It's Tuesday Night and I'm Back From the Pub.

With nothing more interesting to say I was going to take the opportunity to tell you a tedious but informative story about the last time Britain convicted someone of witchcraft way back in 1944.

Unfortunately the UK Prime Minister has announced that he is going to visit Algeria in the wake of the In Amenas hostage fiasco. Then British Petroleum (BP) entered a guilty plea to a range of charges including corporate manslaughter in a US court over the Deep Water Horizon/Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The guilty plea was accepted. Women's issues in the US think this will be viewed as the US bravely slapping down the UK over it's general bad behaviour particularly that conducted in Africa. What they've failed to realise is that until Chris Brown is put in prison it's all on them. In fact unless Rihanna shows willing soon it may already be too late to get out from under this one. The fact that BP were the ones setting the momentum should really have been a big f*cking clue.

So with Britain deploying some 300 military trainers to Mali and surrounding English speaking west-African nations I feel compelled to ask; Are the local troops familiar with a concept known as 'time sensitivity'? It's just in what will be a special forces war with African troops at best playing a supporting role I feel it may be important.

Oh and yes the last person to be convicted of witchcraft in the UK was Helen Duncan. In 1941 Ms Duncan held a seance if which she summoned the spirit of one of the 800 sailors who had died when HMS Branham was sunk by a German U-boat in November 1941. The problem was that the sinking of the Barnham was kept secret until January 1942 in order to stop the news adversely affecting public morale. Therefore the only logical way Ms Duncan could have known about the incident was if someone on Britain's side who knew about the secret leaked or Ms Duncan was a German spy. After thoroughly investigating Britain's intelligence services found no indication of either of these scenarios being the case. However with D-Day coming up they really needed to shut Ms Duncan up so in January 1944 they tried and convicted her of witch craft and she spent the rest of the war in prison before being posthumously pardoned in July 2012. Actually thinking about it this case might have been what prompted the US and the USSR to spend small fortunes researching shared consciousness during the cold war.

20:20 on 28/1/13.