Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Oh I 100% agree with you, even with my limited experience of the “law game”.
In England and Wales, murder is a “specific intention” crime. The defendant must specifically intend to cause death or GBH. Carelessness or recklnessess is not enough. That has always been the case.
Manslaughter can carry a life sentence, just the same as murder. Those arguing against it are simply arguing that it is wrong that the defendants cant be called “murderers”, at least in the eyes of the law. It’s an argument of semantics.
If you think they should be called murderers, we need a 3rd degree murder offence.
I think the semantic point is a fair one, if unlikely to mollify the relatives of the victims. We shall have to see what the punishment ends up being, but if it is round about what you might get for a murder, thre isn't actually that much difference.
Yup, although I acknowledge the emotional attachment to the word “murderer”.
People are forgetting that they have been convicted of causing the death of the victim.
When Tony Blair attended Fettes in Edinburgh, the SNP did not hold a single seat, and support for Scottish independence was in single figures. You make your own mind up about the effects of devolution.
I think for me, devolution was one of the three great catalysts that have led to that increase:
- the Labour Opposition's denial that Thatcherism had democratic legitimacy in Scotland, which undermined the legitimacy of the Union - the Labour Governmnent granting devolution, which created an alternative power centre in Edinburgh, while not creating a fully federal UK, so the structure always looked half-baked - the fact that, whatever one thinks of their record in government, the SNP have had two of the most skilful political leaders of my lifetime in Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon.
A fourth might be the Brexit referendum, but I'm not so convinced that's led to an Indy surge.
Surely another big factor is continuing Tory governments in Westminster. Labour actually increased its vote in 2010 in Scotland under Gordon Brown.
Fishing by name and nature, perhaps, in blaming Labour's opposition to Thatcherism but not the lady herself, or indeed the poll tax which was introduced in Scotland first. Look at the dates on the table below, and see when Tory representation fell off a cliff.
Numbers of Conservative MPs returned from Scotland at successive general elections: 1970 -- 23 2/74 -- 21 1074 -- 16 1979 -- 22 1983 -- 21 1987 -- 10 1992 -- 11 1997 -- 0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Scotland
So May won more Scottish Tory MPs even than Thatcher in 1987 or Major in 1992
It was most impressive in retrospect how many remain votes the Tories actually gained in 2017 in Scotland in addition to all the unionist leave votes they gained.
Stirling, East Renfrewshire and Aberdeen South were arguably their most impressive gains and perhaps unlikely to be won back now even if the Tories hold all their existing 6 seats.
Indeed. But they were marketing themselves as something very different, as the Ruth D party while concealing their Conservative formal title. And there were major Labour figures telling people to vote Tory rather than Labour (specifically, tactically, to keep the SNP out).
On topic, I agree with David H, though I would add one caveat - that any common payment system would have to make sure it did not break competition law, as it easily could do, if it turned out to favour one paper over another somehow, or became a barrier to entry to the news market. Then they would have Ofcom and the CMA on their case very quickly, and deservedly so.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Oh I 100% agree with you, even with my limited experience of the “law game”.
Have you thought about pitching yourself in this kind of job while you sort out a career? I'd like to hear from a legal expert on these kinds of things too.
I do wonder how big the market is for various experts from different industries getting together and writing about what's going on in the world. I'm going to guess smaller than I expect but it might not be.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Oh I 100% agree with you, even with my limited experience of the “law game”.
Just to give an example.
A friend was getting divorced. He had run out of money for lawyers. Literally. So I went along to try and help.
It was a meeting in the judges office. Just the her, her lawyer, my friend and me. And the judge.
The meeting was strange, to be honest... but at the end...
The final piece was the most remarkable - the judge told us, quite clearly, that if my friend broke any of the conditions of her judgement, she would enforce it. And that since his ex-wife was now a single mother, she (the judge) would *not* enforce the rulings on her.
I had never conceived that a judge would say that they would be biased in the enforcement of a judgement.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
The sky did not fall in when the Diplock courts were introduced. Nor when we pretty much abolished civil juries in 1933 - and a civil judge can feck up your liberties as a subject just as effectively as a criminal court can, by for instance bankrupting you, taking your children away from you, and making orders for breach of which you can be imprisoned.
Two massive flaws in the jury system have been highlighted - inability to understand points of law, and intimidation. Judge only trials obviate theses difficulties at a stroke, and the countervailing argument is what? that judges are more corruptible, or more likely to act as puppets of the state, than random jurors? That makes no sense even if it is true, because the corruption opportunities are in civil trials and so are the puppet of the state opportunities - as we have repeatedly seen in brexit litigation over the last four years. No juries in that lot in the first place. I honestly don't see what the case for juries actually is, except for a lot of ill-informed historical fustian about Magna Carta. Edit to clarify that I don't say that the courts in fact acted as puppets of the state in the brexit litigation, only that the opportunity was there.
I am unconvinced, Mr Ishmael. If I were a member of a criminal gang, I think it would be much easier to nobble a single judge than twelves separate jurymen.
If it is true that juries are unable to understand points of law, then why on earth do we bother to have hugely-paid lawyers in court? Their job is surely to explain to the court what the law is, and how it applies in a particular case.
The lawyers of my acquaintance always manage to do this when we are chatting about this and that. Perhaps I mix with a better class of lawyer than you do?
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
The sky did not fall in when the Diplock courts were introduced. Nor when we pretty much abolished civil juries in 1933 - and a civil judge can feck up your liberties as a subject just as effectively as a criminal court can, by for instance bankrupting you, taking your children away from you, and making orders for breach of which you can be imprisoned.
Two massive flaws in the jury system have been highlighted - inability to understand points of law, and intimidation. Judge only trials obviate theses difficulties at a stroke, and the countervailing argument is what? that judges are more corruptible, or more likely to act as puppets of the state, than random jurors? That makes no sense even if it is true, because the corruption opportunities are in civil trials and so are the puppet of the state opportunities - as we have repeatedly seen in brexit litigation over the last four years. No juries in that lot in the first place. I honestly don't see what the case for juries actually is, except for a lot of ill-informed historical fustian about Magna Carta. Edit to clarify that I don't say that the courts in fact acted as puppets of the state in the brexit litigation, only that the opportunity was there.
I am unconvinced, Mr Ishmael. If I were a member of a criminal gang, I think it would be much easier to nobble a single judge than twelves separate jurymen.
If it is true that juries are unable to understand points of law, then why on earth do we bother to have hugely-paid lawyers in court? Their job is surely to explain to the court what the law is, and how it applies in a particular case.
The lawyers of my acquaintance always manage to do this when we are chatting about this and that. Perhaps I mix with a better class of lawyer than you do?
Well said. If lawyers and judges are incapable of explaining points of law within a courtroom setting then how on earth are the people subject to the law supposed to understand it either? Ignorance is no excuse under the law, but if the law is too complex to explain within a courtroom it perhaps should be.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Oh I 100% agree with you, even with my limited experience of the “law game”.
Just to give an example.
A friend was getting divorced. He had run out of money for lawyers. Literally. So I went along to try and help.
It was a meeting in the judges office. Just the her, her lawyer, my friend and me. And the judge.
The meeting was strange, to be honest... but at the end...
The final piece was the most remarkable - the judge told us, quite clearly, that if my friend broke any of the conditions of her judgement, she would enforce it. And that since his ex-wife was now a single mother, she (the judge) would *not* enforce the rulings on her.
I had never conceived that a judge would say that they would be biased in the enforcement of a judgement.
Family law in this country is a complete joke. Judges seem to be stuck in the 1930s, a friend of mine went through a very messy divorce and ended up on the wrong side of a judgement where he had to pay ongoing support despite there being no children and her having a reasonably good job. It's only because he has a lot of money that he was able to appeal and have the decision overturned but essentially he said that the judge in the initial case took pity on his ex-wife after she put on a great show of tears for sympathy and how he'd be awful to her for their whole marriage and stopped her from pursuing a career to her full potential.
I know that not to be the case, but it was very obvious she received legal advice to that end and the judge fell for it. In the appeal he produced lots of evidence to the contrary including whatsapp messages where she had irrationality threatened to do harm to herself because he went to visit his sister. He said it felt like the judge in the original case just couldn't believe that women would do such things and he got stuck with a pretty big ongoing lifestyle maintenance payment.
If that, or your friend's were isolated cases I'd be very surprised. Almost everyone I know on the male side of the divorce fence have plenty of awful stories about ex wives withholding access to children and courts not enforcing visitation rights.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
The professional judges of the Queens Bench Division came to a polar opposite view to the professional judges of the Supreme Court on the prorogation of Parliament...
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Doesn't the research show that juries are remarkably good at coming to the right result?
From every self-policing profession, we know where that ends up.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
The sky did not fall in when the Diplock courts were introduced. Nor when we pretty much abolished civil juries in 1933 - and a civil judge can feck up your liberties as a subject just as effectively as a criminal court can, by for instance bankrupting you, taking your children away from you, and making orders for breach of which you can be imprisoned.
Two massive flaws in the jury system have been highlighted - inability to understand points of law, and intimidation. Judge only trials obviate theses difficulties at a stroke, and the countervailing argument is what? that judges are more corruptible, or more likely to act as puppets of the state, than random jurors? That makes no sense even if it is true, because the corruption opportunities are in civil trials and so are the puppet of the state opportunities - as we have repeatedly seen in brexit litigation over the last four years. No juries in that lot in the first place. I honestly don't see what the case for juries actually is, except for a lot of ill-informed historical fustian about Magna Carta.
Edit to clarify that I don't say that the courts in fact acted as puppets of the state in the brexit litigation, only that the opportunity was there.
Jury nullification is potentially useful. A jury can acquit, if it considers that the law is oppressive, or the prosecution is unfair. It's an important check on oppression by the authorities.
Knowledge of the law is not terribly important for a juror, since the jury is ruling on matters of fact, not matters of law.
In my view, the existence of trial by jury strengthens public confidence in the working of the judicial system. It's a check against bias. Judges, inevitably, are drawn from quite a narrow social circle, overwhelmingly upper middle class. Even if they are unbiased (as I'm sure most are) it would be easy enough to accuse them of bias. And, my experience is that jurors do take their duties seriously.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
The sky did not fall in when the Diplock courts were introduced. Nor when we pretty much abolished civil juries in 1933 - and a civil judge can feck up your liberties as a subject just as effectively as a criminal court can, by for instance bankrupting you, taking your children away from you, and making orders for breach of which you can be imprisoned.
Two massive flaws in the jury system have been highlighted - inability to understand points of law, and intimidation. Judge only trials obviate theses difficulties at a stroke, and the countervailing argument is what? that judges are more corruptible, or more likely to act as puppets of the state, than random jurors? That makes no sense even if it is true, because the corruption opportunities are in civil trials and so are the puppet of the state opportunities - as we have repeatedly seen in brexit litigation over the last four years. No juries in that lot in the first place. I honestly don't see what the case for juries actually is, except for a lot of ill-informed historical fustian about Magna Carta. Edit to clarify that I don't say that the courts in fact acted as puppets of the state in the brexit litigation, only that the opportunity was there.
I am unconvinced, Mr Ishmael. If I were a member of a criminal gang, I think it would be much easier to nobble a single judge than twelves separate jurymen.
