Yesterday I intervened in Caroline Cox's question on the destruction of the Armenian cultural heritage in Azerbaijan, see URL below. It is very hard to imagine the mindset of people who are so determined to erase the record of their victims, who were ethnically cleansed from the territory. But of course the Turks, who belong to the same family, have also worked hard to eradicate all the monuments of the 1.5 million Armenians who perished in the genocide of 1915-16

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199900/ldhansrd/pdvn/lds06/text/60720-1033.htm#06072042000008

This morning I had a meeting with the Attorney-General to discuss the case of Mr George Tomkins, who was remanded in custody in 1983-84 for a crime he manifestly didn't commit. I had written to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney-General at the time protesting against his treatment, and had been calling for an independent inquiry into the circumstances of the prosecution, and of the Attorney-General later stepping in to halt Mr Tomkins' private prosecution of the corrupt police officers who framed him. The Atorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, said that he and his officials had made searching inquiries into those events, but the original prosecution had been approved by two QCs. He did acknowledge that under the present rules, he would not have stopped the private prosecution against the police officers, even if the advice was that it was unlikely to succeed.

Ping-pong: yesterday I won 2-1, but today JW won 3-0. He now leads by 28-22, so I have a lot of ground to make up.