Barring unexpected scandals or disasters Starmer and Reeves should now be safe until the May local elections, giving themselves time to shore up support. But the cost of choosing this [less bold] option is that, once again, the truly difficult decisions have been put off for later and little has been done to deal with the big problems facing the country.
The country doesn’t want anyone to deal with the big problems
Then we will face the consequences of the big problems dealing with the country and not in the gradualist way we might have. As I said yesterday, I fear the risk of this has increased with this faux budget.
What were your thoughts on Kemi and the Tories response. I was a fan and would be surprised if we didn't see Tory Labour crossover cemented over the coming weeks.
Thoughts and prayers for Robert Jenrick.
I think you have it right. If her own side were impressed it's not good news for OZEMPIC Bob. But as for 'crossovers' and moving dials......that's MoonRabbit thinking!
Barring unexpected scandals or disasters Starmer and Reeves should now be safe until the May local elections, giving themselves time to shore up support. But the cost of choosing this [less bold] option is that, once again, the truly difficult decisions have been put off for later and little has been done to deal with the big problems facing the country.
The country doesn’t want anyone to deal with the big problems
Then we will face the consequences of the big problems dealing with the country and not in the gradualist way we might have. As I said yesterday, I fear the risk of this has increased with this faux budget.
What were your thoughts on Kemi and the Tories response. I was a fan and would be surprised if we didn't see Tory Labour crossover cemented over the coming weeks.
Thoughts and prayers for Robert Jenrick.
I think you have it right. If her own side were impressed it's not good news for OZEMPIC Bob. But as for 'crossovers' and moving dials......that's MoonRabbit thinking!
My sympathy for reducing our use of jury trials stems largely from the experience of four weeks spent mostly hanging around in jury rooms, interspersed with small periods of time actually sitting on trials. I see my suggestions for cutting down on some of the inefficiency was shot down by Cyclefree and other great and good posters on this august site, so maybe I should can it. I'm still not sure though why you need twelve jurors in all cases. How did we alight on that number? Why wouldn't ten or six work?
From my experience you usually get three or four jurors who say nothing and just vote with the crowd.
Smaller numbers anyone?
No, I wouldn't reduce the number.
Noted with thanks, Andy.
How many virgins do you want when you go to paradise?
Still another 200,000 people who need homes to live in and the NHS and all the other services.
Still another 200,000 people contributing to society and being productive.
Yes, that's the flip side. But houses don't just pop up out of the ground and one of the biggest issues is housing in this country. It's all very well saying its a big drop in migration but its still more people. In the same way that a fall in inflation still means prices are going up.
I've just found out that Alex Harvey - of the Sensational Alex Harvey band - was in the masons (and unusually, had actually worked with stone, having at one time been a carver of gravestones). Not sure what to do with this information, so I'm leaving it here.
I'll engage - I saw them in 1976, with Little Feat, supporting The Who, at Charlton football ground - at the time, the loudest concert ever, apparently. They were fun. I still haven't recovered, as we approach the fiftieth anniversary. PS - just checked. The ticket was £4!
£4 must have been quite pricey for live music in 1976. I remember seeing Oasis for £5 in 1993 (this was at the Leadmill in Sheffield, rather than the stadium gigs they moved on to, but still).
I'd have loved to have seen SAHB. I've only ever seen them on telly, of course (what with Alex Harvey having died when I was 7) - but I love the amount of aggression which he manages to get into the act of standing still in a slightly daft big stripey t-shirt.
Although 1993 was pre Definitely Maybe for Oasis so that would likely be a factor compared to Maiden in 1998 and The Who in 1976 who! had both been around for ages at those respective points.
I've just found out that Alex Harvey - of the Sensational Alex Harvey band - was in the masons (and unusually, had actually worked with stone, having at one time been a carver of gravestones). Not sure what to do with this information, so I'm leaving it here.
Another Scottish great, Finn Russell, also an apprenticed stonemason.
I worked beside Alistair (Zal) Cleminson in the early noughties, lovely guy who taught me the essentials of Excel. No, he didn't wear the make up to work.
That really deserves more than the one like I am able to give it.
Edit: I've just looked Finn Russell up - because your fact rang a bell - and I'm reminded of this lovely phrase on Wikipedia: "Russell did not feel drawn to academic work". It feels like this terse phrase possibly hides several years of his teachers' expletives about the extent to which he was 'drawn to academic work'.
Still enjoying this. For the benefit of the thread, this is the man who taught TUD the essentials of Microsoft Excel:
Can anybody recommend any good books about Airey Neave please?
THere's always his own writings about his escape from Colditz and his work in MI9 - They have hteir Exits and Saturday at MI9 but they prob don't cover the political era.
Patrick Bishop's biog I seem to remember reading - it was acceptable enough but I didn't feel the need to keep it. There is another biog by Routledge which I have not read.
Is MI9 intelligence for dyslexics?
No, it was really called that (just in case it's not a witty pun by you). A separate dept to help Allied servicemen esp. RAF etc evade capture, or escape from PoW camps, provide maps in chessboards, arrange escape trails etc.
Edit: Airey Neave was assigned to that for obvious reasons of experience of both PoW life and escaping, but also because IIRC he knew too much and wasn't allowed to go into the field in NWE lest he be captured and the information about his helpers etc. be extracted by torture. Obviously a good use of his experience, thjough the alternative would have been going to the Indo-Burmese front, of course.
MI9 was formed in late 1940 as a result of conversations during 1939 with servicemen who had escaped during the First World War. It was a department of thw War Office intended to train servicemen in escape and evasion, and initially tasked with rescuing those stranded after Dunkirk. The focus on downed aircrew came later.
Looks as if Govt has done a massive, completely unnecessary own goal.
Reading comments on various newspaper websites, the vast majority of people think tax relief on all pension contributions is being reduced so only £2k of contributions is allowable.
So someone contributing say £10k into a pension will lose £1,600 if basic rate taxpayer, and £3,200 if higher rate taxpayer.
Of course this is nonsense, the change only affects people doing salary sacrifice.
But most people don't understand this at all and think they will be hit themselves - and hit massively.
It's even dafter because change doesn't come in until April 2029 - so probably will be after the GE in any case.
These would be huge sums - it's going to frighten lots of people and cost Labour a lot of votes.
There's likely to be considerable numbers of people who are learning about salary sacrifice pension contributions and wondering why they've never benefited from there.
It wouldn't surprise me if the number of people who use salary sacrifice increases, certainly for the next three years, and probably permanently.
Aren’t most modern employer pension schemes already salary sacrifice?
Looks as if Govt has done a massive, completely unnecessary own goal.
Reading comments on various newspaper websites, the vast majority of people think tax relief on all pension contributions is being reduced so only £2k of contributions is allowable.
So someone contributing say £10k into a pension will lose £1,600 if basic rate taxpayer, and £3,200 if higher rate taxpayer.
Of course this is nonsense, the change only affects people doing salary sacrifice.
But most people don't understand this at all and think they will be hit themselves - and hit massively.
It's even dafter because change doesn't come in until April 2029 - so probably will be after the GE in any case.
These would be huge sums - it's going to frighten lots of people and cost Labour a lot of votes.
There's likely to be considerable numbers of people who are learning about salary sacrifice pension contributions and wondering why they've never benefited from there.
It wouldn't surprise me if the number of people who use salary sacrifice increases, certainly for the next three years, and probably permanently.
Aren’t most modern employer pension schemes already salary sacrifice?
No, because they are based on the official salary, as I understand it.
I'd do away with Jury trials. Most European countries don't use this system. It seems very arcane. The criminal justice system clearly needs an overhaul but the place to start is with sentencing. We've been inured to these insanely long sentences. Imagining five years ahead will seem like a lifetime to a twenty year old and ten years and beyond will feel ike forever.
Scale it all down. As for Juries. Why would twelve random people with their own prejudices be better than say three who are trained and who could be regularly assessed?
Looks as if Govt has done a massive, completely unnecessary own goal.
Reading comments on various newspaper websites, the vast majority of people think tax relief on all pension contributions is being reduced so only £2k of contributions is allowable.
So someone contributing say £10k into a pension will lose £1,600 if basic rate taxpayer, and £3,200 if higher rate taxpayer.
Of course this is nonsense, the change only affects people doing salary sacrifice.
But most people don't understand this at all and think they will be hit themselves - and hit massively.
It's even dafter because change doesn't come in until April 2029 - so probably will be after the GE in any case.
These would be huge sums - it's going to frighten lots of people and cost Labour a lot of votes.
There's likely to be considerable numbers of people who are learning about salary sacrifice pension contributions and wondering why they've never benefited from there.
It wouldn't surprise me if the number of people who use salary sacrifice increases, certainly for the next three years, and probably permanently.
It’s been the policy of successive governments to encourage people to use workplace pensions.
Gordon Brown made it mandatory for financial advisors to advocate people using them. Even in the cases where they are less efficient - rare but happens.
Salary sacrifice has the advantage of people getting used to it. They set it up with payroll and it sits there, contributing.
As a corrective. I believe European countries running the Roman Law/Napoleonic Code system have been moving away * from examining magistrates determining guilt towards more jury trials. I'm not sure what the motivation for this is.
* Not as I have just checked in the Netherlands, Germany or Scandinavia. They don't have jury trials.
I'd do away with Jury trials. Most European countries don't use this system. It seems very arcane. The criminal justice system clearly needs an overhaul but the place to start is with sentencing. We've been inured to these insanely long sentences. Imagining five years ahead will seem like a lifetime to a twenty year old and ten years and beyond will feel ike forever.
Scale it all down. As for Juries. Why would twelve random people with their own prejudices be better than say three who are trained and who could be regularly assessed?
I've just found out that Alex Harvey - of the Sensational Alex Harvey band - was in the masons (and unusually, had actually worked with stone, having at one time been a carver of gravestones). Not sure what to do with this information, so I'm leaving it here.
I'll engage - I saw them in 1976, with Little Feat, supporting The Who, at Charlton football ground - at the time, the loudest concert ever, apparently. They were fun. I still haven't recovered, as we approach the fiftieth anniversary. PS - just checked. The ticket was £4!
£4 must have been quite pricey for live music in 1976. I remember seeing Oasis for £5 in 1993 (this was at the Leadmill in Sheffield, rather than the stadium gigs they moved on to, but still).
I'd have loved to have seen SAHB. I've only ever seen them on telly, of course (what with Alex Harvey having died when I was 7) - but I love the amount of aggression which he manages to get into the act of standing still in a slightly daft big stripey t-shirt.
Although 1993 was pre Definitely Maybe for Oasis so that would likely be a factor compared to Maiden in 1998 and The Who in 1976 who! had both been around for ages at those respective points.
Mine was The Prodigy, Guildford Civic Hall, 1994, £10 from memory. Bloody loud!
I've just found out that Alex Harvey - of the Sensational Alex Harvey band - was in the masons (and unusually, had actually worked with stone, having at one time been a carver of gravestones). Not sure what to do with this information, so I'm leaving it here.