If it is true that juries are unable to understand points of law, then why on earth do we bother to have hugely-paid lawyers in court? Their job is surely to explain to the court what the law is, and how it applies in a particular case.
The lawyers of my acquaintance always manage to do this when we are chatting about this and that. Perhaps I mix with a better class of lawyer than you do?
Well said. If lawyers and judges are incapable of explaining points of law within a courtroom setting then how on earth are the people subject to the law supposed to understand it either? Ignorance is no excuse under the law, but if the law is too complex to explain within a courtroom it perhaps should be.
We want the law to be complex because we want it to discriminate finely between, for instance, differing levels of responsibility and guilt. You can get by in real life with a pretty rule-of-thumb approach - all you need to know in this instance is, you shouldn't nick quad bikes, and if caught doing so you should hand yourself in.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Doesn't the research show that juries are remarkably good at coming to the right result?
From every self-policing profession, we know where that ends up.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
The sky did not fall in when the Diplock courts were introduced. Nor when we pretty much abolished civil juries in 1933 - and a civil judge can feck up your liberties as a subject just as effectively as a criminal court can, by for instance bankrupting you, taking your children away from you, and making orders for breach of which you can be imprisoned.
Two massive flaws in the jury system have been highlighted - inability to understand points of law, and intimidation. Judge only trials obviate theses difficulties at a stroke, and the countervailing argument is what? that judges are more corruptible, or more likely to act as puppets of the state, than random jurors? That makes no sense even if it is true, because the corruption opportunities are in civil trials and so are the puppet of the state opportunities - as we have repeatedly seen in brexit litigation over the last four years. No juries in that lot in the first place. I honestly don't see what the case for juries actually is, except for a lot of ill-informed historical fustian about Magna Carta.
Edit to clarify that I don't say that the courts in fact acted as puppets of the state in the brexit litigation, only that the opportunity was there.
The two points you raise and then disregard with no actual thought are indeed very important. Firstly Judges are indeed part of the state and even if they were never going to act as puppets of the State - which is a ridiculous thing to try and deny given both human nature and history - they would still appear to many to be biased in favour of the state which undermines the whole public support for our judicial system.
Secondly your claim that corruption would not occur is equally idiotic. One only has to look at the collapse of the Italian judicial system and the failure of the anti-corruption drive of the last 30 years to see that. In France a survey last year showed that 41% think that French judges are either 'rather' or 'very' corrupt. Again perception matters.
Bear in mind that most of the big miscarriages of justice in the last few decades have not come about because juries 'got it wrong' but because of establishment corrupt behaviour which meant they never had a chance to 'get it right'.
Juries play a vital role of mitigating the worst excesses of state and judicial overreach. Anyone who thinks we should reduce them is contemptable.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
The professional judges of the Queens Bench Division came to a polar opposite view to the professional judges of the Supreme Court on the prorogation of Parliament...
Well the whole concept of the appeal system is that you appeal to more senior judges, but must you really bring Brexit into everything?
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Oh I 100% agree with you, even with my limited experience of the “law game”.
Have you thought about pitching yourself in this kind of job while you sort out a career? I'd like to hear from a legal expert on these kinds of things too.
I do wonder how big the market is for various experts from different industries getting together and writing about what's going on in the world. I'm going to guess smaller than I expect but it might not be.
What sort of job are you referring to? Unfortunately i’m qualified to give advice on very little!
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
The sky did not fall in when the Diplock courts were introduced. Nor when we pretty much abolished civil juries in 1933 - and a civil judge can feck up your liberties as a subject just as effectively as a criminal court can, by for instance bankrupting you, taking your children away from you, and making orders for breach of which you can be imprisoned.
Two massive flaws in the jury system have been highlighted - inability to understand points of law, and intimidation. Judge only trials obviate theses difficulties at a stroke, and the countervailing argument is what? that judges are more corruptible, or more likely to act as puppets of the state, than random jurors? That makes no sense even if it is true, because the corruption opportunities are in civil trials and so are the puppet of the state opportunities - as we have repeatedly seen in brexit litigation over the last four years. No juries in that lot in the first place. I honestly don't see what the case for juries actually is, except for a lot of ill-informed historical fustian about Magna Carta.
Edit to clarify that I don't say that the courts in fact acted as puppets of the state in the brexit litigation, only that the opportunity was there.
The two points you raise and then disregard with no actual thought are indeed very important. Firstly Judges are indeed part of the state and even if they were never going to act as puppets of the State - which is a ridiculous thing to try and deny given both human nature and history - they would still appear to many to be biased in favour of the state which undermines the whole public support for our judicial system.
Secondly your claim that corruption would not occur is equally idiotic. One only has to look at the collapse of the Italian judicial system and the failure of the anti-corruption drive of the last 30 years to see that. In France a survey last year showed that 41% think that French judges are either 'rather' or 'very' corrupt. Again perception matters.
Bear in mind that most of the big miscarriages of justice in the last few decades have not come about because juries 'got it wrong' but because of establishment corrupt behaviour which meant they never had a chance to 'get it right'.
Juries play a vital role of mitigating the worst excesses of state and judicial overreach. Anyone who thinks we should reduce them is contemptable.
I think it is fair to raise as a matter of debate as indeed most aspets of our legal system could be assessed and debated, but of all the reasons to dismiss the merits of jury trials, 'exceptionalism' is a pretty poor one, whether one takes exceptionalism to mean not many others do it, or whether it means an unwarranted belief it is a good thing because of nationalistic fervour.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Oh I 100% agree with you, even with my limited experience of the “law game”.
Just to give an example.
A friend was getting divorced. He had run out of money for lawyers. Literally. So I went along to try and help.
It was a meeting in the judges office. Just the her, her lawyer, my friend and me. And the judge.
The meeting was strange, to be honest... but at the end...
The final piece was the most remarkable - the judge told us, quite clearly, that if my friend broke any of the conditions of her judgement, she would enforce it. And that since his ex-wife was now a single mother, she (the judge) would *not* enforce the rulings on her.
I had never conceived that a judge would say that they would be biased in the enforcement of a judgement.
Family law in this country is a complete joke. Judges seem to be stuck in the 1930s, a friend of mine went through a very messy divorce and ended up on the wrong side of a judgement where he had to pay ongoing support despite there being no children and her having a reasonably good job. It's only because he has a lot of money that he was able to appeal and have the decision overturned but essentially he said that the judge in the initial case took pity on his ex-wife after she put on a great show of tears for sympathy and how he'd be awful to her for their whole marriage and stopped her from pursuing a career to her full potential.
I know that not to be the case, but it was very obvious she received legal advice to that end and the judge fell for it. In the appeal he produced lots of evidence to the contrary including whatsapp messages where she had irrationality threatened to do harm to herself because he went to visit his sister. He said it felt like the judge in the original case just couldn't believe that women would do such things and he got stuck with a pretty big ongoing lifestyle maintenance payment.
If that, or your friend's were isolated cases I'd be very surprised. Almost everyone I know on the male side of the divorce fence have plenty of awful stories about ex wives withholding access to children and courts not enforcing visitation rights.
Part of the solution to this is equality in parental rights.
We could start with fathers on the birth certificate as a default in all cases, absent an order from the Court.
Portugal develops the first mask to inactivate the COVID-19 virus. The mask, called MOxATech, has been on sale since April, but its ability to inactivate the virus has only now been confirmed by a series of tests carried out by the João Lobo Antunes Molecular Medicine Institute in Lisbon (iMM). This protective equipment, which has a coating that neutralizes the virus when it comes into contact with it, has been developed thanks to the collaboration between the textile manufacturer Adalberto, the retail company MO, Sonae Fashion, the CITEVE technology center, iMM and the Universidade do Minho. The virologist of the iMM Pedro Simas, who coordinated the tests, has assured that the tests carried out "have shown an effective inactivation of the SARS-CoV-2 even after 50 washes, observing a 99% viral reduction after one hour of contact with the tissue".
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
The sky did not fall in when the Diplock courts were introduced. Nor when we pretty much abolished civil juries in 1933 - and a civil judge can feck up your liberties as a subject just as effectively as a criminal court can, by for instance bankrupting you, taking your children away from you, and making orders for breach of which you can be imprisoned.
Two massive flaws in the jury system have been highlighted - inability to understand points of law, and intimidation. Judge only trials obviate theses difficulties at a stroke, and the countervailing argument is what? that judges are more corruptible, or more likely to act as puppets of the state, than random jurors? That makes no sense even if it is true, because the corruption opportunities are in civil trials and so are the puppet of the state opportunities - as we have repeatedly seen in brexit litigation over the last four years. No juries in that lot in the first place. I honestly don't see what the case for juries actually is, except for a lot of ill-informed historical fustian about Magna Carta. Edit to clarify that I don't say that the courts in fact acted as puppets of the state in the brexit litigation, only that the opportunity was there.
I am unconvinced, Mr Ishmael. If I were a member of a criminal gang, I think it would be much easier to nobble a single judge than twelves separate jurymen.
If it is true that juries are unable to understand points of law, then why on earth do we bother to have hugely-paid lawyers in court? Their job is surely to explain to the court what the law is, and how it applies in a particular case.
The lawyers of my acquaintance always manage to do this when we are chatting about this and that. Perhaps I mix with a better class of lawyer than you do?
Well said. If lawyers and judges are incapable of explaining points of law within a courtroom setting then how on earth are the people subject to the law supposed to understand it either? Ignorance is no excuse under the law, but if the law is too complex to explain within a courtroom it perhaps should be.
We want the law to be complex because we want it to discriminate finely between, for instance, differing levels of responsibility and guilt. You can get by in real life with a pretty rule-of-thumb approach - all you need to know in this instance is, you shouldn't nick quad bikes, and if caught doing so you should hand yourself in.
The law certainly should be more accessible, and the fundamentals should be taught in schools, otherwise you’re learning about the law from American movies. You don’t need a law degree to have a decent understanding of how it works, but you do need something.
The fact that case law makes such a huge part of E+W and yet without a tool like Westlaw it’s incredibly difficult to do any research as a layman, is a disgrace frankly.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Oh I 100% agree with you, even with my limited experience of the “law game”.
Just to give an example.
A friend was getting divorced. He had run out of money for lawyers. Literally. So I went along to try and help.
It was a meeting in the judges office. Just the her, her lawyer, my friend and me. And the judge.
The meeting was strange, to be honest... but at the end...
The final piece was the most remarkable - the judge told us, quite clearly, that if my friend broke any of the conditions of her judgement, she would enforce it. And that since his ex-wife was now a single mother, she (the judge) would *not* enforce the rulings on her.
I had never conceived that a judge would say that they would be biased in the enforcement of a judgement.
Family law in this country is a complete joke. Judges seem to be stuck in the 1930s, a friend of mine went through a very messy divorce and ended up on the wrong side of a judgement where he had to pay ongoing support despite there being no children and her having a reasonably good job. It's only because he has a lot of money that he was able to appeal and have the decision overturned but essentially he said that the judge in the initial case took pity on his ex-wife after she put on a great show of tears for sympathy and how he'd be awful to her for their whole marriage and stopped her from pursuing a career to her full potential.
