Jane's not a fan of Vera Lynn I take it!

The Manx judiciary are infamous for some of their zany pronouncements but this latest one takes the biscuit:

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/article.cfm?id=42800&headline=Wear%20shorts%20...

It's all the more bizarre given that I remarked in a post last year on bumping in to a (now former) Deemster in the street rather fashionably attired as an extra from ‘It ain’t half hot mum’. Additionally Dame Vera Lynn cut quite a dash in shorts when she took herself of to entertain the troops of the 14th Army in Burma in WW2. We can take it Deputy High Bailiff Jane Hughes is not a Vera Lynn fan! The Lynn analogy is quite apposite given that probably a few tropical leeches infest the ‘halls of justice’.

Indeed in the right situation in fact shorts can be de rigueur as illustrated by these two French ‘Squaddies’ part of the EUFOR in West Africa.

Nonetheless it seems sartorial style in the hallowed halls of Deemsters Walk does not extend to shorts. Personally I think there’s no justice in it but secretly I am pleased that Janes latest salvo has brightened an otherwise dull morning for me!

Bernard Moffatt