As I write, the newspapers are full of pictures of an 11-year-old girl who, on a drunken one-night stand, managed to get pregnant.

She's sitting on a sofa, a fag in one hand and an overflowing ashtray perched on one knee. Her stomach is huge. And in the next room, we see her mother, smoking a little smack and telling reporters that she's very proud. No dear, that's the wrong word. You're not proud. You're a stupid waste of the world's resources.

And she's not alone. In fact, I am becoming increasingly concerned with the sheer number of properly idiotic people who call Britain home.

Last year, towards the end of an all-weekend open-air gig, I went to the portable lavatories in the VIP enclosure. You know the sort. Blue water, a dead flower and lots of powder on all the shelving. Anyway, they were immaculate.

This was not the case with the bogs provided outside the VIP enclosure. They were in a total state. Piss on the floor, shit on the walls, entire bog rolls unravelled and stuffed down the pan. Now come on. How hard is it to use a lavatory? And how thick do you have to be to get it wrong?

You see this kind of thing at motorway service stations as well. I had cause to visit one the other day and it was extraordinary. Even the Polish lorry drivers in there were standing, hands on hips, wondering exactly how anyone had managed to get crap on the ceiling. Not even cows can do that.

These were people who had grown up under the hammer of communism. They'd had to queue for bread, knowing that just a few hundred miles away in the west, people were buying Hovis to feed to the birds. I wonder how they would have felt if they had known we couldn't go for a piss without getting it into someone's eye.

And here's the thing. All these people - mothers of pregnant 11-year olds, van drivers who are confused by plumbing - are all eligible to do jury service.

I spoke yesterday to a friend who had sat through the trial of a chap who had come from Lagos with a suitcase full of cocaine. He'd told police that he had no idea what was in the bag, only that he had been asked to deliver it to a house in central London - a house which turned out, surprise, surprise, to be empty when it was raided.

Plainly, the man was guilty. Anyone with half a brain could see that. But unfortunately, half the jury didn't have half a brain. Most, apparently, didn't have a brain at all.

Two couldn't read the card saying they understood what was going on, one woman said that no matter what, she couldn't find a fellow black person guilty of anything, and another two said they weren't that bothered which way the vote went, so long as they could go home. To piss all over the bathroom floor, probably.

As a result, the drug smuggler walked free.

Now, as I understand it, there are certain conditions that have to be met before you can do jury service. One of them is that you must have a sound mind. This was included in the rules to prevent window lickers from turning up in jock straps and army boots and making dolphin noises throughout the proceedings.