Best Of

FPT ref DavidL's comments on juries

1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete
2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above?
3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.

None of the above has to be on the critical path.

My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.

There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.

Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.

There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else

Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.

Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.

So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.

Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”

You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.

Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.

It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.

Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.

The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.

I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.

What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)

The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.

So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money.
We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money.
Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money.
Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.

Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.

Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.

We have no money

Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.

It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.

This has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.

When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.

The problem is the pattern - we have lost control of public spending. Which results in starving spending on needed things.

Spend £700 million on court infrastructure and staff, say. Rather than saving a shop windows worth of salmon. Think how many clerks you could hire to prepare juries for the courts.

Merge NI & IT to reduce the admin overhead.

Buy the “world beating” ACV that actually exists - CV-90. Aside from it actually working, costing a fraction of what Ajax does, it will reduce the burden on the NHS.

Train U.K. medics overseas. Using the overseas aid budget - it will be supporting developing world health systems, after all. Then we have more medics - so less agency staff on the NHS (cheaper), less stress on the existing NHS staff (retainment), more U.K. citizens with qualifications for jobs which are in high demand…

This is about running procurement and government intelligently. Cost control and productivity - both are not being done.

There are issues with training doctors overseas: e.g., try https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12909-017-0903-6

We hire medics from overseas.

Some places are problematic - don’t use them.

Plenty of places where we recognise their pill-rolling certificates. If they are good enough to train their own people to our standards, why not train our people to the same standard?

Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.

You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.

Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?

Anyone who thinks welfare in the UK is linked to relative measures of prosperity has little idea of how a large part of society lives. Only pensioners get that consideration. Welfare is issued on the necessary minimum - maybe that's all a safety net should provide. But it means if you cut below that minimum for essentially ideological reasons as with the two child cap, you are creating new and genuine hardship.

FPT ref DavidL's comments on juries

1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete
2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above?
3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.

None of the above has to be on the critical path.

My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.

There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.

Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.

There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else

Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.

Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.

So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.

Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”

You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.

Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.

It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.

Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.

The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.

I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.

What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)

The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.

So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money.
We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money.
Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money.
Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.

Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.

Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.

We have no money

Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.

It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.

This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.

Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.

I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.

This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.

I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.

Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.

House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why?
Land banking by developers
Arcane endless planning regulations
Housing Associations starved of resources
A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money.
But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.

FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday.
So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool
We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here
We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build
We need to bonfire the planning barriers
We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land
All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc

Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.

Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?

A minor example:

How much does it cost to replace two rotting windows in Britain in 2025?
More than you might think
https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/how-much-does-it-cost-to-replace

But if we don’t triple the cost of replacing windows, by needing plan application consultants, because the forms are so complex… how will the consultants eat?

Plus it will breach international law, human rights law, law of the sea, NATO, SEATO….

None of the individual steps are necessarily that objectionable, but the implementation is shockingly poor, and there seems to be no oversight to see whether the system is working as intended or needs to be amended.

The system fails badly.

It has no real oversight or review (otherwise government would long since have looking at how to reform it).
It is not proportionate what is needed to achieve its aims (building safety) at a reasonable cost.
It is not timely: even the best managed schemes face significant delays on getting anything signed off.
It is overly complex, and inflexible.

FPT ref DavidL's comments on juries

1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete
2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above?
3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.

None of the above has to be on the critical path.

My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.

There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.

Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.

There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else

Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.

Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.

So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.

Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”

You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.

Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.

It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.

Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.

The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.

I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.

What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)

The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.

So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money.
We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money.
Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money.
Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.

Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.

Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.

That is not "just a little short of the highest in Europe". It's 57% in France, with other European countries above 44% including Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Slovenia/-akia.

So not Ireland, Switzerland, Iceland, the Czech Republic, Portugal etc who spend less than the UK as does Canada, Australia and the USA and New Zealand, Singapore etc. France spends more than all of them and has a massive deficit its governments seem incapable of getting to grips with, the left wanting no spending cuts at all just yet higher taxes on the rich

We're not the lowest in Europe either, no.

There's also the difficulty with making figures comparable. The Swiss figure is low, but I think that's because it excludes healthcare. Switzerland has a system of mandatory healthcare insurance, so that counts as not being government expenditure, and yet it's mandatory for everyone and legislated for, so it kinda works the same as countries where it is counted as being government expenditure. You are required by law to pay a fee to a cross-subsidised system, rather than being required by law to pay a tax to a cross-subsidised system.

Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.

You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.

Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?

It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.

An absolute measure is fairer.

Yep. Relative poverty is NOT a measure of individual circumstance, it is a measure of inequality. The left love it. Absolute poverty is whether you can heat your house, eat food etc. The almost universal adoption of relative poverty has not helped.

I can see it having some utility as a measure, but it is reported on as if it is like absolute poverty, which I think confuses what is being talked about as they are not the same thing and one is more vital a concern than the other.

I don't disagree with this but the conversation started with @Morris_Dancer: "Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure."

My point is that 'relative poverty' is not a 'bullshit measure', it's just one that MD doesn't like. No reason to criticise BBC Verify for using it.

It doesn't matter much what measure you use, as long as you are clear you are using it and what it actually means. Eg use of 'relative poverty' really needs to explain that there is nothing necessarily wrong with being in 'relative poverty' and it is not obvious that anyone should do anything about it.

(Even though I think we should!)

FPT ref DavidL's comments on juries

1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete
2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above?
3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.

None of the above has to be on the critical path.

My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.

There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.

Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.

There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else

Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.

Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.

So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.

Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”

You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.

Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.

It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.

Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.

The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.

I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.

What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)

The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.

So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money.
We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money.
Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money.
Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.

Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.

Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.

We have no money

Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.

It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.

This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.

Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.

I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.

This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.

I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.

Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.

House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why?
Land banking by developers
Arcane endless planning regulations
Housing Associations starved of resources
A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money.
But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.

FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday.
So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool
We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here
We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build
We need to bonfire the planning barriers
We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land
All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc

Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.

Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?

A minor example:

How much does it cost to replace two rotting windows in Britain in 2025?
More than you might think
https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/how-much-does-it-cost-to-replace