I know that not to be the case, but it was very obvious she received legal advice to that end and the judge fell for it. In the appeal he produced lots of evidence to the contrary including whatsapp messages where she had irrationality threatened to do harm to herself because he went to visit his sister. He said it felt like the judge in the original case just couldn't believe that women would do such things and he got stuck with a pretty big ongoing lifestyle maintenance payment.
If that, or your friend's were isolated cases I'd be very surprised. Almost everyone I know on the male side of the divorce fence have plenty of awful stories about ex wives withholding access to children and courts not enforcing visitation rights.
The system is designed to produce bad results.
One evening, while out drinking with old flatmate, we encountered a lawyer who appeared to be drinking himself to death. Being in a friendly, quiet kind of wine bar, we got chatting.
It seemed that he had got himself a job at a very high end firm, specialising in divorce and other family stuff. Very junior etc. Apparently his job was thus (for cases where the circumstances matched the conditions) -
- At the start of high end divorces, allegations would fly. The husband was Hannibal Lector multiplied by Vlad Dracul, with a side order of Hitler and Stalin. The wife was Elizabeth Báthory, without the concern for the servants.
- His job was to sit down with the wife and point out that (a) she hadn't worked in years, (b) all the income came from the husbands high end job, (c) if her allegations were true, the husband would get a criminal conviction (d) Criminal conviction = no money. (e) Goodbye high end lifestyle for her and the children
- All to be done in a way that meant he wasn't bending the law. Too much.
- Within a day, all allegations would be dropped. From her side.
His drinking was caused by his moral certainty that, in some cases, the allegations were true.
In 1979, Mrs Thatcher could not have done anything to offend Scots voters. That should be self-evident. Labour was in office until then. Clearly something happened after 1983, or some things.
There could have been something she had done as LotO or as a Cabinet Minister under Heath, or something in the Conservative Manifesto.
I agree, the decline in support between 83 and 87 needs some explanation though. It can't have been the Community Charge, because it wasn't a big issue till 1988/9 (though it was, unnoticed, in the 87 manifesto). Mrs Thatcher was still the same person she had been in 1983. And I doubt it was the privatisation of British Gas.
As to what it was, I genuinely don't know.
Either way, suggesting it was just Mrs Thatcher and the reform of local taxation is clearly much too simplistic.
Funnily enough, what seems to have done for the Conservatives was not the drop off of votes (their share of the vote fell by 4.4% from 83 to 87 vs 3% from 79 to 83) but more where that vote was concentrated. So, in 1983, the vote dropped by 3% and the party lost by 1.1%; in 1987, the vote dropped 4.4% and the Conservatives lost 11 seats
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Doesn't the research show that juries are remarkably good at coming to the right result?
From every self-policing profession, we know where that ends up.
The end is probably flying around on a 737-MAX...
Found this. Research is US courts, not UK:
"The research reviewed here clearly begins to fill a gap in the literature. While there has been a great deal of research exploring juror and jury decisionmaking and a separate literature examining influences on judicial decisionmaking, there has been surprisingly little research comparing the decisions of juries and trial court judges. The most notable conclusion to be drawn from this emerging literature is that the decisionmaking of judges and jurors is strikingly similar. While there is evidence of some differences, there is a high degree of agreement between the groups, they appear to decide real cases quite similarly, and they show a great deal of similarity in responding to simulated cases designed to examine a variety of legal decisionmaking processes.
"One problem with comparing the decisionmaking of juries to that of judges is that to the extent that there are differences in the decisionmaking of judges and juries, there is not always a clear benchmark for determining which group’s decision is normatively better. Many of the studies reviewed here—either explicitly or implicitly— assume that judges are “right.” However, differences in the decisionmaking of judges and juries “do not speak for themselves.” For example, even if a large number of studies converged on the finding that judges are more likely to find for plaintiffs than juries or that juries are likely to award higher damages than judges, it would not be clear in the abstract which outcome was more “correct.”"
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
The sky did not fall in when the Diplock courts were introduced. Nor when we pretty much abolished civil juries in 1933 - and a civil judge can feck up your liberties as a subject just as effectively as a criminal court can, by for instance bankrupting you, taking your children away from you, and making orders for breach of which you can be imprisoned.
Two massive flaws in the jury system have been highlighted - inability to understand points of law, and intimidation. Judge only trials obviate theses difficulties at a stroke, and the countervailing argument is what? that judges are more corruptible, or more likely to act as puppets of the state, than random jurors? That makes no sense even if it is true, because the corruption opportunities are in civil trials and so are the puppet of the state opportunities - as we have repeatedly seen in brexit litigation over the last four years. No juries in that lot in the first place. I honestly don't see what the case for juries actually is, except for a lot of ill-informed historical fustian about Magna Carta.
Edit to clarify that I don't say that the courts in fact acted as puppets of the state in the brexit litigation, only that the opportunity was there.
The two points you raise and then disregard with no actual thought are indeed very important. Firstly Judges are indeed part of the state and even if they were never going to act as puppets of the State - which is a ridiculous thing to try and deny given both human nature and history - they would still appear to many to be biased in favour of the state which undermines the whole public support for our judicial system.
Secondly your claim that corruption would not occur is equally idiotic. One only has to look at the collapse of the Italian judicial system and the failure of the anti-corruption drive of the last 30 years to see that. In France a survey last year showed that 41% think that French judges are either 'rather' or 'very' corrupt. Again perception matters.
Bear in mind that most of the big miscarriages of justice in the last few decades have not come about because juries 'got it wrong' but because of establishment corrupt behaviour which meant they never had a chance to 'get it right'.
Juries play a vital role of mitigating the worst excesses of state and judicial overreach. Anyone who thinks we should reduce them is contemptable.
Contemptible. I do love the Pavlovian response of a leaver to the suggestion that Magna Carta might, after all, have died in vain.
You have entirely missed the very easily understood point I was making. It isn't about corruptibility, it's about differential corruptibility (counting giving in to intimidation as a case of corruption).
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
The professional judges of the Queens Bench Division came to a polar opposite view to the professional judges of the Supreme Court on the prorogation of Parliament...
Well the whole concept of the appeal system is that you appeal to more senior judges, but must you really bring Brexit into everything?
Just happened to be the highest profile example of polar opposite judgments I could think of....
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
The sky did not fall in when the Diplock courts were introduced. Nor when we pretty much abolished civil juries in 1933 - and a civil judge can feck up your liberties as a subject just as effectively as a criminal court can, by for instance bankrupting you, taking your children away from you, and making orders for breach of which you can be imprisoned.
Two massive flaws in the jury system have been highlighted - inability to understand points of law, and intimidation. Judge only trials obviate theses difficulties at a stroke, and the countervailing argument is what? that judges are more corruptible, or more likely to act as puppets of the state, than random jurors? That makes no sense even if it is true, because the corruption opportunities are in civil trials and so are the puppet of the state opportunities - as we have repeatedly seen in brexit litigation over the last four years. No juries in that lot in the first place. I honestly don't see what the case for juries actually is, except for a lot of ill-informed historical fustian about Magna Carta.
Edit to clarify that I don't say that the courts in fact acted as puppets of the state in the brexit litigation, only that the opportunity was there.
The two points you raise and then disregard with no actual thought are indeed very important. Firstly Judges are indeed part of the state and even if they were never going to act as puppets of the State - which is a ridiculous thing to try and deny given both human nature and history - they would still appear to many to be biased in favour of the state which undermines the whole public support for our judicial system.
Secondly your claim that corruption would not occur is equally idiotic. One only has to look at the collapse of the Italian judicial system and the failure of the anti-corruption drive of the last 30 years to see that. In France a survey last year showed that 41% think that French judges are either 'rather' or 'very' corrupt. Again perception matters.
Bear in mind that most of the big miscarriages of justice in the last few decades have not come about because juries 'got it wrong' but because of establishment corrupt behaviour which meant they never had a chance to 'get it right'.
Juries play a vital role of mitigating the worst excesses of state and judicial overreach. Anyone who thinks we should reduce them is contemptable.
Contemptible. I do love the Pavlovian response of a leaver to the suggestion that Magna Carta might, after all, have died in vain.
You have entirely missed the very easily understood point I was making. It isn't about corruptibility, it's about differential corruptibility (counting giving in to intimidation as a case of corruption).
Given I made no mention of Magna Carta and that jury trial long precedes that document, your response is as infantile as the rest of the stuff you spew out on here.
And I didn't miss your point at all. It is just that, as usual, you are wrong.
In England and Wales, murder is a “specific intention” crime. The defendant must specifically intend to cause death or GBH. Carelessness or recklnessess is not enough. That has always been the case.
Manslaughter can carry a life sentence, just the same as murder. Those arguing against it are simply arguing that it is wrong that the defendants cant be called “murderers”, at least in the eyes of the law. It’s an argument of semantics.
If you think they should be called murderers, we need a 3rd degree murder offence.
I think the semantic point is a fair one, if unlikely to mollify the relatives of the victims. We shall have to see what the punishment ends up being, but if it is round about what you might get for a murder, thre isn't actually that much difference.
Yup, although I acknowledge the emotional attachment to the word “murderer”.
People are forgetting that they have been convicted of causing the death of the victim.
Let’s hope they get a long sentence.
You still have "Killer" - and the sentence can be "Life" but with minimum term lower than it would have been for a murder conviction.
This generates "PC KILLERS GET LIFE" headlines for next Friday - which I sense is needed and might just happen. But we will see.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
The sky did not fall in when the Diplock courts were introduced. Nor when we pretty much abolished civil juries in 1933 - and a civil judge can feck up your liberties as a subject just as effectively as a criminal court can, by for instance bankrupting you, taking your children away from you, and making orders for breach of which you can be imprisoned.
Two massive flaws in the jury system have been highlighted - inability to understand points of law, and intimidation. Judge only trials obviate theses difficulties at a stroke, and the countervailing argument is what? that judges are more corruptible, or more likely to act as puppets of the state, than random jurors? That makes no sense even if it is true, because the corruption opportunities are in civil trials and so are the puppet of the state opportunities - as we have repeatedly seen in brexit litigation over the last four years. No juries in that lot in the first place. I honestly don't see what the case for juries actually is, except for a lot of ill-informed historical fustian about Magna Carta.
Edit to clarify that I don't say that the courts in fact acted as puppets of the state in the brexit litigation, only that the opportunity was there.
The two points you raise and then disregard with no actual thought are indeed very important. Firstly Judges are indeed part of the state and even if they were never going to act as puppets of the State - which is a ridiculous thing to try and deny given both human nature and history - they would still appear to many to be biased in favour of the state which undermines the whole public support for our judicial system.
Secondly your claim that corruption would not occur is equally idiotic. One only has to look at the collapse of the Italian judicial system and the failure of the anti-corruption drive of the last 30 years to see that. In France a survey last year showed that 41% think that French judges are either 'rather' or 'very' corrupt. Again perception matters.
Bear in mind that most of the big miscarriages of justice in the last few decades have not come about because juries 'got it wrong' but because of establishment corrupt behaviour which meant they never had a chance to 'get it right'.
Juries play a vital role of mitigating the worst excesses of state and judicial overreach. Anyone who thinks we should reduce them is contemptable.
Contemptible. I do love the Pavlovian response of a leaver to the suggestion that Magna Carta might, after all, have died in vain.
You have entirely missed the very easily understood point I was making. It isn't about corruptibility, it's about differential corruptibility (counting giving in to intimidation as a case of corruption).
