Imagine a group of delinquent pensioners spice up their retirement by hanging round your neighbourhood soaking people with big water pistols. Would it be acceptable to deal with the problem by setting aside a corner of the park for the exclusive use of young and middle aged people so they can relax and enjoy themselves without having to worry about elderly water bomb attackers?  That’s exactly the type of approach that MP Chris Williamson has been criticised for saying we should explore to help protect women from being sexually assaulted on trains by having “women only” carriages on trains; I want to take up his call for exploration because I think there’s a fairer way to segregate potential attackers from the women they would prey on: unaccompanied males train carriages.

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In the aftermath of the referendum I was surprised to see that there was an almighty political struggle going on, why hadn’t the vote settled all the relevant questions? So I had a look at the referendum’s small print, the European Union Referendum Act 2015, and compared it with the small print for the equivalent act behind the Alternative Vote referendum we had in 2011, the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011.

What I found was that when we took part in the Alternative Vote referendum our ballots were armed and aimed at the statute books ready to change in the law, but in the EU Membership referendum that wasn’t the case, so when the trigger was pulled all that happened was a flag popped out saying “Leave!”.

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