I'll engage - I saw them in 1976, with Little Feat, supporting The Who, at Charlton football ground - at the time, the loudest concert ever, apparently. They were fun. I still haven't recovered, as we approach the fiftieth anniversary.
Alex Harvey Band and Lowell George era Little Feat. That is a cracking support lineup
Oh, and The Outlaws, who were excellent. All flooding back now.
On the subject of gigs, just booked tickets for the Waterboys and Steve Earle playing together as the Fisherman's Blues Review at the O2 next September.
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
All good questions OKC, but I suspect no easy answers. Local knowledge would generally be thought of as an advantage, but if you remember the famous A6 murder trial, it was held in Bedford, close to the scene of the crime. Had it been held at the Old Bailey, Hanratty would probably have got off.
I've just found out that Alex Harvey - of the Sensational Alex Harvey band - was in the masons (and unusually, had actually worked with stone, having at one time been a carver of gravestones). Not sure what to do with this information, so I'm leaving it here.
Another Scottish great, Finn Russell, also an apprenticed stonemason.
I worked beside Alistair (Zal) Cleminson in the early noughties, lovely guy who taught me the essentials of Excel. No, he didn't wear the make up to work.
That really deserves more than the one like I am able to give it.
Edit: I've just looked Finn Russell up - because your fact rang a bell - and I'm reminded of this lovely phrase on Wikipedia: "Russell did not feel drawn to academic work". It feels like this terse phrase possibly hides several years of his teachers' expletives about the extent to which he was 'drawn to academic work'.
Yes, even now Russell has a look of the naughtiest boy in the class.
Can anybody recommend any good books about Airey Neave please?
THere's always his own writings about his escape from Colditz and his work in MI9 - They have hteir Exits and Saturday at MI9 but they prob don't cover the political era.
Patrick Bishop's biog I seem to remember reading - it was acceptable enough but I didn't feel the need to keep it. There is another biog by Routledge which I have not read.
Is MI9 intelligence for dyslexics?
No, it was really called that (just in case it's not a witty pun by you). A separate dept to help Allied servicemen esp. RAF etc evade capture, or escape from PoW camps, provide maps in chessboards, arrange escape trails etc.
Edit: Airey Neave was assigned to that for obvious reasons of experience of both PoW life and escaping, but also because IIRC he knew too much and wasn't allowed to go into the field in NWE lest he be captured and the information about his helpers etc. be extracted by torture. Obviously a good use of his experience, thjough the alternative would have been going to the Indo-Burmese front, of course.
MI9 was formed in late 1940 as a result of conversations during 1939 with servicemen who had escaped during the First World War. It was a department of thw War Office intended to train servicemen in escape and evasion, and initially tasked with rescuing those stranded after Dunkirk. The focus on downed aircrew came later.
Can anybody recommend any good books about Airey Neave please?
THere's always his own writings about his escape from Colditz and his work in MI9 - They have hteir Exits and Saturday at MI9 but they prob don't cover the political era.
Patrick Bishop's biog I seem to remember reading - it was acceptable enough but I didn't feel the need to keep it. There is another biog by Routledge which I have not read.
Is MI9 intelligence for dyslexics?
No, it was really called that (just in case it's not a witty pun by you). A separate dept to help Allied servicemen esp. RAF etc evade capture, or escape from PoW camps, provide maps in chessboards, arrange escape trails etc.
Edit: Airey Neave was assigned to that for obvious reasons of experience of both PoW life and escaping, but also because IIRC he knew too much and wasn't allowed to go into the field in NWE lest he be captured and the information about his helpers etc. be extracted by torture. Obviously a good use of his experience, thjough the alternative would have been going to the Indo-Burmese front, of course.
MI9 was formed in late 1940 as a result of conversations during 1939 with servicemen who had escaped during the First World War. It was a department of thw War Office intended to train servicemen in escape and evasion, and initially tasked with rescuing those stranded after Dunkirk. The focus on downed aircrew came later.
In the past, Military Intelligence departments ranged from MI1 to MI19, I believe.
As a corrective. I believe European countries running the Roman Law/Napoleonic Code system have been moving away * from examining magistrates determining guilt towards more jury trials. I'm not sure what the motivation for this is.
* Not as I have just checked in the Netherlands, Germany or Scandinavia. They don't have jury trials.
And in France they have just cut back on jury trials after a previous expansion. So maybe not ...
Interestingly quite a few countries have a hybrid system of one or two professional judges and a couple of lay judges that decide the case together.
I'd do away with Jury trials. Most European countries don't use this system. It seems very arcane. The criminal justice system clearly needs an overhaul but the place to start is with sentencing. We've been inured to these insanely long sentences. Imagining five years ahead will seem like a lifetime to a twenty year old and ten years and beyond will feel ike forever.
Scale it all down. As for Juries. Why would twelve random people with their own prejudices be better than say three who are trained and who could be regularly assessed?
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
I'd understood that the continental legal system requires people to prove their innocence, rather than innocence being the initial presumption.
I've just found out that Alex Harvey - of the Sensational Alex Harvey band - was in the masons (and unusually, had actually worked with stone, having at one time been a carver of gravestones). Not sure what to do with this information, so I'm leaving it here.
I'll engage - I saw them in 1976, with Little Feat, supporting The Who, at Charlton football ground - at the time, the loudest concert ever, apparently. They were fun. I still haven't recovered, as we approach the fiftieth anniversary.
Alex Harvey Band and Lowell George era Little Feat. That is a cracking support lineup
Oh, and The Outlaws, who were excellent. All flooding back now.
On the subject of gigs, just booked tickets for the Waterboys and Steve Earle playing together as the Fisherman's Blues Review at the O2 next September.
That sounds like a belter! Fisherman's Blues a lifetime top 3 album; Copperhead Road a top 10 track.
So the government has front loaded all of the spending decisions and backloaded all of the tax rises. This budget is going to unravel very badly. A big chunk of the supposed increased revenue from tax rises come after the election date but that is being used to balance yet another giant splurge of spending on welfare and it's resulted in an additional £58bn of borrowing. The Labour party are taking voters for mugs and the weird Lib Dems and "one nation Tories" on here supporting it when even Labour voters have ducked out shows just how gullible the "centrist dads" really are.
My sympathy for reducing our use of jury trials stems largely from the experience of four weeks spent mostly hanging around in jury rooms, interspersed with small periods of time actually sitting on trials. I see my suggestions for cutting down on some of the inefficiency was shot down by Cyclefree and other great and good posters on this august site, so maybe I should can it. I'm still not sure though why you need twelve jurors in all cases. How did we alight on that number? Why wouldn't ten or six work?
From my experience you usually get three or four jurors who say nothing and just vote with the crowd.
Smaller numbers anyone?
Twelve comes from at least Henry II's day.
I'm guessing there's a religious angle...twelve apostles maybe?
AI says it's the fault of the Welsh:
The practice likely originated with the Welsh King Morgan of Gla-Morgan, who, in the 8th century, based the jury size on the 12 Apostles of Jesus.
I've just found out that Alex Harvey - of the Sensational Alex Harvey band - was in the masons (and unusually, had actually worked with stone, having at one time been a carver of gravestones). Not sure what to do with this information, so I'm leaving it here.
I'll engage - I saw them in 1976, with Little Feat, supporting The Who, at Charlton football ground - at the time, the loudest concert ever, apparently. They were fun. I still haven't recovered, as we approach the fiftieth anniversary. PS - just checked. The ticket was £4!
£4 must have been quite pricey for live music in 1976. I remember seeing Oasis for £5 in 1993 (this was at the Leadmill in Sheffield, rather than the stadium gigs they moved on to, but still).
I'd have loved to have seen SAHB. I've only ever seen them on telly, of course (what with Alex Harvey having died when I was 7) - but I love the amount of aggression which he manages to get into the act of standing still in a slightly daft big stripey t-shirt.
Although 1993 was pre Definitely Maybe for Oasis so that would likely be a factor compared to Maiden in 1998 and The Who in 1976 who! had both been around for ages at those respective points.
Maybe it was 1994. But if Definitely Maybe had come out, it had only just come out. Supersonic was well-known, but perhaps not the rest of the set. They were a bit boring, to be honest. Musically adept and with some good songs, but seemed less than the sum of their parts, and didn't seem enthused to be there.
But live music in that era was very affordable. Northern_Al compares to pints; I compare to the cost of recorded music. It was usually cheaper to see a band play live than to buy a copy of their album. And £5 would get you in to see whoever was playing at the Leadmill that evening AND your entry to the disco afterwards. The Leadmill was one of the cheaper venues, but I don't remember paying anywhere over £10 (and in fact I do remember Oasis tickets going for £15 when they came back in 1995, and turning them down on the grounds of not-paying-that-much.)
I'd do away with Jury trials. Most European countries don't use this system. It seems very arcane. The criminal justice system clearly needs an overhaul but the place to start is with sentencing. We've been inured to these insanely long sentences. Imagining five years ahead will seem like a lifetime to a twenty year old and ten years and beyond will feel ike forever.
Scale it all down. As for Juries. Why would twelve random people with their own prejudices be better than say three who are trained and who could be regularly assessed?
That's weird. The revaluations happen fairly regularly (every 3 years?) so not sure why those particular pubs are having such massive increases. Something wrong with the formula?
Rachel introduced a new surcharge on "big business" to reduce cost on "small business", but "big business" is those in buildings with a rateable value of more than £500,000 i.e. everybody but a hole in the wall operation. Supermarkets are getting particularly shafted on this, which means we are all going to pay more. But pubs are on the whole big buildings, and particularly nice ones in Cornwall (which is where the twitter account is I believe), the building is going to be worth a load more than £500k.
That surcharge is on business properties with a rateable value over £500k. As per the tweet her RV is now £73,500, which is way under that (and would now be subject to the standard RHL multiplier of 43p in the £, for 2026-27. (ie an actual rates bill of £31,605).
I am also puzzled how it went from £18.5k to £73.5k. Until I looked at the figures for Covid RHL (retail hospitality and leisure) rates relief.
Back in 2023, this was set at 75% - which would approximately reduce the effective value form £73.5k to £18.5k. In the current year, though, it's only 40%, so her current effective assessment is actually more like £44k.
So there's been minimal change in the actual rateable value of the property. What has happened in that the hospitality rates relief has fallen from 75% to 40% to nil.
Still another 200,000 people who need homes to live in and the NHS and all the other services.
Still another 200,000 people contributing to society and being productive.
Yes, that's the flip side. But houses don't just pop up out of the ground and one of the biggest issues is housing in this country. It's all very well saying its a big drop in migration but its still more people. In the same way that a fall in inflation still means prices are going up.
It's hard to know how to judge the government on migration. I don't think they've even said what their objective is, except to aim for hard to define words like "controlled". Perhaps the most obvious objective for the government is that they'd want immigration to fall out of the top 3 concerns of the voters.
Perhaps if the issue is, at root, mostly about housing, you could judge the success of the government's migration policy by house prices and ownership. If house prices are down (in real and/or income multiple terms) and house ownership is up - indicating progress on reducing the deficit in housing supply - then you could say that the government's migration policy has not increased the population more quickly than the economy has been able to build homes.
