Where does the BBC find these people. They're debating the future of the jury system in talk back format with a couple of so called experts. Some one's rung in to suggest reverting the Good Old Days when property ownership was a basic qualification for the right to sit on a jury.

The caller's belief seems to be that by reintroducing such a qualification most of the riff-raff who are currently being empanelled and are prone to:

• falling asleep during evidence
• reaching snap judgements based on appearance
• sleeping in
• listening to an MP3 type device

and so on and so forth, would be excluded.

Hmm

That wasn't what startled me though. Talk back wouldn't work if it didn't give air time to idiots. But usually those idiots are the callers, while those in the studio tend to talk well informed sense even if one doesn't agree with their conclusions.

I was rather taken aback by a woman contributor in the studio who instantly linked property ownership/jury service to property ownership and the historic link to voting rights. Yes. Except she claimed that property ownership was the basis of voting rights not from the 18th to early 20th centuries but In The Middle Ages.

Oh dear.