Given I made no mention of Magna Carta and that jury trial long precedes that document, your response is as infantile as the rest of the stuff you spew out on here.
And I didn't miss your point at all. It is just that, as usual, you are wrong.
Damn, burn.
I can only dream of what you think of my contributions.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Oh I 100% agree with you, even with my limited experience of the “law game”.
Just to give an example.
A friend was getting divorced. He had run out of money for lawyers. Literally. So I went along to try and help.
It was a meeting in the judges office. Just the her, her lawyer, my friend and me. And the judge.
The meeting was strange, to be honest... but at the end...
The final piece was the most remarkable - the judge told us, quite clearly, that if my friend broke any of the conditions of her judgement, she would enforce it. And that since his ex-wife was now a single mother, she (the judge) would *not* enforce the rulings on her.
I had never conceived that a judge would say that they would be biased in the enforcement of a judgement.
Family law in this country is a complete joke. Judges seem to be stuck in the 1930s, a friend of mine went through a very messy divorce and ended up on the wrong side of a judgement where he had to pay ongoing support despite there being no children and her having a reasonably good job. It's only because he has a lot of money that he was able to appeal and have the decision overturned but essentially he said that the judge in the initial case took pity on his ex-wife after she put on a great show of tears for sympathy and how he'd be awful to her for their whole marriage and stopped her from pursuing a career to her full potential.
I know that not to be the case, but it was very obvious she received legal advice to that end and the judge fell for it. In the appeal he produced lots of evidence to the contrary including whatsapp messages where she had irrationality threatened to do harm to herself because he went to visit his sister. He said it felt like the judge in the original case just couldn't believe that women would do such things and he got stuck with a pretty big ongoing lifestyle maintenance payment.
If that, or your friend's were isolated cases I'd be very surprised. Almost everyone I know on the male side of the divorce fence have plenty of awful stories about ex wives withholding access to children and courts not enforcing visitation rights.
The system is designed to produce bad results.
One evening, while out drinking with old flatmate, we encountered a lawyer who appeared to be drinking himself to death. Being in a friendly, quiet kind of wine bar, we got chatting.
It seemed that he had got himself a job at a very high end firm, specialising in divorce and other family stuff. Very junior etc. Apparently his job was thus (for cases where the circumstances matched the conditions) -
- At the start of high end divorces, allegations would fly. The husband was Hannibal Lector multiplied by Vlad Dracul, with a side order of Hitler and Stalin. The wife was Elizabeth Báthory, without the concern for the servants.
- His job was to sit down with the wife and point out that (a) she hadn't worked in years, (b) all the income came from the husbands high end job, (c) if her allegations were true, the husband would get a criminal conviction (d) Criminal conviction = no money. (e) Goodbye high end lifestyle for her and the children
- All to be done in a way that meant he wasn't bending the law. Too much.
- Within a day, all allegations would be dropped. From her side.
His drinking was caused by his moral certainty that, in some cases, the allegations were true.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Oh I 100% agree with you, even with my limited experience of the “law game”.
Just to give an example.
A friend was getting divorced. He had run out of money for lawyers. Literally. So I went along to try and help.
It was a meeting in the judges office. Just the her, her lawyer, my friend and me. And the judge.
The meeting was strange, to be honest... but at the end...
The final piece was the most remarkable - the judge told us, quite clearly, that if my friend broke any of the conditions of her judgement, she would enforce it. And that since his ex-wife was now a single mother, she (the judge) would *not* enforce the rulings on her.
I had never conceived that a judge would say that they would be biased in the enforcement of a judgement.
Family law in this country is a complete joke. Judges seem to be stuck in the 1930s, a friend of mine went through a very messy divorce and ended up on the wrong side of a judgement where he had to pay ongoing support despite there being no children and her having a reasonably good job. It's only because he has a lot of money that he was able to appeal and have the decision overturned but essentially he said that the judge in the initial case took pity on his ex-wife after she put on a great show of tears for sympathy and how he'd be awful to her for their whole marriage and stopped her from pursuing a career to her full potential.
I know that not to be the case, but it was very obvious she received legal advice to that end and the judge fell for it. In the appeal he produced lots of evidence to the contrary including whatsapp messages where she had irrationality threatened to do harm to herself because he went to visit his sister. He said it felt like the judge in the original case just couldn't believe that women would do such things and he got stuck with a pretty big ongoing lifestyle maintenance payment.
If that, or your friend's were isolated cases I'd be very surprised. Almost everyone I know on the male side of the divorce fence have plenty of awful stories about ex wives withholding access to children and courts not enforcing visitation rights.
The system is designed to produce bad results.
One evening, while out drinking with old flatmate, we encountered a lawyer who appeared to be drinking himself to death. Being in a friendly, quiet kind of wine bar, we got chatting.
It seemed that he had got himself a job at a very high end firm, specialising in divorce and other family stuff. Very junior etc. Apparently his job was thus (for cases where the circumstances matched the conditions) -
- At the start of high end divorces, allegations would fly. The husband was Hannibal Lector multiplied by Vlad Dracul, with a side order of Hitler and Stalin. The wife was Elizabeth Báthory, without the concern for the servants.
- His job was to sit down with the wife and point out that (a) she hadn't worked in years, (b) all the income came from the husbands high end job, (c) if her allegations were true, the husband would get a criminal conviction (d) Criminal conviction = no money. (e) Goodbye high end lifestyle for her and the children
- All to be done in a way that meant he wasn't bending the law. Too much.
- Within a day, all allegations would be dropped. From her side.
His drinking was caused by his moral certainty that, in some cases, the allegations were true.
You don't half have some unusual encounters.
Perhaps.
But if you live in London, and are prepared to travel the 3 feet to leave the bubble of "the social group/class" you naturally swim in, you can find a great deal.
In this case, we were just being sociable with a chap who was sinking rather good red by the bucket.
That is the real joy of London.
Yet most wander round, like the Spanish summer language students in Oxford, when I was growing up.
Alone in their group, dressed the same, never talking to The Outsiders.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
The sky did not fall in when the Diplock courts were introduced. Nor when we pretty much abolished civil juries in 1933 - and a civil judge can feck up your liberties as a subject just as effectively as a criminal court can, by for instance bankrupting you, taking your children away from you, and making orders for breach of which you can be imprisoned.
Two massive flaws in the jury system have been highlighted - inability to understand points of law, and intimidation. Judge only trials obviate theses difficulties at a stroke, and the countervailing argument is what? that judges are more corruptible, or more likely to act as puppets of the state, than random jurors? That makes no sense even if it is true, because the corruption opportunities are in civil trials and so are the puppet of the state opportunities - as we have repeatedly seen in brexit litigation over the last four years. No juries in that lot in the first place. I honestly don't see what the case for juries actually is, except for a lot of ill-informed historical fustian about Magna Carta.
Edit to clarify that I don't say that the courts in fact acted as puppets of the state in the brexit litigation, only that the opportunity was there.
The two points you raise and then disregard with no actual thought are indeed very important. Firstly Judges are indeed part of the state and even if they were never going to act as puppets of the State - which is a ridiculous thing to try and deny given both human nature and history - they would still appear to many to be biased in favour of the state which undermines the whole public support for our judicial system.
Secondly your claim that corruption would not occur is equally idiotic. One only has to look at the collapse of the Italian judicial system and the failure of the anti-corruption drive of the last 30 years to see that. In France a survey last year showed that 41% think that French judges are either 'rather' or 'very' corrupt. Again perception matters.
Bear in mind that most of the big miscarriages of justice in the last few decades have not come about because juries 'got it wrong' but because of establishment corrupt behaviour which meant they never had a chance to 'get it right'.
Juries play a vital role of mitigating the worst excesses of state and judicial overreach. Anyone who thinks we should reduce them is contemptable.
Contemptible. I do love the Pavlovian response of a leaver to the suggestion that Magna Carta might, after all, have died in vain.
You have entirely missed the very easily understood point I was making. It isn't about corruptibility, it's about differential corruptibility (counting giving in to intimidation as a case of corruption).
Given I made no mention of Magna Carta and that jury trial long precedes that document, your response is as infantile as the rest of the stuff you spew out on here.
And I didn't miss your point at all. It is just that, as usual, you are wrong.
Thanks.
You don't seem very exercised by the point that most of the passes were sold in 1933. Why not? You seem not to understand that a principle that doesn't generalise is not a principle at all. It's like your ridiculous referendum - you are happy to go to war under the banner of democracy, innit? when you really need to be making the case or direct democracy, innit? and explaining why if it's such a good thing you never campaign for it in any other context. Why haven't you proposed a plebiscite on lockdowns, or mask wearing? Why didn't you propose a jury for the Iraq or Bloody Sunday enquiries*, or the brexit litigation? Because that's the thing: Bushel's case (which I meant when I said Penn's case, sorry) was about unlawful assembly. We don't usually prosecute for that sort of thing these days, we have other ways of skinning cats, and so jury cases aren't about constitutional stuff, they are about nasty little shits killing policemen.
*not a bad idea, actually, I'd respect Ed Mil a lot more if he had called for jury-led enquiries.
I'm also running nearly 50K a week and have been doing so for the last two months. I've never been in better shape
Congratulations. I just don't have the willpower, and after a week or two I take a day off, then 2, then it's several weeks. Lockdown has not helped as I used to cycle to and from work at least.
I'm probably atypical but my only newspaper is and has been the Racing Post (and before that the much-lamented Sporting Life).
It's not cheap - £3.50 on weekdays and £3.90 on Saturdays - and I only buy the paper once or twice a week now. The RP website (and indeed other racing websites) is perfectly good for form analysis but it's not the same.
The RP stopped printing from late March to the beginning of June and I did wonder if it would return in print form but it's used in the betting shops so there will always be a need (presumably).
An increasing amount of website content which would be in the paper is now behind a subscription paywall but it's not difficult to get free race replays.
The paper is also available at race meetings but many people download the Timeform racecard (or similar from other websites). I'm sure the RP is going to stop in print form at some point.
That's sad. Newspapers are a good past time on the weekend.
Much rather go to the pub, go for a run, etc. They don't appeal to me in any way.
How’s the weightlifting going by the way? What sort of movements are you doing?
Pull ups, press ups, ab wheel, floor bench press and some curls. Going well so far thanks for asking.
Plus 50k a week running? Yikes!
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm going to cut the running down a tad as it's the calories I am struggling to get in, I'm trying gain weight/muscle and it's tough to get all the calories in with the amount of running I do.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Doesn't the research show that juries are remarkably good at coming to the right result?
From every self-policing profession, we know where that ends up.
The end is probably flying around on a 737-MAX...
Found this. Research is US courts, not UK:
"The research reviewed here clearly begins to fill a gap in the literature. While there has been a great deal of research exploring juror and jury decisionmaking and a separate literature examining influences on judicial decisionmaking, there has been surprisingly little research comparing the decisions of juries and trial court judges. The most notable conclusion to be drawn from this emerging literature is that the decisionmaking of judges and jurors is strikingly similar. While there is evidence of some differences, there is a high degree of agreement between the groups, they appear to decide real cases quite similarly, and they show a great deal of similarity in responding to simulated cases designed to examine a variety of legal decisionmaking processes.