This way of judging migration also seems like a more reliable method, given the uncertainty and unreliability of the official migration statistics. Suppose the headline number for net migration fell below 100,000 next year. How many Reform voters would actually believe that to be the case?
Just scrap the spend on digital ID and put it into the Justice Dept.
I don't think that ius the right way to think. The justice system should be sorted out as a high priority in its own right.
What I am not quite sure about is how one clears the backlog quickly without needing to recruit lots more staff at all the choke points in the legal sausage machine. And ending with a reasonable balance of stuff which is still useful in the future rather than being 'wasted'. THe Nightingale Hospitals were never used - though that can't be called waste: it wasn't predictable at the time.
The clear impression I get is of years, especially under Mr Osborne, of skimping and shutting down everywhere the HO could.
For instance modernising jury selection to the legal equivalent of ERNIE* doesn't help with a shortage of criminal lawyers, so the pay rates for defence counsel need to be increased (baaad acc to the DT and DM, which is as we all know what SKS is most terrified of, surpassing all else).
But if one worked through things ... eg nissen huts for courtrooms like Nightingale Hospitals ... or simply had a go at modernising the system permanently as one went along ...
*Which does fail in the sense of seeing justice to be done in front of you, in contrast to paper lots in a bowl. But if people are happy with Premium Bonds ...?
It’s about identifying the bottlenecks point by point (as you do in manufacturing) and addressing them one by one. It takes time.
One point in case: sentencing is often delayed because pre-sentencing reports are not completed in time. Apply additional resource to solving that. It may then result in sentencing being delayed because of X or Y. Then focus on that.
The problem with many politicians (and the media/voters) is they only care about an arbitrary goal - they don’t think about continuous improvement
If all reading somewhere that this is exactly what Elon Musk does. He might only get half a day every week or two at each facility or company, so he asks the management what is the single biggest problem affecting the rate of production, and they all work together to fix it there and then.
Next week, same question, different problem. After a year, you’ve fixed the top few dozen problems affecting the company.
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
So the government has front loaded all of the spending decisions and backloaded all of the tax rises. This budget is going to unravel very badly. A big chunk of the supposed increased revenue from tax rises come after the election date but that is being used to balance yet another giant splurge of spending on welfare and it's resulted in an additional £58bn of borrowing. The Labour party are taking voters for mugs and the weird Lib Dems and "one nation Tories" on here supporting it when even Labour voters have ducked out shows just how gullible the "centrist dads" really are.
The fiscal consolidation (measured as the reduction in in the cyclically adjusted primary deficit) is set to be bigger in FY26 than later in the forecast, and bigger than forecast in March. The biggest fiscal adjustment is still seen as the current fiscal year. So this accusation of backloading is not entirely fair.
Just scrap the spend on digital ID and put it into the Justice Dept.
Uncharacteristically simplistic for you? What has one thing to do with the other?
The justice system is massively underfunded, thanks to spending cuts over the last decade and a half.
Rather than completely changing the basis of how we administer criminal justice (with minimal public debate, and significant implications for individual liberty) in order to cut costs, there is a very strong case for simply funding it better to do its job.
The money has to come from somewhere, and the digital ID scheme (also controversial, and quite likely useless) seems as good a place as any.
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
I'd understood that the continental legal system requires people to prove their innocence, rather than innocence being the initial presumption.
No, of course not. The presumption of innocence is a fundamental legal right and an international human right enshrined in documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights.
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
Who are the specialists in truth telling, lie detecting, deciding between experts who disagree, or applying the 'satisfied so that you are sure' test if it is not ordinary people?
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
Guilt or innocence is not solely about technical factual information. It's often about judging the reliability of witness testimony when the jury is presented with two different accounts of the same event, or about making conclusions about intent and motivation.
Comparing it to medical or engineering situations is infantile.
EDIT: And, in any case, my experience is that a doctor will often ask me - the patient - for my opinion as to how to proceed, so there is already a lot of lay input into medical decision-making.
I'd do away with Jury trials. Most European countries don't use this system. It seems very arcane. The criminal justice system clearly needs an overhaul but the place to start is with sentencing. We've been inured to these insanely long sentences. Imagining five years ahead will seem like a lifetime to a twenty year old and ten years and beyond will feel ike forever.
Scale it all down. As for Juries. Why would twelve random people with their own prejudices be better than say three who are trained and who could be regularly assessed?
Looks as if Govt has done a massive, completely unnecessary own goal.
Reading comments on various newspaper websites, the vast majority of people think tax relief on all pension contributions is being reduced so only £2k of contributions is allowable.
So someone contributing say £10k into a pension will lose £1,600 if basic rate taxpayer, and £3,200 if higher rate taxpayer.
Of course this is nonsense, the change only affects people doing salary sacrifice.
But most people don't understand this at all and think they will be hit themselves - and hit massively.
It's even dafter because change doesn't come in until April 2029 - so probably will be after the GE in any case.
These would be huge sums - it's going to frighten lots of people and cost Labour a lot of votes.
What they’re trying to do, as many of us suggested beforehand, is to try and drag a couple of hundred thousand people kicking and screaming into the £100k 60% tax bracket.
Except that won’t happen, because people are mostly rational actors. What’s more likely to happen, is the affected people start taking unpaid leave to keep their salary below £100k. Doubly so if they have childcare.
Some people work regardless of tax. The Beatles didn't stop because they were paying 98%, although they did write a song about it.
They first set up a company to handle their income, which was novel at the time, and then they moved to the US.
IIRC, *no one* actually ever paid 98%
Depends whether you mean on total income in which case the answer is no. But on marginal income then the answer is yes (83% plus 15% extra on investment income). Most avoided it using benefits in kind which weren't then taxable. I am showing my age.
Looks as if Govt has done a massive, completely unnecessary own goal.
Reading comments on various newspaper websites, the vast majority of people think tax relief on all pension contributions is being reduced so only £2k of contributions is allowable.
So someone contributing say £10k into a pension will lose £1,600 if basic rate taxpayer, and £3,200 if higher rate taxpayer.
Of course this is nonsense, the change only affects people doing salary sacrifice.
But most people don't understand this at all and think they will be hit themselves - and hit massively.
It's even dafter because change doesn't come in until April 2029 - so probably will be after the GE in any case.
These would be huge sums - it's going to frighten lots of people and cost Labour a lot of votes.
There's likely to be considerable numbers of people who are learning about salary sacrifice pension contributions and wondering why they've never benefited from there.
It wouldn't surprise me if the number of people who use salary sacrifice increases, certainly for the next three years, and probably permanently.
Aren’t most modern employer pension schemes already salary sacrifice?
They might be but that doesn't mean that the employees know about the option.
The BBC report that about a third of private sector employees and a tenth of public sector employees use salary sacrifice pension contributions.
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
Who are the specialists in truth telling, lie detecting, deciding between experts who disagree, or applying the 'satisfied so that you are sure' test if it is not ordinary people?
AIUI, the job of a court is to determine whether or not defendants are guilty of breaking laws. I'd have thought the best people to decide on this would be those who are experts in law. That's how it works in every other field. The use of juries seems completely anachronistic to me.
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
It's a fair point Feersum, even if you do stretch it to extremes. I'm often dismayed that knowing something about a subject can disqualify you from jury membership on a related topic. Many fraud trials stretch the comprehension of non-specialist juries, for example, as do many involving shady business practice.
I'm sure the Maxwell brothers would not have got off if the jury had understood more about company law.
So the government has front loaded all of the spending decisions and backloaded all of the tax rises. This budget is going to unravel very badly. A big chunk of the supposed increased revenue from tax rises come after the election date but that is being used to balance yet another giant splurge of spending on welfare and it's resulted in an additional £58bn of borrowing. The Labour party are taking voters for mugs and the weird Lib Dems and "one nation Tories" on here supporting it when even Labour voters have ducked out shows just how gullible the "centrist dads" really are.
To this 'One Nation Tory' the budget feels like one in which the PM and CoE are determined to last the course up to 2029/9, have no ambition to carry on thereafter, have abandoned their duty of reforming the fiscal system, have returned to a very anti 'One Nation' tax, borrow and spend, and have decided to hand to Reform in 2029 both a lot of welfare to cut, and a fiscal poisoned chalice. The additional borrowing, surrounded by pledges to not borrow and reduce debt and attacks on everyone else for borrowing, are unimpressive.
Still another 200,000 people who need homes to live in and the NHS and all the other services.
Still another 200,000 people contributing to society and being productive.
Our future demographics will depend more on the future balance between births and deaths than immigration, I suspect. In 2023-24, the latter outnumbered the former; in 2024-25, that switched over. Next year might be different again.
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
Who are the specialists in truth telling, lie detecting, deciding between experts who disagree, or applying the 'satisfied so that you are sure' test if it is not ordinary people?
AIUI, the job of a court is to determine whether or not defendants are guilty of breaking laws. I'd have thought the best people to decide on this would be those who are experts in law. That's how it works in every other field. The use of juries seems completely anachronistic to me.
The uncertainty in a trial is rarely over interpretation of the law, but on what happened.
3p per mile for entirely electrics. 1.5p per mile for hybrids. Expensive Vehicle Supplement (+£425 per year VED for years 2->6, year 1 already involves being clobbered) at £50k+ price for electrics, £40k+ for ICE vehicles. VED as is otherwise.
Listening to our Botham-tachioed Tesla correspondent (trigger warning, not very pretty but good for tickling Ozzie barmaids), and the newspapers, there's lots of stuff about "440k fewer EVs by 2030-31 - an OUTRAGEOUS crippling of EV sales which is 25% of those on our roads". *
I'm not quite with that interpretation. Predicted EVs on our roads by 2030-31 are around 6 or 7 million, so the reduction in numbers is relatively marginal. On the other side is a transition of revenue source (which imo is rather too slow). I agree that reactions will be as much emotional as rational, and that the proposed mechanism is a mess.
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
Who are the specialists in truth telling, lie detecting, deciding between experts who disagree, or applying the 'satisfied so that you are sure' test if it is not ordinary people?
AIUI, the job of a court is to determine whether or not defendants are guilty of breaking laws. I'd have thought the best people to decide on this would be those who are experts in law. That's how it works in every other field. The use of juries seems completely anachronistic to me.
I think there's a bit more to it than that. Having juries is a defence against 'but this is the process'. The fewer actual humans you involve, the greater the risk of the processing winning against common sense. Personally I thought the Colston statue rioters were a bunch of smug pricks. But I absolutely want to live in a country where a jury can decide their fate rather than a judge. Because one day I might do something legally wrong but morally right and be reliant on a jury.
"Her new [property] tax – a toxic mix of two hated levies, council tax and IHT – is equivalent to detonating a time bomb under Middle England."
"Socialism is back, and the property-owning democracy is out. Labour has declared war on social mobility, on petit bourgeois values, on the consumer society and on conservative Britain."
I was hoping that Osborne's Jack-in-a-Box £175k transferrable allowance would go, amongst other things. But no dice.
But to do it properly would require changes to the Gift regime, especially the gifts out of "not required" income being tax free. That is a charter for useless loafing offspring of very wealthy people *.
