Do not mistake this for a witch-hunt. It is not. Rather, it is a ninny-hunt. In fact, if there was sufficient slogan space on the t-shirts that I, as a modern-day Thomas Danforth, would distribute to the villagers along with their flaming torches, it is a Legally-Illiterate-Ninny-Who-Has-Inexplicably-Found-His-Hands-On-The-Oxidated-Levers-of-Justice hunt. Shailesh Vara MP, the under-secretary of state at the Ministry…
Read moreOfficial: If you are accused of a crime, the government will pay more for someone to photocopy your case than for someone to defend you
This is not a complaint about what criminal barristers get paid. Honestly. There are plenty of such grizzlings on other posts over these pages. But this is not one of them. No siree. Well not really. Admittedly pay rates are a feature of this contemplation, but only as an adjunct to a broader, more depressing principle. And it…
Read moreWhy this 75p Mars bar shows we should abolish magistrates
If there is one positive to be derived from the Criminal Courts Charge (about which see here), it is that the creeping media attention is starting to shine a low-wattage torch on the grubby underside of the criminal justice system – the magistrates’ courts. Enormous credit must be extended to Frances Crook and colleagues at…
Read moreMichael and the Mystery of the Disappearing Prosecution Service
And now, the latest instalment in a new children’s series provisionally entitled “Michael Meets The Justice System”, possibly published by Penguin (and now, happily, no longer barred to prisoners), in which the reader joins brand new Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove on a rollercoaster of head-scratching and belly laughs as…
Read moreBozo the clown and the court closures
A somewhat disheartening intervention yesterday from junior justice minister Shailesh Vara, the mendacious bozo behind the false statistics on barristers’ earnings fiasco, as his written ministerial statement heralds a consultation envisaging the closure of 91 courts and tribunals. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Courts and Legal Aid made the following observation: “The estate costs taxpayers…
Read moreThe ballad of Steak Pants Man and the Criminal Courts Charge
This week brought forth a shimmering example of the perfect insanity of former Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s parting gift to the criminal justice system. Insanity for which you, the taxpayer, are going to pay. In his last weeks in office, Mr Grayling snuck in through the legislative back-door secondary legislation giving effect to the Criminal…
Read moreWhy on earth should the DPP resign over Lord Janner?
I don’t normally blog on serious matters of law. Doing so tends to involve a level of effort, research and legal analysis way beyond my limited capacity, and in any case there are a number of top notch blogs (as listed in the blogroll) with which I can’t, and wouldn’t, compete. But as the allegations…
Read moreWhat I go to court for
I am not a habitually angry person. Those who know me professionally would, I hope, attest to my happy-go-lucky demeanour and brimming joie de vivre. By way of example, I considered illustrating this blogpost with a jovial (and nostalgic) nod to Busted’s What I Go To School For. In fact: See? Jocular. Convivial. That’s me…
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