitely fail the RTD Test:

• The Daleks
• The Keys of Marinus
• The Web Planet
• The Space Museum
• Galaxy Four
• The Dominators
• The Krotons
• Planet of the Daleks
• The Monster of Peladon
• Genesis of the Daleks
• Planet of Evil
• The Deadly Assassin
• Underworld
• The Invasion of Time
• The Pirate Planet
• The Androids of Tara
• The Armageddon Factor
• Destiny of the Daleks
• The Creature from the Pit
• The Horns of Nimon
• Full Circle
• The Keeper of Traken
• Snakedance
• Timelash
• The Trial of a Time Lord: Mindwarp
• Time and the Rani

This is where I get controversial. I can think of two points of classic Doctor Who which were low periods. The first was the second half of the Tom Baker era, and the second was the end of the Colin Baker era and the early part of the McCoy era. The first of these is an era with a higher proportion of adventures breaking the RTD Test. What is the programme by that stage? A couple of aliens visiting alien planets populated by aliens and dealing with alien threats. Is it too much to suggest that Doctor Who hits its low points when it forgets - or sidelines - the human aspect?

Consider other TV programmes. Merlin had a consistent universe - set in and around Camelot. There would not be an episode in which a spell of Morgana's sees Arthur on Bowie Base One, wondering what Queen Annis is pointing at him and answering her questions with "Arthur. King. To get back to Camelot." None of the Doctor Who substitutes - Robin Hood, Merlin or Atlantis - have this potential for flitting around in space and time. They are limited to a time and a place.

Unlike these, Doctor Who has the danger of moving away from a human focus.

What about its early sci-fi rival, Star Trek? Now, Doctor Who has a positive view of humanity - described as "indominatible" in The Ark in Space and Utopia - but it isn't starry-eyed. Sorry, but Star Trek came across as having a "White Person's Burden" approach - visit an alien planet, have the events there a metaphor for a contemporary issue, and let the enlighted humans sort it out, because education and science will have made politically incorrect viewpoints an embarrassing thing of the past.

Doctor Who, meanwhile, is more realistic about humanity.

Now, a programme about aliens on an alien planet dealing with aliens could be of interest if a realistic world was created. But in Doctor Who, the Doctor moves on all the time, with no chance for us to understand Chloris or Dulkis. The 3 from Season 16 that have no human connection are at least part of a plot arc - that of the Key To Time. And from Season 17, Destiny of the Daleks can be just about Earthified by the fact that Davros is going to be taken to Earth for trial, so again this is part of a plot arc. But there is no such excuse for The Creature from the Pit or The Horns of Nimon. Now, the later part of the Pertwee era was moving the Doctor away from contemporary Earth-based adventures (normally involving UNIT), and it seems that by the later part of the Baker era this had gone too far.

Now we need to ask whether the RTD Test is still being passed, and this brings us to the Matt Smith era. In Season 32 there is The Doctor's Wife. Not set on Earth - not set in this universe - and the only humans being the companions, Amy Pond and Rory Williams.

Moving on to the most recent season, Season 33, we have Asylum of the Daleks, for which the only human connection apart from the TARDIS crew is the spaceship Alaska. In The Rings of Akhaten, this is a world with no human connections, and it is unclear if the salvage team in Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS were human (they may have been - this is the only Doctor Who recently that I have thought so bad that it's not worth watching to the end).

We shall have to see what direction Season 34 and the Peter Capaldi era takes it in.

I'm Not Bothered By Your Ps, But Please Mind Your Queues

OK, something happened today that was really annoying. I was shopping at the local Sainsbury's and was at the front of the queue. The lady in front of me had finished her shopping, and had just paid, collected her vouchers, when a man rushed up with 4 tins of soup and handed them to the cashier. After he had been served I explained to the cashier that there was a queue of people waiting and she had allowed him to queue-jump.

She was sorry that I felt that way, but he was with the woman in front of me, and therefore it was not queue-jumping.

I have a simple philosophy on shopping:

If you have started putting your shopping on the conveyor belt, you have finished shopping. If you have forgotten something you can either:

• Put the stuff back into your basket/trolley, fetch the item, and then go to the back of a queue, or
• Wait till you get to the till, pay for what you have got, and then go back for the item, joining the back of a queue and paying for it separately

It is annoying when the person in front of you abandons their shopping, rushes off to complete their shopping, and their stuff gets to the till - but the shopper isn't there. So the cashier and the people in the queue have to wait until that person has got the rest of their items...

Sometimes cashiers support queue-jumpers. I was in a WHSmith just before Christmas a few years back, and it was a system of several tills with one snaking line, with one of those automated "Please go to till number...." announcements. One young cashier, I guess a college student earning extra cash on a Saturday, allowed one of her friends to come up to the till ahead of the rest of the queue. After I had been served, I went to customer services and asked to speak to the manager. When he arrived I explained what had happened, and he asked which cashier. I pointed over and said "that woman at that till".

He explained that by saying "that woman at that till", I was verbally abusing her. Staff do not come to work to be verbally abused. The issue for him was not that she had allowed one of her mates to queue-jump but that I was verbally abusing a member of staff - whom I had not actually spoken to. To be honest it's a casual phrase - no different to "that young man at that till" or "that dark-haired woman at that till". As I had verbally abused a member of staff he had no choice but to ask me to leave the store.

When I got home, I phoned a central complaints line for WHSmith and expressed my concern, not just at the queue-jumping being allowed, but the store manager's quite OTT response to me complaining.

Another WHSmith store with long queues. I get to the front of a queue and an old lady had walked through the front door a few moments earlier. Marching to the till she beings "A Euro..." and the cashier gets on with scanning my items.

"Excuse me, I was here first", the old lady says.

The cashier tells her that she wasn't and that there is a queue. Old lady gets a manager involved, who foolishly allows her to go to the front of the other queue and buy her Euromillions lottery ticket ahead of people who had been waiting patiently. So her reward for trying to queue-jump is being allowed to queue-jump.

One of the most annoying was at the Co-op (although I tend to pronounce it monosyllabic, which is appropriate as this involves chickens).

Some shoppers get to the till and cannot make up their minds.

She had - among other things - 2 chickens. The shopping is complete and the cashier tells her the amount.

As she had 2 chickens, she felt she should be entitled to them at a discount. No she can't, so off she toddles to put a chicken back and the new amount is rung up. She spies bananas, and takes them to the till. So they are added. Then she decides she doesn't want the bananas, so takes them back and the amount is taken off her total. She sees chocolates, and goes to examine them. Wisely deciding that avoiding a riot is more important than chocolate, she goes to the till and pays. Finally.