* See Charlie Gilmour.
No that hits the children of most of Middle England pensioners and like May's dementia tax would be political suicide
So the government has front loaded all of the spending decisions and backloaded all of the tax rises. This budget is going to unravel very badly. A big chunk of the supposed increased revenue from tax rises come after the election date but that is being used to balance yet another giant splurge of spending on welfare and it's resulted in an additional £58bn of borrowing. The Labour party are taking voters for mugs and the weird Lib Dems and "one nation Tories" on here supporting it when even Labour voters have ducked out shows just how gullible the "centrist dads" really are.
The fiscal consolidation (measured as the reduction in in the cyclically adjusted primary deficit) is set to be bigger in FY26 than later in the forecast, and bigger than forecast in March. The biggest fiscal adjustment is still seen as the current fiscal year. So this accusation of backloading is not entirely fair.
Reeves is being blamed for not taking the same difficult decisions chancellors over the previous decade have also not taken, but we would like her to do so. Fairness doesn't really come into it
So the government has front loaded all of the spending decisions and backloaded all of the tax rises. This budget is going to unravel very badly. A big chunk of the supposed increased revenue from tax rises come after the election date but that is being used to balance yet another giant splurge of spending on welfare and it's resulted in an additional £58bn of borrowing. The Labour party are taking voters for mugs and the weird Lib Dems and "one nation Tories" on here supporting it when even Labour voters have ducked out shows just how gullible the "centrist dads" really are.
Your curious obsession with "weird Lib Dems" and "centrist dads" marks you out as pretty damn weird yourself.
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
It's a fair point Feersum, even if you do stretch it to extremes. I'm often dismayed that knowing something about a subject can disqualify you from jury membership on a related topic. Many fraud trials stretch the comprehension of non-specialist juries, for example, as do many involving shady business practice.
I'm sure the Maxwell brothers would not have got off if the jury had understood more about company law.
Yes, the process of trying to extract a meaningful decision on a complex topic from a group a laypeople with little to no understanding of the field seems completely absurd to me.
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
Who are the specialists in truth telling, lie detecting, deciding between experts who disagree, or applying the 'satisfied so that you are sure' test if it is not ordinary people?
AIUI, the job of a court is to determine whether or not defendants are guilty of breaking laws. I'd have thought the best people to decide on this would be those who are experts in law. That's how it works in every other field. The use of juries seems completely anachronistic to me.
You are eliding two things. Whether or not a given state of affairs is breaking the law is a matter of law, and decided by the judge. Whether or not the facts (after both prosecution and defence have had their turn) show, so that you are sure, that person X has broken the law is a matter of fact not law. This bit is what the jury is asked to do. The split is entirely rational. (Though I think in practice we are going to have to reduce the number of jury trials. Already 95% of cases are dealt with by magistrates without a jury.)
"Her new [property] tax – a toxic mix of two hated levies, council tax and IHT – is equivalent to detonating a time bomb under Middle England."
"Socialism is back, and the property-owning democracy is out. Labour has declared war on social mobility, on petit bourgeois values, on the consumer society and on conservative Britain."
I was hoping that Osborne's Jack-in-a-Box £175k transferrable allowance would go, amongst other things. But no dice.
But to do it properly would require changes to the Gift regime, especially the gifts out of "not required" income being tax free. That is a charter for useless loafing offspring of very wealthy people *.
* See Charlie Gilmour.
No that hits the children of most of Middle England pensioners and like May's dementia tax would be political suicide
But, as already much discussed, unfair to everyone else. Aunties, uncles, those who have less valuable estates to leave and subsidize the ones who benefit.
"Her new [property] tax – a toxic mix of two hated levies, council tax and IHT – is equivalent to detonating a time bomb under Middle England."
"Socialism is back, and the property-owning democracy is out. Labour has declared war on social mobility, on petit bourgeois values, on the consumer society and on conservative Britain."
Oh dear, where is nurse? People in £2mn houses are not 'middle England'. Perhaps he needs to widen his circle of acquaintances. I mean, I am minted and even I don't live in a £2mn house.
Yes I oppose the tax but saying it affects Middle England to increase taxes on £2 million plus houses is only true if Middle England is restricted to Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster, Hampstead, Golders Green, Oxshott, Alderly Edge and Chigwell High Road
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
It's a fair point Feersum, even if you do stretch it to extremes. I'm often dismayed that knowing something about a subject can disqualify you from jury membership on a related topic. Many fraud trials stretch the comprehension of non-specialist juries, for example, as do many involving shady business practice.
I'm sure the Maxwell brothers would not have got off if the jury had understood more about company law.
Yes, the process of trying to extract a meaningful decision on a complex topic from a group a laypeople with little to no understanding of the field seems completely absurd to me.
In some cases the facts are so complex that it is unrealistic to expect a jury to do it. A lot of fraud cases are like that. It's also arguable that cases like Letby are so complex that a decision on guilt or innocence requires expert assessment alongside lay opinion, and also would benefit from a reasoned, and appealable, judgment.
Wow. A tiny shift and the Green Party will be in second place. Does this say more about British politics or the believability of current polling?
If you look at the changes you can see that the Greens were in second place in the previous poll.
I think there's plenty of evidence that enough British voters are mad as hell and willing to break with the Tory/Labour duopoly to make the current polling plausible. I don't see any particular reason to doubt the polling. But the British electorate is volatile. The polling is unlikely to be stable from now until the next election - but who will benefit from the changes in opinion to come? That seems to be down to the relative abilities of the respective politicians to shape and influence public opinion.
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
Guilt or innocence is not solely about technical factual information. It's often about judging the reliability of witness testimony when the jury is presented with two different accounts of the same event, or about making conclusions about intent and motivation.
Comparing it to medical or engineering situations is infantile.
EDIT: And, in any case, my experience is that a doctor will often ask me - the patient - for my opinion as to how to proceed, so there is already a lot of lay input into medical decision-making.
Indeed.
The issue is that in a criminal court case there are two sides. The proesecution on behalf of the State and the Defence on behalf of the accused. By the time it gets to court we already have the State having made decisions at multiple points - to arrest, to charge, to prosecute etc. When it gets to court it is grossly unfair and unjust if the final decision of guilt and innocence is also in the hands of the State.
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
I'd understood that the continental legal system requires people to prove their innocence, rather than innocence being the initial presumption.
I would hope not. There must be a huge number of crimes that I could not prove I did not commit.
Most European systems have a non confrontational approach to trials (there is a proper name for that, that I can't remember). Anglosphere countries like the confrontational method.
"Her new [property] tax – a toxic mix of two hated levies, council tax and IHT – is equivalent to detonating a time bomb under Middle England."
"Socialism is back, and the property-owning democracy is out. Labour has declared war on social mobility, on petit bourgeois values, on the consumer society and on conservative Britain."
Oh dear, where is nurse? People in £2mn houses are not 'middle England'. Perhaps he needs to widen his circle of acquaintances. I mean, I am minted and even I don't live in a £2mn house.
Yes I oppose the tax but saying it affects Middle England to increase taxes on £2 million plus houses is only true if Middle England is restricted to Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster, Hampstead, Golders Green, Oxshott, Alderly Edge and Chigwell High Road
We have a £3 million sea front home being built within 400 yards and several others nearby
However, Wales has its own review due to be implemented in 2028
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
It's a fair point Feersum, even if you do stretch it to extremes. I'm often dismayed that knowing something about a subject can disqualify you from jury membership on a related topic. Many fraud trials stretch the comprehension of non-specialist juries, for example, as do many involving shady business practice.
I'm sure the Maxwell brothers would not have got off if the jury had understood more about company law.
Yes, the process of trying to extract a meaningful decision on a complex topic from a group a laypeople with little to no understanding of the field seems completely absurd to me.
In some cases the facts are so complex that it is unrealistic to expect a jury to do it. A lot of fraud cases are like that. It's also arguable that cases like Letby are so complex that a decision on guilt or innocence requires expert assessment alongside lay opinion, and also would benefit from a reasoned, and appealable, judgment.
This, together with your previous post, would imply that juries should only be used to determine the facts of the case when the case is relatively straightforward. But if the facts are straightforward, why would you need a jury to determine them?
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
Guilt or innocence is not solely about technical factual information. It's often about judging the reliability of witness testimony when the jury is presented with two different accounts of the same event, or about making conclusions about intent and motivation.
Comparing it to medical or engineering situations is infantile.
EDIT: And, in any case, my experience is that a doctor will often ask me - the patient - for my opinion as to how to proceed, so there is already a lot of lay input into medical decision-making.
Indeed.
The issue is that in a criminal court case there are two sides. The proesecution on behalf of the State and the Defence on behalf of the accused. By the time it gets to court we already have the State having made decisions at multiple points - to arrest, to charge, to prosecute etc. When it gets to court it is grossly unfair and unjust if the final decision of guilt and innocence is also in the hands of the State.
I think the other point I would make is that making a decision on guilt or innocence in a trial is often hard. If it was likely to be easy than either the prosecution would be abandoned, or the defendant would plead guilty to reduce their sentence.
I am not convinced that judges are likely to make great judgements consistently when faced with repeated difficult cases. There is a risk that they will become cynical or jaded, or come to rely on biased shortcuts and prejudices to reach judgements. A benefit of the jury system is that it brings fresh scrutiny into the system to keep it connected to wider public opinion and consent.
One concern about the family court system is that it does not benefit from such external involvement, and there is little scrutiny. I would not want the criminal justice system to go the same way.
So the government has front loaded all of the spending decisions and backloaded all of the tax rises. This budget is going to unravel very badly. A big chunk of the supposed increased revenue from tax rises come after the election date but that is being used to balance yet another giant splurge of spending on welfare and it's resulted in an additional £58bn of borrowing. The Labour party are taking voters for mugs and the weird Lib Dems and "one nation Tories" on here supporting it when even Labour voters have ducked out shows just how gullible the "centrist dads" really are.
The fiscal consolidation (measured as the reduction in in the cyclically adjusted primary deficit) is set to be bigger in FY26 than later in the forecast, and bigger than forecast in March. The biggest fiscal adjustment is still seen as the current fiscal year. So this accusation of backloading is not entirely fair.
Reeves is being blamed for not taking the same difficult decisions chancellors over the previous decade have also not taken, but we would like her to do so. Fairness doesn't really come into it
The government is carrying out a significant fiscal adjustment and is trying to do it without crashing growth or leaving local government a wasteland like the 2010 government did. So far growth has been stronger than expected. If they achieve this as planned they will deserve praise. Not that they will get any on here!
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
I'd understood that the continental legal system requires people to prove their innocence, rather than innocence being the initial presumption.
I would hope not. There must be a huge number of crimes that I could not prove I did not commit.
Most European systems have a non confrontational approach to trials (there is a proper name for that, that I can't remember). Anglosphere countries like the confrontational method.
Yes, and it seems to work perfectly well. The conviction (hah!) that you have to have a prosecution and a defence pitted against each other in order to determine guilt isn't the axiom that many seem to think it is. It's also possible, and in my view preferable, to determine guilt by carefully considering the facts of the case from a neutral standpoint, as is the case in many other countries.