"One problem with comparing the decisionmaking of juries to that of judges is that to the extent that there are differences in the decisionmaking of judges and juries, there is not always a clear benchmark for determining which group’s decision is normatively better. Many of the studies reviewed here—either explicitly or implicitly— assume that judges are “right.” However, differences in the decisionmaking of judges and juries “do not speak for themselves.” For example, even if a large number of studies converged on the finding that judges are more likely to find for plaintiffs than juries or that juries are likely to award higher damages than judges, it would not be clear in the abstract which outcome was more “correct.”"
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Oh I 100% agree with you, even with my limited experience of the “law game”.
Just to give an example.
A friend was getting divorced. He had run out of money for lawyers. Literally. So I went along to try and help.
It was a meeting in the judges office. Just the her, her lawyer, my friend and me. And the judge.
The meeting was strange, to be honest... but at the end...
The final piece was the most remarkable - the judge told us, quite clearly, that if my friend broke any of the conditions of her judgement, she would enforce it. And that since his ex-wife was now a single mother, she (the judge) would *not* enforce the rulings on her.
I had never conceived that a judge would say that they would be biased in the enforcement of a judgement.
Family law in this country is a complete joke. Judges seem to be stuck in the 1930s, a friend of mine went through a very messy divorce and ended up on the wrong side of a judgement where he had to pay ongoing support despite there being no children and her having a reasonably good job. It's only because he has a lot of money that he was able to appeal and have the decision overturned but essentially he said that the judge in the initial case took pity on his ex-wife after she put on a great show of tears for sympathy and how he'd be awful to her for their whole marriage and stopped her from pursuing a career to her full potential.
I know that not to be the case, but it was very obvious she received legal advice to that end and the judge fell for it. In the appeal he produced lots of evidence to the contrary including whatsapp messages where she had irrationality threatened to do harm to herself because he went to visit his sister. He said it felt like the judge in the original case just couldn't believe that women would do such things and he got stuck with a pretty big ongoing lifestyle maintenance payment.
If that, or your friend's were isolated cases I'd be very surprised. Almost everyone I know on the male side of the divorce fence have plenty of awful stories about ex wives withholding access to children and courts not enforcing visitation rights.
The system is designed to produce bad results.
One evening, while out drinking with old flatmate, we encountered a lawyer who appeared to be drinking himself to death. Being in a friendly, quiet kind of wine bar, we got chatting.
It seemed that he had got himself a job at a very high end firm, specialising in divorce and other family stuff. Very junior etc. Apparently his job was thus (for cases where the circumstances matched the conditions) -
- At the start of high end divorces, allegations would fly. The husband was Hannibal Lector multiplied by Vlad Dracul, with a side order of Hitler and Stalin. The wife was Elizabeth Báthory, without the concern for the servants.
- His job was to sit down with the wife and point out that (a) she hadn't worked in years, (b) all the income came from the husbands high end job, (c) if her allegations were true, the husband would get a criminal conviction (d) Criminal conviction = no money. (e) Goodbye high end lifestyle for her and the children
- All to be done in a way that meant he wasn't bending the law. Too much.
- Within a day, all allegations would be dropped. From her side.
His drinking was caused by his moral certainty that, in some cases, the allegations were true.
You don't half have some unusual encounters.
Perhaps.
But if you live in London, and are prepared to travel the 3 feet to leave the bubble of "the social group/class" you naturally swim in, you can find a great deal.
In this case, we were just being sociable with a chap who was sinking rather good red by the bucket.
That is the real joy of London.
Yet most wander round, like the Spanish summer language students in Oxford, when I was growing up.
Alone in their group, dressed the same, never talking to The Outsiders.
Well in this case a divorce lawyer in a wine bar so not really a Walk On The Wild Side. Interesting anyway. And it is good to be socially promiscuous.
Just noted the latest Gravis poll in Pennsylvania which puts Biden up by just three - 48-45 compared to Fox News which gave Biden an 11-point advantage (50-39).
Gravis also did polls in Michigan (Biden up 51-42) and Wisconsin (Biden up 50-42).
Gravis notes undecided voters look to be breaking strongly for Biden.
That's sad. Newspapers are a good past time on the weekend.
Much rather go to the pub, go for a run, etc. They don't appeal to me in any way.
How’s the weightlifting going by the way? What sort of movements are you doing?
Pull ups, press ups, ab wheel, floor bench press and some curls. Going well so far thanks for asking.
Plus 50k a week running? Yikes!
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm going to cut the running down a tad as it's the calories I am struggling to get in, I'm trying gain weight/muscle and it's tough to get all the calories in with the amount of running I do.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
5k in 25m is good. I can do 3k in 20m. Think I'd need at least 35m for 5k unless being chased.
... Our major divisions take the form of constitutional battles over where accountability and power should lie. One of those, the EU question, has been settled; once Scotland and Northern Ireland are also resolved then we ought finally to have some peace and quiet for a change.
Would that be when England is finally independent? What about that little extra bit to the west known as "Wales"? Or is that merely Extreme Western England these days?
My view is that the end point of our current constitutional upheavals is an Anglo-Welsh state. Scotland goes first, then Northern Ireland goes next, for a variety of reasons: (1) Scottish secession obviously breaks up the current British state and greatly encourages the nationalists; (2) Scotland is the NI Unionists' closest partner in the Union in terms both of geography and culture - it's abandonment of the state will leave them demoralised and isolated; (3) there's limited interest in Britain in retaining the province as it is, and this will presumably only lessen once it's left out on a limb; (4) ditching Northern Ireland rids the British Government of a bottomless money pit and removes one of the major obstacles to better relations with the EU.
The English and the Welsh then sit down, ask if carrying on together is worth it, and probably conclude that it is. The two have been joined at the hip for seven centuries, are heavily integrated, and Wales has a weaker nationalist movement and a much stronger anti-devolution movement than Scotland does. That's not to say that this state of affairs will endure forever, but that's the way things are now and are likely to remain for some time.
And so, after Scotland leaves the UK, rejoins the EU and the border posts and fences go up, we end up with three states occupying (as good as) three islands, and we can all do our own thing.
That's sad. Newspapers are a good past time on the weekend.
Much rather go to the pub, go for a run, etc. They don't appeal to me in any way.
How’s the weightlifting going by the way? What sort of movements are you doing?
Pull ups, press ups, ab wheel, floor bench press and some curls. Going well so far thanks for asking.
Plus 50k a week running? Yikes!
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm going to cut the running down a tad as it's the calories I am struggling to get in, I'm trying gain weight/muscle and it's tough to get all the calories in with the amount of running I do.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
5k in 25m is good. I can do 3k in 20m. Think I'd need at least 35m for 5k unless being chased.
The ultimate aim is below 20 minutes - then I will feel like I've "made it" - but it's a longer term goal.
For now it's: 25 minute 5K > getting bigger and stronger > 20 minute 5K
I'm probably atypical but my only newspaper is and has been the Racing Post (and before that the much-lamented Sporting Life).
It's not cheap - £3.50 on weekdays and £3.90 on Saturdays - and I only buy the paper once or twice a week now. The RP website (and indeed other racing websites) is perfectly good for form analysis but it's not the same.
The RP stopped printing from late March to the beginning of June and I did wonder if it would return in print form but it's used in the betting shops so there will always be a need (presumably).
An increasing amount of website content which would be in the paper is now behind a subscription paywall but it's not difficult to get free race replays.
The paper is also available at race meetings but many people download the Timeform racecard (or similar from other websites). I'm sure the RP is going to stop in print form at some point.
That's sad. Newspapers are a good past time on the weekend.
Much rather go to the pub, go for a run, etc. They don't appeal to me in any way.
How’s the weightlifting going by the way? What sort of movements are you doing?
Pull ups, press ups, ab wheel, floor bench press and some curls. Going well so far thanks for asking.
Plus 50k a week running? Yikes!
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm going to cut the running down a tad as it's the calories I am struggling to get in, I'm trying gain weight/muscle and it's tough to get all the calories in with the amount of running I do.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
5k in 25m is good. I can do 3k in 20m. Think I'd need at least 35m for 5k unless being chased.
The ultimate aim is below 20 minutes - then I will feel like I've "made it" - but it's a longer term goal.
For now it's: 25 minute 5K > getting bigger and stronger > 20 minute 5K
That's sad. Newspapers are a good past time on the weekend.
Much rather go to the pub, go for a run, etc. They don't appeal to me in any way.
How’s the weightlifting going by the way? What sort of movements are you doing?
Pull ups, press ups, ab wheel, floor bench press and some curls. Going well so far thanks for asking.
Plus 50k a week running? Yikes!
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm going to cut the running down a tad as it's the calories I am struggling to get in, I'm trying gain weight/muscle and it's tough to get all the calories in with the amount of running I do.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
5k in 25m is good. I can do 3k in 20m. Think I'd need at least 35m for 5k unless being chased.
The ultimate aim is below 20 minutes - then I will feel like I've "made it" - but it's a longer term goal.
For now it's: 25 minute 5K > getting bigger and stronger > 20 minute 5K
What’s the point?
Better able to run away from the horde of COVID zombies?
That's sad. Newspapers are a good past time on the weekend.
Much rather go to the pub, go for a run, etc. They don't appeal to me in any way.
How’s the weightlifting going by the way? What sort of movements are you doing?
Pull ups, press ups, ab wheel, floor bench press and some curls. Going well so far thanks for asking.
Plus 50k a week running? Yikes!
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm going to cut the running down a tad as it's the calories I am struggling to get in, I'm trying gain weight/muscle and it's tough to get all the calories in with the amount of running I do.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
5k in 25m is good. I can do 3k in 20m. Think I'd need at least 35m for 5k unless being chased.
At the risk of sounding like a total arse, I've managed to get my 5K time down below 22 minutes, given favourable conditions and a flat course. How much more I've got in my middle aged legs, I don't know. I'm close to, and think I've a better chance of getting, sub-45 for 10K than sub-20 for 5K. We shall see.
However, these things are all relative. There's a bloke at work that can get round 5K in 18 minutes, which is sickening enough. The track world record is under 13 minutes which, after you've ended up in a panting heap taking nearly twice as long as that, gives you a new appreciation of exactly how able even the also-rans in professional races really are.
... Our major divisions take the form of constitutional battles over where accountability and power should lie. One of those, the EU question, has been settled; once Scotland and Northern Ireland are also resolved then we ought finally to have some peace and quiet for a change.
Would that be when England is finally independent? What about that little extra bit to the west known as "Wales"? Or is that merely Extreme Western England these days?
My view is that the end point of our current constitutional upheavals is an Anglo-Welsh state. Scotland goes first, then Northern Ireland goes next, for a variety of reasons: (1) Scottish secession obviously breaks up the current British state and greatly encourages the nationalists; (2) Scotland is the NI Unionists' closest partner in the Union in terms both of geography and culture - it's abandonment of the state will leave them demoralised and isolated; (3) there's limited interest in Britain in retaining the province as it is, and this will presumably only lessen once it's left out on a limb; (4) ditching Northern Ireland rids the British Government of a bottomless money pit and removes one of the major obstacles to better relations with the EU.
