NoIvichok has some truly weird properties. Apparently harmless to children and ducks but so deadly that the table in Zizzi's restaurant at which the Skripals sat needed destroying immediately. There's no word on what happened to the menus, cutlery and china which they also touched and yet none of the staff who served them nor fellow customers seemed to be affected by one of the world's most toxic substances.

And the biggest mystery of all - where, exactly, ARE the Skripals? Wouldn't the easiest thing be to actually call them as witnesses rather than speculate on what happened that strange day in Salisbury?

I once believed that our legal system was relatively 'clean' - that it contained enough independent-minded folk that corruption was unlikely. No longer, alas.