Looks as if Govt has done a massive, completely unnecessary own goal.
Reading comments on various newspaper websites, the vast majority of people think tax relief on all pension contributions is being reduced so only £2k of contributions is allowable.
So someone contributing say £10k into a pension will lose £1,600 if basic rate taxpayer, and £3,200 if higher rate taxpayer.
Of course this is nonsense, the change only affects people doing salary sacrifice.
But most people don't understand this at all and think they will be hit themselves - and hit massively.
It's even dafter because change doesn't come in until April 2029 - so probably will be after the GE in any case.
These would be huge sums - it's going to frighten lots of people and cost Labour a lot of votes.
There's likely to be considerable numbers of people who are learning about salary sacrifice pension contributions and wondering why they've never benefited from there.
It wouldn't surprise me if the number of people who use salary sacrifice increases, certainly for the next three years, and probably permanently.
Aren’t most modern employer pension schemes already salary sacrifice?
The employee pays NI on their own contributions, but gets tax relief. When the pension eventually comes to be paid, they pay tax on their pension, but not NI. That's the long-standing internal logic of the current arrangements. The employer making "voluntary" contributions to their employees' pensions, and entirely coincedentally the employee opts to forgo an amount of their salary being exactly equal to the extra pension contribution, is an artifice, solely intended to save the NI for both parties to the deal.
It would have been equally logical, and more optimal, to move toward charging NI on pension payments (or, better, simply move toward abolishing NI and having one combined tax rate). But far too brave and sensible for our elected politicians, of any colour or persuasion, it seems.
Barring unexpected scandals or disasters Starmer and Reeves should now be safe until the May local elections, giving themselves time to shore up support. But the cost of choosing this [less bold] option is that, once again, the truly difficult decisions have been put off for later and little has been done to deal with the big problems facing the country.
The country doesn’t want anyone to deal with the big problems
Then we will face the consequences of the big problems dealing with the country and not in the gradualist way we might have. As I said yesterday, I fear the risk of this has increased with this faux budget.
What were your thoughts on Kemi and the Tories response. I was a fan and would be surprised if we didn't see Tory Labour crossover cemented over the coming weeks.
From the bits I have seen it was a better than average LOTO speech. Responding to the budget with minimal notice is one of the toughest jobs of the LOTO ( I've never really understood why it is not the Shadow Chancellor) but in this case she had the advantage of the early leaking of a lot of information and she seemed to take advantage of that to give some structure to her speech. Whether this makes any difference really depends on whether she and Stride can start to create a coherent and cohesive alternative that actually addresses the issues and then sell that to the public. As @Gallowgate pointed out this morning that is a big ask. I was distinctly underwhelmed by Stride's Conference speech in that regard but hopefully that was a first draft and things might improve.
I listened to the first ten minutes or so and to be honest it's the longest I've ever listened to Badenoch speaking. It was certainly a combative speech but I was surprised at how nasty and personal it was. Is this her usual style? It was a turn off for me but maybe Tories will like it, they seem to be more into this kind of thing. She does risk coming across as what the young people call a "pick me" - a woman who seeks male approval by denigrating other women.
Would you have liked Kemi to be less combative, given that she was dealing with a woman and all?
I just don't like personal remarks or unkindness, regardless of who is speaking to whom.
I was surprised so many on here were excited by Kemi yesterday. They had a genuinely funny leader in Hague who had the whole House in stitches but it didn't make voters like him any more. If she'd had a great profound line -the holy grail of advertisers -which could carry beyond yesterday then it might have had an impact. I suppose it might make her own side like her a bit more if they think she did well
Hague was facing Blair and Brown in their prime when New Labour had a huge poll lead.
Kemi is facing Starmer and Reeves who are loathed by most voters now and Labour is polling barely half what New Labour were pre 2001
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
I'd understood that the continental legal system requires people to prove their innocence, rather than innocence being the initial presumption.
I would hope not. There must be a huge number of crimes that I could not prove I did not commit.
Most European systems have a non confrontational approach to trials (there is a proper name for that, that I can't remember). Anglosphere countries like the confrontational method.
Yes, and it seems to work perfectly well. The conviction (hah!) that you have to have a prosecution and a defence pitted against each other in order to determine guilt isn't the axiom that many seem to think it is. It's also possible, and in my view preferable, to determine guilt by carefully considering the facts of the case from a neutral standpoint, as is the case in many other countries.
That is dependent on your belief that the State is neutral.
"Her new [property] tax – a toxic mix of two hated levies, council tax and IHT – is equivalent to detonating a time bomb under Middle England."
"Socialism is back, and the property-owning democracy is out. Labour has declared war on social mobility, on petit bourgeois values, on the consumer society and on conservative Britain."
I was hoping that Osborne's Jack-in-a-Box £175k transferrable allowance would go, amongst other things. But no dice.
But to do it properly would require changes to the Gift regime, especially the gifts out of "not required" income being tax free. That is a charter for useless loafing offspring of very wealthy people *.
* See Charlie Gilmour.
No that hits the children of most of Middle England pensioners and like May's dementia tax would be political suicide
But, as already much discussed, unfair to everyone else. Aunties, uncles, those who have less valuable estates to leave and subsidize the ones who benefit.
Step children and adopted children also benefit from Osborne's inheritance tax cut. The Nil Rate Band Residence Inheritance tax exemption was the most popular Tory policy of the 21st century and without it half the estates in the country would now pay inheritance tax
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
I'd understood that the continental legal system requires people to prove their innocence, rather than innocence being the initial presumption.
I would hope not. There must be a huge number of crimes that I could not prove I did not commit.
Most European systems have a non confrontational approach to trials (there is a proper name for that, that I can't remember). Anglosphere countries like the confrontational method.
Yes, and it seems to work perfectly well. The conviction (hah!) that you have to have a prosecution and a defence pitted against each other in order to determine guilt isn't the axiom that many seem to think it is. It's also possible, and in my view preferable, to determine guilt by carefully considering the facts of the case from a neutral standpoint, as is the case in many other countries.
The French police procedural TV series 'Spiral' is interesting from that respect, focusing as it does on the way the French system works and the interplay between the police and the judge during both the investigation into and prosecution for crime. It's very different from the way our system works, and from an inexpert view seems to offer both pros and cons as an alternative way to do things? In particular the judge appears to have an active, hands-on role from the moment the crime is committed, and not simply dropped in as the umpire (and sentencer) if and when a case eventually comes to trial, as we do it.
It seems to me to be a more efficient, and possibly more effective, way to go about things, but (as Richard alludes to above) it does all hang on the judge maintaining his or her independence despite having worked alongside the police from the outset.
"Her new [property] tax – a toxic mix of two hated levies, council tax and IHT – is equivalent to detonating a time bomb under Middle England."
"Socialism is back, and the property-owning democracy is out. Labour has declared war on social mobility, on petit bourgeois values, on the consumer society and on conservative Britain."
I was hoping that Osborne's Jack-in-a-Box £175k transferrable allowance would go, amongst other things. But no dice.
But to do it properly would require changes to the Gift regime, especially the gifts out of "not required" income being tax free. That is a charter for useless loafing offspring of very wealthy people *.
* See Charlie Gilmour.
No that hits the children of most of Middle England pensioners and like May's dementia tax would be political suicide
But, as already much discussed, unfair to everyone else. Aunties, uncles, those who have less valuable estates to leave and subsidize the ones who benefit.
Step children and adopted children also benefit from Osborne's inheritance tax cut. The Nil Rate Band Residence Inheritance tax exemption was the most popular Tory policy of the 21st century and without it half the estates in the country would now pay inheritance tax
How many of each are there compared with nephews and nieces? And plenty of people don't have direct descendants.
If the Tories were trying to introduce natalist policies it's a bloody stupid one. Cut Sire Start, cap the child benefit, and introduce RNRB. Great thinking.
Barring unexpected scandals or disasters Starmer and Reeves should now be safe until the May local elections, giving themselves time to shore up support. But the cost of choosing this [less bold] option is that, once again, the truly difficult decisions have been put off for later and little has been done to deal with the big problems facing the country.
The country doesn’t want anyone to deal with the big problems
Then we will face the consequences of the big problems dealing with the country and not in the gradualist way we might have. As I said yesterday, I fear the risk of this has increased with this faux budget.
What were your thoughts on Kemi and the Tories response. I was a fan and would be surprised if we didn't see Tory Labour crossover cemented over the coming weeks.
From the bits I have seen it was a better than average LOTO speech. Responding to the budget with minimal notice is one of the toughest jobs of the LOTO ( I've never really understood why it is not the Shadow Chancellor) but in this case she had the advantage of the early leaking of a lot of information and she seemed to take advantage of that to give some structure to her speech. Whether this makes any difference really depends on whether she and Stride can start to create a coherent and cohesive alternative that actually addresses the issues and then sell that to the public. As @Gallowgate pointed out this morning that is a big ask. I was distinctly underwhelmed by Stride's Conference speech in that regard but hopefully that was a first draft and things might improve.
I listened to the first ten minutes or so and to be honest it's the longest I've ever listened to Badenoch speaking. It was certainly a combative speech but I was surprised at how nasty and personal it was. Is this her usual style? It was a turn off for me but maybe Tories will like it, they seem to be more into this kind of thing. She does risk coming across as what the young people call a "pick me" - a woman who seeks male approval by denigrating other women.
Would you have liked Kemi to be less combative, given that she was dealing with a woman and all?
I just don't like personal remarks or unkindness, regardless of who is speaking to whom.
I was surprised so many on here were excited by Kemi yesterday. They had a genuinely funny leader in Hague who had the whole House in stitches but it didn't make voters like him any more. If she'd had a great profound line -the holy grail of advertisers -which could carry beyond yesterday then it might have had an impact. I suppose it might make her own side like her a bit more if they think she did well
Hague was facing Blair and Brown in their prime when New Labour had a huge poll lead.
Kemi is facing Starmer and Reeves who are loathed by most voters now and Labour is polling barely half what New Labour were pre 2001
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
I'd understood that the continental legal system requires people to prove their innocence, rather than innocence being the initial presumption.
I would hope not. There must be a huge number of crimes that I could not prove I did not commit.
Most European systems have a non confrontational approach to trials (there is a proper name for that, that I can't remember). Anglosphere countries like the confrontational method.
Yes, and it seems to work perfectly well. The conviction (hah!) that you have to have a prosecution and a defence pitted against each other in order to determine guilt isn't the axiom that many seem to think it is. It's also possible, and in my view preferable, to determine guilt by carefully considering the facts of the case from a neutral standpoint, as is the case in many other countries.
The French police procedural TV series 'Spiral' is interesting from that respect, focusing as it does on the way the French system works and the interplay between the police and the judge during both the investigation into and prosecution for crime. It's very different from the way our system works, and from an inexpert view seems to offer both pros and cons as an alternative way to do things? In particular the judge appears to have an active, hands-on role from the moment the crime is committed, and not simply dropped in as the umpire (and sentencer) if and when a case eventually comes to trial, as we do it.