The English and the Welsh then sit down, ask if carrying on together is worth it, and probably conclude that it is. The two have been joined at the hip for seven centuries, are heavily integrated, and Wales has a weaker nationalist movement and a much stronger anti-devolution movement than Scotland does. That's not to say that this state of affairs will endure forever, but that's the way things are now and are likely to remain for some time.
And so, after Scotland leaves the UK, rejoins the EU and the border posts and fences go up, we end up with three states occupying (as good as) three islands, and we can all do our own thing.
The loss of influence and power under this scenario would be an eventual shock to many people in England, as would the necessity of reaching some cultural accommodation with the perceived "metropolitan elites" of London and elsewhere, once the effects of Brexit are felt.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Oh I 100% agree with you, even with my limited experience of the “law game”.
Just to give an example.
A friend was getting divorced. He had run out of money for lawyers. Literally. So I went along to try and help.
It was a meeting in the judges office. Just the her, her lawyer, my friend and me. And the judge.
The meeting was strange, to be honest... but at the end...
The final piece was the most remarkable - the judge told us, quite clearly, that if my friend broke any of the conditions of her judgement, she would enforce it. And that since his ex-wife was now a single mother, she (the judge) would *not* enforce the rulings on her.
I had never conceived that a judge would say that they would be biased in the enforcement of a judgement.
Family law in this country is a complete joke. Judges seem to be stuck in the 1930s, a friend of mine went through a very messy divorce and ended up on the wrong side of a judgement where he had to pay ongoing support despite there being no children and her having a reasonably good job. It's only because he has a lot of money that he was able to appeal and have the decision overturned but essentially he said that the judge in the initial case took pity on his ex-wife after she put on a great show of tears for sympathy and how he'd be awful to her for their whole marriage and stopped her from pursuing a career to her full potential.
I know that not to be the case, but it was very obvious she received legal advice to that end and the judge fell for it. In the appeal he produced lots of evidence to the contrary including whatsapp messages where she had irrationality threatened to do harm to herself because he went to visit his sister. He said it felt like the judge in the original case just couldn't believe that women would do such things and he got stuck with a pretty big ongoing lifestyle maintenance payment.
If that, or your friend's were isolated cases I'd be very surprised. Almost everyone I know on the male side of the divorce fence have plenty of awful stories about ex wives withholding access to children and courts not enforcing visitation rights.
The system is designed to produce bad results.
One evening, while out drinking with old flatmate, we encountered a lawyer who appeared to be drinking himself to death. Being in a friendly, quiet kind of wine bar, we got chatting.
It seemed that he had got himself a job at a very high end firm, specialising in divorce and other family stuff. Very junior etc. Apparently his job was thus (for cases where the circumstances matched the conditions) -
- At the start of high end divorces, allegations would fly. The husband was Hannibal Lector multiplied by Vlad Dracul, with a side order of Hitler and Stalin. The wife was Elizabeth Báthory, without the concern for the servants.
- His job was to sit down with the wife and point out that (a) she hadn't worked in years, (b) all the income came from the husbands high end job, (c) if her allegations were true, the husband would get a criminal conviction (d) Criminal conviction = no money. (e) Goodbye high end lifestyle for her and the children
- All to be done in a way that meant he wasn't bending the law. Too much.
- Within a day, all allegations would be dropped. From her side.
His drinking was caused by his moral certainty that, in some cases, the allegations were true.
You don't half have some unusual encounters.
Perhaps.
But if you live in London, and are prepared to travel the 3 feet to leave the bubble of "the social group/class" you naturally swim in, you can find a great deal.
In this case, we were just being sociable with a chap who was sinking rather good red by the bucket.
That is the real joy of London.
Yet most wander round, like the Spanish summer language students in Oxford, when I was growing up.
Alone in their group, dressed the same, never talking to The Outsiders.
Well in this case a divorce lawyer in a wine bar so not really a Walk On The Wild Side. Interesting anyway. And it is good to be socially promiscuous.
Another joy is to introduce people from different social groups to each other as my friends. The results are hilarious. Including marriage.
That's sad. Newspapers are a good past time on the weekend.
Much rather go to the pub, go for a run, etc. They don't appeal to me in any way.
How’s the weightlifting going by the way? What sort of movements are you doing?
Pull ups, press ups, ab wheel, floor bench press and some curls. Going well so far thanks for asking.
Plus 50k a week running? Yikes!
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm going to cut the running down a tad as it's the calories I am struggling to get in, I'm trying gain weight/muscle and it's tough to get all the calories in with the amount of running I do.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
5k in 25m is good. I can do 3k in 20m. Think I'd need at least 35m for 5k unless being chased.
The ultimate aim is below 20 minutes - then I will feel like I've "made it" - but it's a longer term goal.
For now it's: 25 minute 5K > getting bigger and stronger > 20 minute 5K
What’s the point?
What's the point in anything? It's something to achieve, something to do. My mental health is so much better now I've been exercising so much. Achieving things has helped me in work too.
That's sad. Newspapers are a good past time on the weekend.
Much rather go to the pub, go for a run, etc. They don't appeal to me in any way.
How’s the weightlifting going by the way? What sort of movements are you doing?
Pull ups, press ups, ab wheel, floor bench press and some curls. Going well so far thanks for asking.
Plus 50k a week running? Yikes!
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm going to cut the running down a tad as it's the calories I am struggling to get in, I'm trying gain weight/muscle and it's tough to get all the calories in with the amount of running I do.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
5k in 25m is good. I can do 3k in 20m. Think I'd need at least 35m for 5k unless being chased.
At the risk of sounding like a total arse, I've managed to get my 5K time down below 22 minutes, given favourable conditions and a flat course. How much more I've got in my middle aged legs, I don't know. I'm close to, and think I've a better chance of getting, sub-45 for 10K than sub-20 for 5K. We shall see.
However, these things are all relative. There's a bloke at work that can get round 5K in 18 minutes, which is sickening enough. The track world record is under 13 minutes which, after you've ended up in a panting heap taking nearly twice as long as that, gives you a new appreciation of exactly how able even the also-rans in professional races really are.
I think I'm capable of getting to 22 minutes with a bit more training. I suspect I'm somewhere around 23-24.5 minutes now.
That's sad. Newspapers are a good past time on the weekend.
Much rather go to the pub, go for a run, etc. They don't appeal to me in any way.
How’s the weightlifting going by the way? What sort of movements are you doing?
Pull ups, press ups, ab wheel, floor bench press and some curls. Going well so far thanks for asking.
Plus 50k a week running? Yikes!
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm going to cut the running down a tad as it's the calories I am struggling to get in, I'm trying gain weight/muscle and it's tough to get all the calories in with the amount of running I do.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
5k in 25m is good. I can do 3k in 20m. Think I'd need at least 35m for 5k unless being chased.
The ultimate aim is below 20 minutes - then I will feel like I've "made it" - but it's a longer term goal.
For now it's: 25 minute 5K > getting bigger and stronger > 20 minute 5K
What’s the point?
What's the point in anything? It's something to achieve, something to do. My mental health is so much better now I've been exercising so much. Achieving things has helped me in work too.
All that time alone, the damaged joints in later life. Join a club or society and get out and meet people
That's sad. Newspapers are a good past time on the weekend.
Much rather go to the pub, go for a run, etc. They don't appeal to me in any way.
How’s the weightlifting going by the way? What sort of movements are you doing?
Pull ups, press ups, ab wheel, floor bench press and some curls. Going well so far thanks for asking.
Plus 50k a week running? Yikes!
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm going to cut the running down a tad as it's the calories I am struggling to get in, I'm trying gain weight/muscle and it's tough to get all the calories in with the amount of running I do.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
5k in 25m is good. I can do 3k in 20m. Think I'd need at least 35m for 5k unless being chased.
The ultimate aim is below 20 minutes - then I will feel like I've "made it" - but it's a longer term goal.
For now it's: 25 minute 5K > getting bigger and stronger > 20 minute 5K
What’s the point?
What's the point in anything? It's something to achieve, something to do. My mental health is so much better now I've been exercising so much. Achieving things has helped me in work too.
All that time alone, the damaged joints in later life. Join a club or society and get out and meet people
It's a few hours a week, plenty of time to see my friends down the pub!
Forgot to mention went to the pub for the first time since they've re-opened (although been getting takeaways longer) and was nice to be outside in the sunshine. A nice buzz around the place.
That's sad. Newspapers are a good past time on the weekend.
Much rather go to the pub, go for a run, etc. They don't appeal to me in any way.
How’s the weightlifting going by the way? What sort of movements are you doing?
Pull ups, press ups, ab wheel, floor bench press and some curls. Going well so far thanks for asking.
Plus 50k a week running? Yikes!
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm going to cut the running down a tad as it's the calories I am struggling to get in, I'm trying gain weight/muscle and it's tough to get all the calories in with the amount of running I do.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
5k in 25m is good. I can do 3k in 20m. Think I'd need at least 35m for 5k unless being chased.
At the risk of sounding like a total arse, I've managed to get my 5K time down below 22 minutes, given favourable conditions and a flat course. How much more I've got in my middle aged legs, I don't know. I'm close to, and think I've a better chance of getting, sub-45 for 10K than sub-20 for 5K. We shall see.
However, these things are all relative. There's a bloke at work that can get round 5K in 18 minutes, which is sickening enough. The track world record is under 13 minutes which, after you've ended up in a panting heap taking nearly twice as long as that, gives you a new appreciation of exactly how able even the also-rans in professional races really are.
That's all quite impressive compared to me. Then again, I have a quarter of a million fags inside of me so if we handicap for that I'm Mo Farah class.
That's sad. Newspapers are a good past time on the weekend.
Much rather go to the pub, go for a run, etc. They don't appeal to me in any way.
How’s the weightlifting going by the way? What sort of movements are you doing?
Pull ups, press ups, ab wheel, floor bench press and some curls. Going well so far thanks for asking.
Plus 50k a week running? Yikes!
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm going to cut the running down a tad as it's the calories I am struggling to get in, I'm trying gain weight/muscle and it's tough to get all the calories in with the amount of running I do.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
5k in 25m is good. I can do 3k in 20m. Think I'd need at least 35m for 5k unless being chased.
The ultimate aim is below 20 minutes - then I will feel like I've "made it" - but it's a longer term goal.
For now it's: 25 minute 5K > getting bigger and stronger > 20 minute 5K
What’s the point?
You could say that about anything.
Getting faster is a good motivational tool for keeping going and getting fitter. It's rather like when I (felt like I) weighed as much as an elephant, and moving through all the targets - one stone, two stone, three stone, etc - helped to get to the eventual goal of not being an elephant.
When I find I hit the wall and find that I can't get any quicker (which probably isn't that far away) then I shall probably find it that much more difficult to maintain the motivation to do the exercise, which in turn keeps me in better condition and helps to stop the weight going back on. So I do appreciate the benefits of pushing myself.
Yes and Willie Carson's whingeing at the prize money sounds ridiculous. It's still nearly £227,000 to the winner.
The problem is the manner in which horse racing re-started after lockdown. Rather like the Sunak view every job had to be saved no matter the cost, racing authorities have tried to save every race in the Pattern (presumably to help the breeding industry).
That's meant all the big races which would have taken place over a four month period have been concertinaed into a two-month gap and that has inevitably meant congestion. MAGICAL might have run against ENABLE today but the Tattersalls Gold Cup, a Group 1 in Ireland normally held at the end of May, has been rescheduled to tomorrow and it's a much more attractive target as there is no travelling involved and she can pick up 147,500 euros.