It seems to me to be a more efficient, and possibly more effective, way to go about things, but (as Richard alludes to above) it does all hang on the judge maintaining his or her independence despite having worked alongside the police from the outset.
See also Anatomy of a Fall (2023) for another nice depiction of their system.
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
I'd understood that the continental legal system requires people to prove their innocence, rather than innocence being the initial presumption.
I would hope not. There must be a huge number of crimes that I could not prove I did not commit.
Most European systems have a non confrontational approach to trials (there is a proper name for that, that I can't remember). Anglosphere countries like the confrontational method.
Yes, and it seems to work perfectly well. The conviction (hah!) that you have to have a prosecution and a defence pitted against each other in order to determine guilt isn't the axiom that many seem to think it is. It's also possible, and in my view preferable, to determine guilt by carefully considering the facts of the case from a neutral standpoint, as is the case in many other countries.
That is dependent on your belief that the State is neutral.
It isn't.
The extent to which the judiciary in any country is genuinely independent in any country is a key question, and our system probably comes as close as any. But I doubt a truly independent judiciary exists anywhere, given the power and patronage that any government has to offer, operating in the UK in a myriad of ways including through the honours system. And just look at the US to see how fragile even a supposedly robust system can be
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
I'd understood that the continental legal system requires people to prove their innocence, rather than innocence being the initial presumption.
I would hope not. There must be a huge number of crimes that I could not prove I did not commit.
Most European systems have a non confrontational approach to trials (there is a proper name for that, that I can't remember). Anglosphere countries like the confrontational method.
Yes, and it seems to work perfectly well. The conviction (hah!) that you have to have a prosecution and a defence pitted against each other in order to determine guilt isn't the axiom that many seem to think it is. It's also possible, and in my view preferable, to determine guilt by carefully considering the facts of the case from a neutral standpoint, as is the case in many other countries.
The French police procedural TV series 'Spiral' is interesting from that respect, focusing as it does on the way the French system works and the interplay between the police and the judge during both the investigation into and prosecution for crime. It's very different from the way our system works, and from an inexpert view seems to offer both pros and cons as an alternative way to do things? In particular the judge appears to have an active, hands-on role from the moment the crime is committed, and not simply dropped in as the umpire if and when a case eventually comes to trial, as we do it.
Yes, that does sound interesting. In truth, I have little knowledge of the legal systems of the UK or of other countries. But it does seem to me to be strange to insist that our way of doing things is the only proper way to do it when there are obviously other ways that appear to work as least as fairly and effectively. It smacks of pure defensiveness: this is the way we've always done it, so this is the way we'll always do it.
"Her new [property] tax – a toxic mix of two hated levies, council tax and IHT – is equivalent to detonating a time bomb under Middle England."
"Socialism is back, and the property-owning democracy is out. Labour has declared war on social mobility, on petit bourgeois values, on the consumer society and on conservative Britain."
I was hoping that Osborne's Jack-in-a-Box £175k transferrable allowance would go, amongst other things. But no dice.
But to do it properly would require changes to the Gift regime, especially the gifts out of "not required" income being tax free. That is a charter for useless loafing offspring of very wealthy people *.
* See Charlie Gilmour.
No that hits the children of most of Middle England pensioners and like May's dementia tax would be political suicide
But, as already much discussed, unfair to everyone else. Aunties, uncles, those who have less valuable estates to leave and subsidize the ones who benefit.
Step children and adopted children also benefit from Osborne's inheritance tax cut. The Nil Rate Band Residence Inheritance tax exemption was the most popular Tory policy of the 21st century and without it half the estates in the country would now pay inheritance tax
Popularity is stupid. Most people except married (etc) Tory voters in the SE don't *have* estates big enough to need IHT, despite the propaganda that it would benefit everyone if those people were disproportionately relieved of their tax duties.
"Her new [property] tax – a toxic mix of two hated levies, council tax and IHT – is equivalent to detonating a time bomb under Middle England."
"Socialism is back, and the property-owning democracy is out. Labour has declared war on social mobility, on petit bourgeois values, on the consumer society and on conservative Britain."
I was hoping that Osborne's Jack-in-a-Box £175k transferrable allowance would go, amongst other things. But no dice.
But to do it properly would require changes to the Gift regime, especially the gifts out of "not required" income being tax free. That is a charter for useless loafing offspring of very wealthy people *.
* See Charlie Gilmour.
No that hits the children of most of Middle England pensioners and like May's dementia tax would be political suicide
But, as already much discussed, unfair to everyone else. Aunties, uncles, those who have less valuable estates to leave and subsidize the ones who benefit.
Step children and adopted children also benefit from Osborne's inheritance tax cut. The Nil Rate Band Residence Inheritance tax exemption was the most popular Tory policy of the 21st century and without it half the estates in the country would now pay inheritance tax
Popularity is stupid. Most people except married (etc) Tory voters in the SE don't *have* estates big enough to need IHT, despite the propaganda that it would benefit everyone if those people were disproportionately relieved of their tax duties.
Think you'll find plenty of people in the SE with an IHT exposure voted Labour in 2024...
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
I'd understood that the continental legal system requires people to prove their innocence, rather than innocence being the initial presumption.
I would hope not. There must be a huge number of crimes that I could not prove I did not commit.
Most European systems have a non confrontational approach to trials (there is a proper name for that, that I can't remember). Anglosphere countries like the confrontational method.
Yes, and it seems to work perfectly well. The conviction (hah!) that you have to have a prosecution and a defence pitted against each other in order to determine guilt isn't the axiom that many seem to think it is. It's also possible, and in my view preferable, to determine guilt by carefully considering the facts of the case from a neutral standpoint, as is the case in many other countries.
The French police procedural TV series 'Spiral' is interesting from that respect, focusing as it does on the way the French system works and the interplay between the police and the judge during both the investigation into and prosecution for crime. It's very different from the way our system works, and from an inexpert view seems to offer both pros and cons as an alternative way to do things? In particular the judge appears to have an active, hands-on role from the moment the crime is committed, and not simply dropped in as the umpire if and when a case eventually comes to trial, as we do it.
Yes, that does sound interesting. In truth, I have little knowledge of the legal systems of the UK or of other countries. But it does seem to me to be strange to insist that our way of doing things is the only proper way to do it when there are obviously other ways that appear to work as least as fairly and effectively. It smacks of pure defensiveness: this is the way we've always done it, so this is the way we'll always do it.
We delight in pitching opposing positions against each other and expecting the right answer to emerge, which is of course also the basis for our political system. The continental system assumes (but doesn't always get) a more collaborative approach with a lot less black and white.
It's almost as if we invented the communist dialectic, before the communists.
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
I'd understood that the continental legal system requires people to prove their innocence, rather than innocence being the initial presumption.
I would hope not. There must be a huge number of crimes that I could not prove I did not commit.
Most European systems have a non confrontational approach to trials (there is a proper name for that, that I can't remember). Anglosphere countries like the confrontational method.
Yes, and it seems to work perfectly well. The conviction (hah!) that you have to have a prosecution and a defence pitted against each other in order to determine guilt isn't the axiom that many seem to think it is. It's also possible, and in my view preferable, to determine guilt by carefully considering the facts of the case from a neutral standpoint, as is the case in many other countries.
That is dependent on your belief that the State is neutral.
It isn't.
The extent to which the judiciary in any country is genuinely independent in any country is a key question, and our system probably comes as close as any. But I doubt a truly independent judiciary exists anywhere, given the power and patronage that any government has to offer, operating in the UK in a myriad of ways including through the honours system. And just look at the US to see how fragile even a supposedly robust system can be
Indeed. Which is why life changing (ruinous) decisions for individuals should not be solely in the hands of a biased (to some degree) judiciary.
Even my reliably lefty friends are questioning putting taxes up on working people to pay for more welfare. Very few defenders left, just a token Lib Dem(!) who says we need to give Labour a chance while the actual Labour voters are pining for the days Rishi and Hunt.
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
I'd understood that the continental legal system requires people to prove their innocence, rather than innocence being the initial presumption.
I would hope not. There must be a huge number of crimes that I could not prove I did not commit.
Most European systems have a non confrontational approach to trials (there is a proper name for that, that I can't remember). Anglosphere countries like the confrontational method.
Yes, and it seems to work perfectly well. The conviction (hah!) that you have to have a prosecution and a defence pitted against each other in order to determine guilt isn't the axiom that many seem to think it is. It's also possible, and in my view preferable, to determine guilt by carefully considering the facts of the case from a neutral standpoint, as is the case in many other countries.
That is dependent on your belief that the State is neutral.
It isn't.
The extent to which the judiciary in any country is genuinely independent in any country is a key question, and our system probably comes as close as any. But I doubt a truly independent judiciary exists anywhere, given the power and patronage that any government has to offer, operating in the UK in a myriad of ways including through the honours system. And just look at the US to see how fragile even a supposedly robust system can be
Indeed. Which is why life changing (ruinous) decisions for individuals should not be solely in the hands of a biased (to some degree) judiciary.
I've sat in a room with a judge delivering a biased set of decisions. The cultural context was interesting - they were probably unaware of how it looked.
Then again, the legal threats against the MPs who talked about the issues regarding family courts in Parliament suggested that there was awareness.
"Her new [property] tax – a toxic mix of two hated levies, council tax and IHT – is equivalent to detonating a time bomb under Middle England."
"Socialism is back, and the property-owning democracy is out. Labour has declared war on social mobility, on petit bourgeois values, on the consumer society and on conservative Britain."
Oh dear, where is nurse? People in £2mn houses are not 'middle England'. Perhaps he needs to widen his circle of acquaintances. I mean, I am minted and even I don't live in a £2mn house.
Yes I oppose the tax but saying it affects Middle England to increase taxes on £2 million plus houses is only true if Middle England is restricted to Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster, Hampstead, Golders Green, Oxshott, Alderly Edge and Chigwell High Road
We have a £3 million sea front home being built within 400 yards and several others nearby
However, Wales has its own review due to be implemented in 2028
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
It's a fair point Feersum, even if you do stretch it to extremes. I'm often dismayed that knowing something about a subject can disqualify you from jury membership on a related topic. Many fraud trials stretch the comprehension of non-specialist juries, for example, as do many involving shady business practice.
I'm sure the Maxwell brothers would not have got off if the jury had understood more about company law.
Yes, the process of trying to extract a meaningful decision on a complex topic from a group a laypeople with little to no understanding of the field seems completely absurd to me.
In some cases the facts are so complex that it is unrealistic to expect a jury to do it. A lot of fraud cases are like that. It's also arguable that cases like Letby are so complex that a decision on guilt or innocence requires expert assessment alongside lay opinion, and also would benefit from a reasoned, and appealable, judgment.
This, together with your previous post, would imply that juries should only be used to determine the facts of the case when the case is relatively straightforward. But if the facts are straightforward, why would you need a jury to determine them?
Once a fact, intrinsically simple (I was there/I wasn't there; he hit me/he didn't hit me) is in dispute it has to be determined. That's what juries do in that small % of cases which go to them. Magistrates do the rest.
Yes, I think some cases are too complex for juries. I also think there are cases where the jury or some jurors will feel the weight of intimidation. I don't think there are simple answers. I have always liked the jury system. It needs looking at, but at root the greater problem by far is trying to do stuff on the cheap.
Barring unexpected scandals or disasters Starmer and Reeves should now be safe until the May local elections, giving themselves time to shore up support. But the cost of choosing this [less bold] option is that, once again, the truly difficult decisions have been put off for later and little has been done to deal with the big problems facing the country.
The country doesn’t want anyone to deal with the big problems
Then we will face the consequences of the big problems dealing with the country and not in the gradualist way we might have. As I said yesterday, I fear the risk of this has increased with this faux budget.
What were your thoughts on Kemi and the Tories response. I was a fan and would be surprised if we didn't see Tory Labour crossover cemented over the coming weeks.
From the bits I have seen it was a better than average LOTO speech. Responding to the budget with minimal notice is one of the toughest jobs of the LOTO ( I've never really understood why it is not the Shadow Chancellor) but in this case she had the advantage of the early leaking of a lot of information and she seemed to take advantage of that to give some structure to her speech. Whether this makes any difference really depends on whether she and Stride can start to create a coherent and cohesive alternative that actually addresses the issues and then sell that to the public. As @Gallowgate pointed out this morning that is a big ask. I was distinctly underwhelmed by Stride's Conference speech in that regard but hopefully that was a first draft and things might improve.
I listened to the first ten minutes or so and to be honest it's the longest I've ever listened to Badenoch speaking. It was certainly a combative speech but I was surprised at how nasty and personal it was. Is this her usual style? It was a turn off for me but maybe Tories will like it, they seem to be more into this kind of thing. She does risk coming across as what the young people call a "pick me" - a woman who seeks male approval by denigrating other women.
Would you have liked Kemi to be less combative, given that she was dealing with a woman and all?
I just don't like personal remarks or unkindness, regardless of who is speaking to whom.
I was surprised so many on here were excited by Kemi yesterday. They had a genuinely funny leader in Hague who had the whole House in stitches but it didn't make voters like him any more. If she'd had a great profound line -the holy grail of advertisers -which could carry beyond yesterday then it might have had an impact. I suppose it might make her own side like her a bit more if they think she did well
Hague was facing Blair and Brown in their prime when New Labour had a huge poll lead.
Kemi is facing Starmer and Reeves who are loathed by most voters now and Labour is polling barely half what New Labour were pre 2001
And Reform may implode before 2029.
Probably not likely but definitely a possibility.
Not sure about implode, but certainly I wouldn't be surprised to see them crack under pressure. Which would amount to the same thing. After all they have a long record of this in their various Farage inspired guises.
If the use of a jury rather than specialists really is the best way to go about things, perhaps we should introduce them in other fields too. For example, doctors could be required to persuade a jury of the suitability or otherwise of a particular treatment regime, and the dimensioning of bridges could also be determined by random folk, with engineers taking an advisory role.
It's a fair point Feersum, even if you do stretch it to extremes. I'm often dismayed that knowing something about a subject can disqualify you from jury membership on a related topic. Many fraud trials stretch the comprehension of non-specialist juries, for example, as do many involving shady business practice.
I'm sure the Maxwell brothers would not have got off if the jury had understood more about company law.
Yes, the process of trying to extract a meaningful decision on a complex topic from a group a laypeople with little to no understanding of the field seems completely absurd to me.
In some cases the facts are so complex that it is unrealistic to expect a jury to do it. A lot of fraud cases are like that. It's also arguable that cases like Letby are so complex that a decision on guilt or innocence requires expert assessment alongside lay opinion, and also would benefit from a reasoned, and appealable, judgment.
This, together with your previous post, would imply that juries should only be used to determine the facts of the case when the case is relatively straightforward. But if the facts are straightforward, why would you need a jury to determine them?
Once a fact, intrinsically simple (I was there/I wasn't there; he hit me/he didn't hit me) is in dispute it has to be determined. That's what juries do in that small % of cases which go to them. Magistrates do the rest.
Yes, I think some cases are too complex for juries. I also think there are cases where the jury or some jurors will feel the weight of intimidation. I don't think there are simple answers. I have always liked the jury system. It needs looking at, but at root the greater problem by far is trying to do stuff on the cheap.
Presumably the main argument in support of juries being as large as twelve, aside from simply history and precedent, is that you need a large enough group of people as a protection against both bias and being nobbled? From a cost and effectiveness point of view you'd think half as many people would work better, as anyone who has served on a very large council committee already knows.
So the government has front loaded all of the spending decisions and backloaded all of the tax rises. This budget is going to unravel very badly. A big chunk of the supposed increased revenue from tax rises come after the election date but that is being used to balance yet another giant splurge of spending on welfare and it's resulted in an additional £58bn of borrowing. The Labour party are taking voters for mugs and the weird Lib Dems and "one nation Tories" on here supporting it when even Labour voters have ducked out shows just how gullible the "centrist dads" really are.
The fiscal consolidation (measured as the reduction in in the cyclically adjusted primary deficit) is set to be bigger in FY26 than later in the forecast, and bigger than forecast in March. The biggest fiscal adjustment is still seen as the current fiscal year. So this accusation of backloading is not entirely fair.
Reeves is being blamed for not taking the same difficult decisions chancellors over the previous decade have also not taken, but we would like her to do so. Fairness doesn't really come into it
The government is carrying out a significant fiscal adjustment and is trying to do it without crashing growth or leaving local government a wasteland like the 2010 government did. So far growth has been stronger than expected. If they achieve this as planned they will deserve praise. Not that they will get any on here!
This government is held to a higher standard than the previous one, but we should also want it to be. So far with a couple of policy exceptions they haven't really beaten the previous benchmark.
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
All good questions OKC, but I suspect no easy answers. Local knowledge would generally be thought of as an advantage, but if you remember the famous A6 murder trial, it was held in Bedford, close to the scene of the crime. Had it been held at the Old Bailey, Hanratty would probably have got off.
Thanks Mr P. Yes, I remember the Hanratty trial. All very dodgy, as I recall. On the Scandinavian point, I'm a little surprised that they don't have jury trial and we do, given the significant contribution Scandinavians made to the development of Britain. Was jury trial Saxon?
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
I'd understood that the continental legal system requires people to prove their innocence, rather than innocence being the initial presumption.
I would hope not. There must be a huge number of crimes that I could not prove I did not commit.
Most European systems have a non confrontational approach to trials (there is a proper name for that, that I can't remember). Anglosphere countries like the confrontational method.
Yes, and it seems to work perfectly well. The conviction (hah!) that you have to have a prosecution and a defence pitted against each other in order to determine guilt isn't the axiom that many seem to think it is. It's also possible, and in my view preferable, to determine guilt by carefully considering the facts of the case from a neutral standpoint, as is the case in many other countries.
The French police procedural TV series 'Spiral' is interesting from that respect, focusing as it does on the way the French system works and the interplay between the police and the judge during both the investigation into and prosecution for crime. It's very different from the way our system works, and from an inexpert view seems to offer both pros and cons as an alternative way to do things? In particular the judge appears to have an active, hands-on role from the moment the crime is committed, and not simply dropped in as the umpire if and when a case eventually comes to trial, as we do it.
Yes, that does sound interesting. In truth, I have little knowledge of the legal systems of the UK or of other countries. But it does seem to me to be strange to insist that our way of doing things is the only proper way to do it when there are obviously other ways that appear to work as least as fairly and effectively. It smacks of pure defensiveness: this is the way we've always done it, so this is the way we'll always do it.
We delight in pitching opposing positions against each other and expecting the right answer to emerge, which is of course also the basis for our political system. The continental system assumes (but doesn't always get) a more collaborative approach with a lot less black and white.
It's almost as if we invented the communist dialectic, before the communists.
It would be interesting to know which approach leads to the greater number of miscarriages of justice with regard to those subsequently determined to have been incorrectly convicted or acquitted.
Macron introduces voluntary national service for 18 to 19 year olds
Sunak tried this without success
Good or bad idea ?
I'm in favour, with the emphasis on "voluntary". Some people like the structure the army gives them and flourish because of it. Volunteers are more likely to be useful too.
Heh. On the BBC, the Chancellor states that, as I assumed, no one has done any thinking on how an EV mileage charge will work. It’s for 2028 so they will consult and it won’t happen. Another measure purely for the spreadsheet. There’s a lot of those…
I've read the document. Its JOYOUS. Fill in a webform to say how many miles. Pay per month if you like. A mandatory annual inspection at a VOSA approved facility paid for by the government. Balancing payment or credits. Lots and lots and lots of bureaucracy. They're trying to say "ah we'll use the existing framework" to make it cheaper, but it won't be.
I heard a Labour bod "explaining" it this morning, and it really sounds like they started from the position of it might raise a few quid, but hadn't gotten round to thinking about how to do it in practice, and whether or not it would be cost effective.
Obviously in the long run we need to adopt telematics based road charging.
Looks as if Govt has done a massive, completely unnecessary own goal.
Reading comments on various newspaper websites, the vast majority of people think tax relief on all pension contributions is being reduced so only £2k of contributions is allowable.
So someone contributing say £10k into a pension will lose £1,600 if basic rate taxpayer, and £3,200 if higher rate taxpayer.
Of course this is nonsense, the change only affects people doing salary sacrifice.
But most people don't understand this at all and think they will be hit themselves - and hit massively.
It's even dafter because change doesn't come in until April 2029 - so probably will be after the GE in any case.
These would be huge sums - it's going to frighten lots of people and cost Labour a lot of votes.
There's likely to be considerable numbers of people who are learning about salary sacrifice pension contributions and wondering why they've never benefited from there.
It wouldn't surprise me if the number of people who use salary sacrifice increases, certainly for the next three years, and probably permanently.
Aren’t most modern employer pension schemes already salary sacrifice?
I was surpised how low the numbers are, given the savings for both employee and employer (for employer, lower employer NICs so the headline employer contribution rate costs them less than that).
Lots more people being found guilty I reckon. Sentencing of course is going to remain the same orbit - so prisons will become more full of edge cases where a jury wouldn't convict but a judge would.
Unless it's an immigration case, where that may be reversed.
That's quite funny, CR, but it's a serious question and I should think there must have been some research done in this area, and also on the optimum size for a jury, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
From my now much overworked sample of four I can say that in two of the cases the judge would have found differently. In one of them, the guy was obviously guilty but the judge didn't blame the jury for getting it wrong. He blamed the prosecution for presenting the case so poorly. (It was the poor sod's first case and he got in a right mess.) In the other I think everyone present was surprised when we returned a guilty verdict. I remain convinced to this day that we got it right.
I'm conflicted about the abolition of jury trials for medium level cases. I've no problem with most of the bizarre decisions .... the Colston statue, for example, although I did scratch my head over that of the Duchess of Edinburgh's outrider. It's always seemed to me that juries had, or should have, local knowledge which should lead them to a sensible confusion. In that connection I recall reading (I'm not THAT old) of the pre-WWII case of the Welsh Nationalists who set fire to a RAF base in Gwynedd, and the trial was moved to London because a local jury had disagreed, and the judge, and the State, very definitely wanted a conviction.