There are many more bad horses than good ones and there's no point filling the programme with races for good horses because the horse population won't have the capacity and we get what we see today.
Like so much else, there's a desperate desire to "catch up", to "get back to normal", no one is thinking through the consequences of this mindset.
I didn't know people existed that had never bought a newspaper. Nothing personal.
I would imagine that would be simply an age thing.
As a child I never purchased a paper, as a teenager/young adult (early days of the internet) I did, then post-graduation I never have again as I get everything online.
My whole newspaper buying days were about a 10 year period . . . if I was 10 years older I can't imagine I'd have ever bothered buying one. I can't imagine my children ever buying one when they grow up.
That's sad. Newspapers are a good past time on the weekend.
Much rather go to the pub, go for a run, etc. They don't appeal to me in any way.
How’s the weightlifting going by the way? What sort of movements are you doing?
Pull ups, press ups, ab wheel, floor bench press and some curls. Going well so far thanks for asking.
Plus 50k a week running? Yikes!
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm going to cut the running down a tad as it's the calories I am struggling to get in, I'm trying gain weight/muscle and it's tough to get all the calories in with the amount of running I do.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
5k in 25m is good. I can do 3k in 20m. Think I'd need at least 35m for 5k unless being chased.
At the risk of sounding like a total arse, I've managed to get my 5K time down below 22 minutes, given favourable conditions and a flat course. How much more I've got in my middle aged legs, I don't know. I'm close to, and think I've a better chance of getting, sub-45 for 10K than sub-20 for 5K. We shall see.
However, these things are all relative. There's a bloke at work that can get round 5K in 18 minutes, which is sickening enough. The track world record is under 13 minutes which, after you've ended up in a panting heap taking nearly twice as long as that, gives you a new appreciation of exactly how able even the also-rans in professional races really are.
That's all quite impressive compared to me. Then again, I have a quarter of a million fags inside of me so if we handicap for that I'm Mo Farah class.
I've spent much of my adult life being obese, which is not recommended for healthy lung function either, so I feel your pain. Although I imagine that did more damage to my joints. I'm just hoping that my slightly dodgy knees can take the abuse, knees being a common source of difficulty as one advances in years, of course.
I think the central problem is that humans simply haven't had long enough to adapt to being bipedal, let alone having food readily and consistently available enough so that we don't need to lay down all our spare energy as blubber for times of famine. It'll all be so much easier in another 10 million years...
Forgot to mention went to the pub for the first time since they've re-opened (although been getting takeaways longer) and was nice to be outside in the sunshine. A nice buzz around the place.
i'm off to Center Parcs Monday - and they just given me a nice chunk of money back as I booked at the pre VAT reduction price
Some things moving a little bit back to normality - but I doubt my working in an office will return to normal even next year
(4 months plus WAH already and situation stays the same until at least new year)
My team were asked if any wanted to go back to office as it slowly opens - all replied no.
Forgot to mention went to the pub for the first time since they've re-opened (although been getting takeaways longer) and was nice to be outside in the sunshine. A nice buzz around the place.
i'm off to Center Parcs Monday - and they just given me a nice chunk of money back as I booked at the pre VAT reduction price
Some things moving a little bit back to normality - but I doubt my working in an office will return to normal even next year
(4 months plus WAH already and situation stays the same until at least new year)
My team were asked if any wanted to go back to office as it slowly opens - all replied no.
Town centres are going to take a hell of a hit.
But our expenses are waaaaay down ..............
We're being told some can return from September but I think the majority will be WFH until next year.
I have never been a fan of Devolution and still view it as a serious mistake , but it was a response to the rise in nationalism which had already occurred. As far back as October 1974 GE ,the SNP polled 30% of the vote in Scotland - though that did fall away subsequently.
That is the profile of a protest vote rather than a party that had convinced people ideologically - cf the Greens in the late 80s.
I think some form of devolution was inevitable and right in the most centralised country in the democratic world, but, as I said below, how Blair did it - asymmetrically and obviously as a sop rather than because he genuinely believed in what he was doing - was almost certain to cause it to fail.
I play poker for fun online - a number of US players are changing user names to show their position re Trump.
Some of them on both sides are actually amusing, especially the haters tbh - but my surprise was they seem about equally split - at least in my buy in bracket.
I have never been a fan of Devolution and still view it as a serious mistake , but it was a response to the rise in nationalism which had already occurred. As far back as October 1974 GE ,the SNP polled 30% of the vote in Scotland - though that did fall away subsequently.
That is the profile of a protest vote rather than a party that had convinced people ideologically - cf the Greens in the late 80s.
I think some form of devolution was inevitable and right in the most centralised country in the democratic world, but, as I said below, how Blair did it - asymmetrically and obviously as a sop rather than because it genuinely believed in what it was doing - was almost certain to cause it to fail.
Quite so re Mr B. He even tried to handicap it from the start by adding the tax question to the referendum in 1997. I don't suppose he believed there would be a Yes to both questions!
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
What this case makes me think is how hugely overrated juries are. They don't understand the law, and they are extremely vulnerable to intimidation (a vulnerability which is not compensated by giving them a bit of police protection during the actual trial, because you would actually need to protect 12 people and their nearest and dearest for ever after, and there aren't enough policemen for that). It's all very well to say fundamental right, Magna Carta, Penn's case etc etc but that is pure English exceptionalism. Most EU countries don't routinely have trial by jury and I am not worried that continental jails are full of the wrongly convicted as a result. Actually, I am much more convinced by the obverse case that the UK streets are full of the wrongly acquitted by thick and frightened juries.
And considering that we imprison more of ourselves per capita than anywhere in the EU, the trusty shield of British fair play looks embarrassingly ineffective anyway. So why make a shibboleth of its most outdated and ineffective aspect, instead of having trial by judges who know the law and can be effectively protected from intimidation?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
It’s not as ironic as you think. Their argument to the European courts was essentially a point of administrative law, and those are regularly argued to judges without juries here in the UK.
They actually argued this in national courts, fighting extradition. So telling a panel of French judges that panels of judges were against human rights....
IIRC analysis of the results of Diplock courts found *less* miscarriages of justice. Among other things, such courts were far more likely to exclude contaminated evidence/testimony from the prosecution.
I think it makes sense that panels of professional judges are more likely to get things “correct” (although this is all relative) than a bunch of amateurs.
Oh, quite.
A group of trained professionals, with experience of the shit that can be pulled by the prosecution, out performing a bunch of amateurs off the street.
That really comes under Water! Is! Wet!, Shock! Findings! Show!
That being said, I prefer juries - because of the non-professionalism.
I have encountered the self-licking ice cream effect among lawyers - as with many professionals.
No system that lacks an outside input does a good job. The family court stuff in the UK went that way and I have personally seen the resultant detachment from reality on the part of "the professionals".
Oh I 100% agree with you, even with my limited experience of the “law game”.
Just to give an example.
A friend was getting divorced. He had run out of money for lawyers. Literally. So I went along to try and help.
It was a meeting in the judges office. Just the her, her lawyer, my friend and me. And the judge.
The meeting was strange, to be honest... but at the end...
The final piece was the most remarkable - the judge told us, quite clearly, that if my friend broke any of the conditions of her judgement, she would enforce it. And that since his ex-wife was now a single mother, she (the judge) would *not* enforce the rulings on her.
I had never conceived that a judge would say that they would be biased in the enforcement of a judgement.
Family law in this country is a complete joke. Judges seem to be stuck in the 1930s, a friend of mine went through a very messy divorce and ended up on the wrong side of a judgement where he had to pay ongoing support despite there being no children and her having a reasonably good job. It's only because he has a lot of money that he was able to appeal and have the decision overturned but essentially he said that the judge in the initial case took pity on his ex-wife after she put on a great show of tears for sympathy and how he'd be awful to her for their whole marriage and stopped her from pursuing a career to her full potential.
I know that not to be the case, but it was very obvious she received legal advice to that end and the judge fell for it. In the appeal he produced lots of evidence to the contrary including whatsapp messages where she had irrationality threatened to do harm to herself because he went to visit his sister. He said it felt like the judge in the original case just couldn't believe that women would do such things and he got stuck with a pretty big ongoing lifestyle maintenance payment.
If that, or your friend's were isolated cases I'd be very surprised. Almost everyone I know on the male side of the divorce fence have plenty of awful stories about ex wives withholding access to children and courts not enforcing visitation rights.
The system is designed to produce bad results.
One evening, while out drinking with old flatmate, we encountered a lawyer who appeared to be drinking himself to death. Being in a friendly, quiet kind of wine bar, we got chatting.
It seemed that he had got himself a job at a very high end firm, specialising in divorce and other family stuff. Very junior etc. Apparently his job was thus (for cases where the circumstances matched the conditions) -
- At the start of high end divorces, allegations would fly. The husband was Hannibal Lector multiplied by Vlad Dracul, with a side order of Hitler and Stalin. The wife was Elizabeth Báthory, without the concern for the servants.
- His job was to sit down with the wife and point out that (a) she hadn't worked in years, (b) all the income came from the husbands high end job, (c) if her allegations were true, the husband would get a criminal conviction (d) Criminal conviction = no money. (e) Goodbye high end lifestyle for her and the children
- All to be done in a way that meant he wasn't bending the law. Too much.
- Within a day, all allegations would be dropped. From her side.
His drinking was caused by his moral certainty that, in some cases, the allegations were true.
You don't half have some unusual encounters.
Perhaps.
But if you live in London, and are prepared to travel the 3 feet to leave the bubble of "the social group/class" you naturally swim in, you can find a great deal.
In this case, we were just being sociable with a chap who was sinking rather good red by the bucket.
That is the real joy of London.
Yet most wander round, like the Spanish summer language students in Oxford, when I was growing up.
Alone in their group, dressed the same, never talking to The Outsiders.
Well in this case a divorce lawyer in a wine bar so not really a Walk On The Wild Side. Interesting anyway. And it is good to be socially promiscuous.
Another joy is to introduce people from different social groups to each other as my friends. The results are hilarious. Including marriage.
You sound a bit sinister. A conductor of experiments on the unwary.
I play poker for fun online - a number of US players are changing user names to show their position re Trump.
Some of them on both sides are actually amusing, especially the haters tbh - but my surprise was they seem about equally split - at least in my buy in bracket.
Poker playing and Trump support skew male so 50% Biden is good for him there.
Hopefully their lack of remorse will play a part in the sentencing. This was from an earlier trial, but yesterday they were laughing as the details of PC Harper’s death were read.
As a lawyer, albeit a Scots lawyer, I simply don’t understand this decision. Murder is when you intend to kill or show a reckless indifference to the consequences of your actions. Where you are involved in a criminal act that indifference is readily inferred.
I can only think that the trial judge either failed to explain this or the jury were not listening. Allowing them bail for reports is equally bizarre. What on earth was he thinking?
Recklessness is not sufficient to establish murder, and, I would have thought, the basis for the jury's decision.
?
Wrong on so many levels. No-one commenting sat through every day of the trial and heard the evidence (I assume) nor the judge’s directions on the law nor the summing up.