Jury trial dates back to ancient times; yes, but do we, in the 21st century get more 'accurate' results than, say, the Scandinavians, the French or the Germans? Who, as far as I know, rely on judges and assessors. (I'm prepared to be corrected on this.)
Do continental criminal lawyers get quite as combative as ours seem to, and are witnesses treated better or worse? Has anyone actually done any dispassionate work on this? Or are we simply seeing a knee-jerk response to what I hope is a short-term problem?
I'd understood that the continental legal system requires people to prove their innocence, rather than innocence being the initial presumption.
I would hope not. There must be a huge number of crimes that I could not prove I did not commit.
Most European systems have a non confrontational approach to trials (there is a proper name for that, that I can't remember). Anglosphere countries like the confrontational method.
Yes, and it seems to work perfectly well. The conviction (hah!) that you have to have a prosecution and a defence pitted against each other in order to determine guilt isn't the axiom that many seem to think it is. It's also possible, and in my view preferable, to determine guilt by carefully considering the facts of the case from a neutral standpoint, as is the case in many other countries.
The French police procedural TV series 'Spiral' is interesting from that respect, focusing as it does on the way the French system works and the interplay between the police and the judge during both the investigation into and prosecution for crime. It's very different from the way our system works, and from an inexpert view seems to offer both pros and cons as an alternative way to do things? In particular the judge appears to have an active, hands-on role from the moment the crime is committed, and not simply dropped in as the umpire if and when a case eventually comes to trial, as we do it.
Yes, that does sound interesting. In truth, I have little knowledge of the legal systems of the UK or of other countries. But it does seem to me to be strange to insist that our way of doing things is the only proper way to do it when there are obviously other ways that appear to work as least as fairly and effectively. It smacks of pure defensiveness: this is the way we've always done it, so this is the way we'll always do it.
We delight in pitching opposing positions against each other and expecting the right answer to emerge, which is of course also the basis for our political system. The continental system assumes (but doesn't always get) a more collaborative approach with a lot less black and white.
It's almost as if we invented the communist dialectic, before the communists.
It would be interesting to know which approach leads to the greater number of miscarriages of justice with regard to those subsequently determined to have been incorrectly convicted or acquitted.
Overall, I think that an inquisitorial system will result in a higher percentage of convictions - which is not necessarily the same thing as a greater proportion of miscarriages of justice.
In any event, nobody is suggesting the UK adopts an inquisitorial system. The proposal is to remove one of the elements of the system which (broadly speaking), favours the Defendant, whilst leaving those elements of the system that favour the prosecution in place.
My own experience of jury service was a positive one. Every member of the jury approached the task with proper seriousness.
The information which was withheld from us (but which was obviously known to the judge), was that the Defendant had a lengthy criminal record. We were left to determine guilt or innocence on the facts of the case alone (we eventually convicted him, on a 11-1 majority).
Comments
Right, what price for a Tory majority next time?
Right, what price for a Tory majority next time?
How many virgins do you want when you go to paradise?
First concert was the Maiden at Wolverhampton civic Hall October 22nd 1998 - £15
https://www.concertarchives.org/concerts/iron-maiden--1748707?photo=968172
Although 1993 was pre Definitely Maybe for Oasis so that would likely be a factor compared to Maiden in 1998 and The Who in 1976 who! had both been around for ages at those respective points.
For the benefit of the thread, this is the man who taught TUD the essentials of Microsoft Excel:
Gordon Brown made it mandatory for financial advisors to advocate people using them. Even in the cases where they are less efficient - rare but happens.
Salary sacrifice has the advantage of people getting used to it. They set it up with payroll and it sits there, contributing.
* Not as I have just checked in the Netherlands, Germany or Scandinavia. They don't have jury trials.
But who decides.
I mean, a minor publisher of a hate rag being sent down isn’t important, right? At least according to the government…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_North_Briton
Interestingly quite a few countries have a hybrid system of one or two professional judges and a couple of lay judges that decide the case together.
They were a bit boring, to be honest. Musically adept and with some good songs, but seemed less than the sum of their parts, and didn't seem enthused to be there.
But live music in that era was very affordable. Northern_Al compares to pints; I compare to the cost of recorded music. It was usually cheaper to see a band play live than to buy a copy of their album. And £5 would get you in to see whoever was playing at the Leadmill that evening AND your entry to the disco afterwards. The Leadmill was one of the cheaper venues, but I don't remember paying anywhere over £10 (and in fact I do remember Oasis tickets going for £15 when they came back in 1995, and turning them down on the grounds of not-paying-that-much.)
If we lose trial by jury, King John won.
https://x.com/fleetstreetfox/status/1993635315022524607?s=20
As per the tweet her RV is now £73,500, which is way under that (and would now be subject to the standard RHL multiplier of 43p in the £, for 2026-27. (ie an actual rates bill of £31,605).
I am also puzzled how it went from £18.5k to £73.5k.
Until I looked at the figures for Covid RHL (retail hospitality and leisure) rates relief.
Back in 2023, this was set at 75% - which would approximately reduce the effective value form £73.5k to £18.5k.
In the current year, though, it's only 40%, so her current effective assessment is actually more like £44k.
So there's been minimal change in the actual rateable value of the property. What has happened in that the hospitality rates relief has fallen from 75% to 40% to nil.
Perhaps if the issue is, at root, mostly about housing, you could judge the success of the government's migration policy by house prices and ownership. If house prices are down (in real and/or income multiple terms) and house ownership is up - indicating progress on reducing the deficit in housing supply - then you could say that the government's migration policy has not increased the population more quickly than the economy has been able to build homes.
This way of judging migration also seems like a more reliable method, given the uncertainty and unreliability of the official migration statistics. Suppose the headline number for net migration fell below 100,000 next year. How many Reform voters would actually believe that to be the case?
Rather than completely changing the basis of how we administer criminal justice (with minimal public debate, and significant implications for individual liberty) in order to cut costs, there is a very strong case for simply funding it better to do its job.
The money has to come from somewhere, and the digital ID scheme (also controversial, and quite likely useless) seems as good a place as any.
Comparing it to medical or engineering situations is infantile.
EDIT: And, in any case, my experience is that a doctor will often ask me - the patient - for my opinion as to how to proceed, so there is already a lot of lay input into medical decision-making.
The BBC report that about a third of private sector employees and a tenth of public sector employees use salary sacrifice pension contributions.
Not sure Reform voters want another Milton Keynes...
Do we think the budget will help or hinder their ratings?
https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1993992748605558920?t=v2ICmz5g-sUm1f3MQwqGYA&s=19
I'm sure the Maxwell brothers would not have got off if the jury had understood more about company law.
In 2023-24, the latter outnumbered the former; in 2024-25, that switched over. Next year might be different again.
3p per mile for entirely electrics. 1.5p per mile for hybrids.
Expensive Vehicle Supplement (+£425 per year VED for years 2->6, year 1 already involves being clobbered) at £50k+ price for electrics, £40k+ for ICE vehicles.
VED as is otherwise.
Listening to our Botham-tachioed Tesla correspondent (trigger warning, not very pretty but good for tickling Ozzie barmaids), and the newspapers, there's lots of stuff about "440k fewer EVs by 2030-31 - an OUTRAGEOUS crippling of EV sales which is 25% of those on our roads". *
I'm not quite with that interpretation. Predicted EVs on our roads by 2030-31 are around 6 or 7 million, so the reduction in numbers is relatively marginal. On the other side is a transition of revenue source (which imo is rather too slow). I agree that reactions will be as much emotional as rational, and that the proposed mechanism is a mess.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnGjroPYnfI
Personally I thought the Colston statue rioters were a bunch of smug pricks. But I absolutely want to live in a country where a jury can decide their fate rather than a judge. Because one day I might do something legally wrong but morally right and be reliant on a jury.
I think there's plenty of evidence that enough British voters are mad as hell and willing to break with the Tory/Labour duopoly to make the current polling plausible. I don't see any particular reason to doubt the polling. But the British electorate is volatile. The polling is unlikely to be stable from now until the next election - but who will benefit from the changes in opinion to come? That seems to be down to the relative abilities of the respective politicians to shape and influence public opinion.
'Labour needs to stop splitting the left vote and stand down'
The issue is that in a criminal court case there are two sides. The proesecution on behalf of the State and the Defence on behalf of the accused. By the time it gets to court we already have the State having made decisions at multiple points - to arrest, to charge, to prosecute etc. When it gets to court it is grossly unfair and unjust if the final decision of guilt and innocence is also in the hands of the State.
Most European systems have a non confrontational approach to trials (there is a proper name for that, that I can't remember). Anglosphere countries like the confrontational method.
However, Wales has its own review due to be implemented in 2028
I am not convinced that judges are likely to make great judgements consistently when faced with repeated difficult cases. There is a risk that they will become cynical or jaded, or come to rely on biased shortcuts and prejudices to reach judgements. A benefit of the jury system is that it brings fresh scrutiny into the system to keep it connected to wider public opinion and consent.
One concern about the family court system is that it does not benefit from such external involvement, and there is little scrutiny. I would not want the criminal justice system to go the same way.
It would have been equally logical, and more optimal, to move toward charging NI on pension payments (or, better, simply move toward abolishing NI and having one combined tax rate). But far too brave and sensible for our elected politicians, of any colour or persuasion, it seems.
Kemi is facing Starmer and Reeves who are loathed by most voters now and Labour is polling barely half what New Labour were pre 2001
It isn't.
It seems to me to be a more efficient, and possibly more effective, way to go about things, but (as Richard alludes to above) it does all hang on the judge maintaining his or her independence despite having worked alongside the police from the outset.
Sunak tried this without success
Good or bad idea ?
If the Tories were trying to introduce natalist policies it's a bloody stupid one. Cut Sire Start, cap the child benefit, and introduce RNRB. Great thinking.
Probably not likely but definitely a possibility.
It's almost as if we invented the communist dialectic, before the communists.
Arne Slot is now 5/2 to be the Next Premier League manager to leave 🪓
...and Jurgen Klopp is 2/1 favourite to become the next Liverpool manager 👀
Could the Reds be set for a reunion? 👀
Then again, the legal threats against the MPs who talked about the issues regarding family courts in Parliament suggested that there was awareness.
Yes, I think some cases are too complex for juries. I also think there are cases where the jury or some jurors will feel the weight of intimidation. I don't think there are simple answers. I have always liked the jury system. It needs looking at, but at root the greater problem by far is trying to do stuff on the cheap.
Was jury trial Saxon?
Obviously in the long run we need to adopt telematics based road charging.
In any event, nobody is suggesting the UK adopts an inquisitorial system. The proposal is to remove one of the elements of the system which (broadly speaking), favours the Defendant, whilst leaving those elements of the system that favour the prosecution in place.
My own experience of jury service was a positive one. Every member of the jury approached the task with proper seriousness.
The information which was withheld from us (but which was obviously known to the judge), was that the Defendant had a lengthy criminal record. We were left to determine guilt or innocence on the facts of the case alone (we eventually convicted him, on a 11-1 majority).