I don’t have the time to deal with this today so I will just leave these 2 articles here and will come back later to sweep up the brickbats.
I love that that even the concept of support for trial by jury is now being derided as mere english exceptionalism. It's one of those terms which is so overused it is becoming meaningless.
Why? If the claim is made that trial by jury is uniquely English (by origin) and uniquely good, then surely the charge of English exceptionalism is a perfect fit? It doesn't even matter whether the claim is valid or not, because the question then is only whether the exceptionalism is justified or not.
Anyone recall the lawyers for the PIRA arguing that the Diplock courts were against human rights, since there were no juries? Just a panel of judges.
They argued this in front of the European courts. In front of panels of judges. With no juries.....
The sky did not fall in when the Diplock courts were introduced. Nor when we pretty much abolished civil juries in 1933 - and a civil judge can feck up your liberties as a subject just as effectively as a criminal court can, by for instance bankrupting you, taking your children away from you, and making orders for breach of which you can be imprisoned.
Two massive flaws in the jury system have been highlighted - inability to understand points of law, and intimidation. Judge only trials obviate theses difficulties at a stroke, and the countervailing argument is what? that judges are more corruptible, or more likely to act as puppets of the state, than random jurors? That makes no sense even if it is true, because the corruption opportunities are in civil trials and so are the puppet of the state opportunities - as we have repeatedly seen in brexit litigation over the last four years. No juries in that lot in the first place. I honestly don't see what the case for juries actually is, except for a lot of ill-informed historical fustian about Magna Carta.
Edit to clarify that I don't say that the courts in fact acted as puppets of the state in the brexit litigation, only that the opportunity was there.
Jury nullification is potentially useful. A jury can acquit, if it considers that the law is oppressive, or the prosecution is unfair. It's an important check on oppression by the authorities.
Knowledge of the law is not terribly important for a juror, since the jury is ruling on matters of fact, not matters of law.
In my view, the existence of trial by jury strengthens public confidence in the working of the judicial system. It's a check against bias. Judges, inevitably, are drawn from quite a narrow social circle, overwhelmingly upper middle class. Even if they are unbiased (as I'm sure most are) it would be easy enough to accuse them of bias. And, my experience is that jurors do take their duties seriously.
< (4 months plus WAH already and situation stays the same until at least new year)
My team were asked if any wanted to go back to office as it slowly opens - all replied no.
Town centres are going to take a hell of a hit.
But our expenses are waaaaay down ..............
That's the revolution talking. I see the Prime Minister is trying to gently cajole us all back to the office desk and the commute but I sense there's plenty of resistance out there.
Unfortunately, some organisations are resorting to coercion as they see the value of their office space disappear in front of them. I've heard of some who are operating at 25% capacity and now want all staff to come in one day a week - no reason given, just to fill the space I imagine.
This is another example of weak short-sighted management - for most organisations, the information and the people are the real assets not the bricks and mortar.
I should also at this point recognise the not inconsiderable part played by technology and a liberalised communications industry. Home broadband (however it is set up) seems to have so far proven robust and reliable. There may be some issues with products like Zoom but generally most businesses have been able to adapt and function perfectly adequately and as you say the employees like it too.
One would think the Prime Minister was more interested in supporting the commercial property industry which may or may not be large donors to the Conservative Party but that would just be cynical.
As one of PB's expat community, getting a physical paper has always been something that happens a day or two afterwards, at two or three times the price of the same paper in the UK, and often shorn of the weekend supplements that make the paper paper good value. Back in the UK, the Saturday Telegraph and the Sunday Times would contain a week's reading between them.
There's been various models of online content, from the strict paywalls of the Times and FT, through the not-so-strict paywalls of the Telegraph and the weekly magazines, to the open advertising-based models of the Mail and Sun.
My suggestion for a way forward is for the newspapers to host their own advertising, exactly as they do with the physical paper. Currently, they outsource the web adverts to companies like Google and Facebook, who use techniques like auto-playing video, popup ads and tracking cookies for social media, which combine to make the experience as obnoxious as possible for the end user - so the vast majority of people use adblockers. As someone who works in IT security, adblockers are now an essential part of the toolkit to prevent viruses, so if the media companies want people to see their ads, they need to host them from their own site.
I have never been a fan of Devolution and still view it as a serious mistake , but it was a response to the rise in nationalism which had already occurred. As far back as October 1974 GE ,the SNP polled 30% of the vote in Scotland - though that did fall away subsequently.
That is the profile of a protest vote rather than a party that had convinced people ideologically - cf the Greens in the late 80s.
I think some form of devolution was inevitable and right in the most centralised country in the democratic world, but, as I said below, how Blair did it - asymmetrically and obviously as a sop rather than because he genuinely believed in what he was doing - was almost certain to cause it to fail.
I have never been a fan of Devolution and still view it as a serious mistake , but it was a response to the rise in nationalism which had already occurred. As far back as October 1974 GE ,the SNP polled 30% of the vote in Scotland - though that did fall away subsequently.
That is the profile of a protest vote rather than a party that had convinced people ideologically - cf the Greens in the late 80s.
I think some form of devolution was inevitable and right in the most centralised country in the democratic world, but, as I said below, how Blair did it - asymmetrically and obviously as a sop rather than because he genuinely believed in what he was doing - was almost certain to cause it to fail.
The devolution settlement as constituted by Blair - lopsided, funded by bloc grant, Barnett left intact, West Lothian left unanswered - was such an effective and thoroughgoing act of sabotage that it seems almost deliberate.
My husband went so far as to suggest that Blair secretly desired all along to turn England, Scotland and Wales into separate states within the EU. I'm not so sure about that, but I certainly think that he deserves a box of chocs and some flowers from the Scottish Government when they finally get what they want.
Amongst all the political figures of the final years of the Union, Blair is the one most responsible for pulling it down.
That's sad. Newspapers are a good past time on the weekend.
Much rather go to the pub, go for a run, etc. They don't appeal to me in any way.
How’s the weightlifting going by the way? What sort of movements are you doing?
Pull ups, press ups, ab wheel, floor bench press and some curls. Going well so far thanks for asking.
Plus 50k a week running? Yikes!
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm going to cut the running down a tad as it's the calories I am struggling to get in, I'm trying gain weight/muscle and it's tough to get all the calories in with the amount of running I do.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
5k in 25m is good. I can do 3k in 20m. Think I'd need at least 35m for 5k unless being chased.
At the risk of sounding like a total arse, I've managed to get my 5K time down below 22 minutes, given favourable conditions and a flat course. How much more I've got in my middle aged legs, I don't know. I'm close to, and think I've a better chance of getting, sub-45 for 10K than sub-20 for 5K. We shall see.
However, these things are all relative. There's a bloke at work that can get round 5K in 18 minutes, which is sickening enough. The track world record is under 13 minutes which, after you've ended up in a panting heap taking nearly twice as long as that, gives you a new appreciation of exactly how able even the also-rans in professional races really are.
That's all quite impressive compared to me. Then again, I have a quarter of a million fags inside of me so if we handicap for that I'm Mo Farah class.
I've spent much of my adult life being obese, which is not recommended for healthy lung function either, so I feel your pain. Although I imagine that did more damage to my joints. I'm just hoping that my slightly dodgy knees can take the abuse, knees being a common source of difficulty as one advances in years, of course.
I think the central problem is that humans simply haven't had long enough to adapt to being bipedal, let alone having food readily and consistently available enough so that we don't need to lay down all our spare energy as blubber for times of famine. It'll all be so much easier in another 10 million years...
Yes, watch the knees. Bit of extra lung power does not compensate for damage there.
I have never been a fan of Devolution and still view it as a serious mistake , but it was a response to the rise in nationalism which had already occurred. As far back as October 1974 GE ,the SNP polled 30% of the vote in Scotland - though that did fall away subsequently.
That is the profile of a protest vote rather than a party that had convinced people ideologically - cf the Greens in the late 80s.
I think some form of devolution was inevitable and right in the most centralised country in the democratic world, but, as I said below, how Blair did it - asymmetrically and obviously as a sop rather than because he genuinely believed in what he was doing - was almost certain to cause it to fail.
I have never been a fan of Devolution and still view it as a serious mistake , but it was a response to the rise in nationalism which had already occurred. As far back as October 1974 GE ,the SNP polled 30% of the vote in Scotland - though that did fall away subsequently.
That is the profile of a protest vote rather than a party that had convinced people ideologically - cf the Greens in the late 80s.
I think some form of devolution was inevitable and right in the most centralised country in the democratic world, but, as I said below, how Blair did it - asymmetrically and obviously as a sop rather than because he genuinely believed in what he was doing - was almost certain to cause it to fail.
I thought the Scottish Constitutional Convention essentially created the blueprint for the Scottish Parliament as voted for in the 1997 Referendum. The Conservatives took no part.
There were two votes, one for a Parliament and one for it to have tax raising powers and both were comfortably carried.
As a move away from centralisation from Westminster but keeping a long way from outright independence, it seems reasonable but we bump up against the WLQ as we always do.
Comments
People are forgetting that they have been convicted of causing the death of the victim.
Let’s hope they get a long sentence.
I do wonder how big the market is for various experts from different industries getting together and writing about what's going on in the world. I'm going to guess smaller than I expect but it might not be.
A friend was getting divorced. He had run out of money for lawyers. Literally. So I went along to try and help.
It was a meeting in the judges office. Just the her, her lawyer, my friend and me. And the judge.
The meeting was strange, to be honest... but at the end...
The final piece was the most remarkable - the judge told us, quite clearly, that if my friend broke any of the conditions of her judgement, she would enforce it. And that since his ex-wife was now a single mother, she (the judge) would *not* enforce the rulings on her.
I had never conceived that a judge would say that they would be biased in the enforcement of a judgement.
If it is true that juries are unable to understand points of law, then why on earth do we bother to have hugely-paid lawyers in court? Their job is surely to explain to the court what the law is, and how it applies in a particular case.
The lawyers of my acquaintance always manage to do this when we are chatting about this and that. Perhaps I mix with a better class of lawyer than you do?
I know that not to be the case, but it was very obvious she received legal advice to that end and the judge fell for it. In the appeal he produced lots of evidence to the contrary including whatsapp messages where she had irrationality threatened to do harm to herself because he went to visit his sister. He said it felt like the judge in the original case just couldn't believe that women would do such things and he got stuck with a pretty big ongoing lifestyle maintenance payment.
If that, or your friend's were isolated cases I'd be very surprised. Almost everyone I know on the male side of the divorce fence have plenty of awful stories about ex wives withholding access to children and courts not enforcing visitation rights.
From every self-policing profession, we know where that ends up.
Knowledge of the law is not terribly important for a juror, since the jury is ruling on matters of fact, not matters of law.
In my view, the existence of trial by jury strengthens public confidence in the working of the judicial system. It's a check against bias. Judges, inevitably, are drawn from quite a narrow social circle, overwhelmingly upper middle class. Even if they are unbiased (as I'm sure most are) it would be easy enough to accuse them of bias. And, my experience is that jurors do take their duties seriously.
Headline - 25
7 days - 14 - lots of backdating
Yesterday - 0
Secondly your claim that corruption would not occur is equally idiotic. One only has to look at the collapse of the Italian judicial system and the failure of the anti-corruption drive of the last 30 years to see that. In France a survey last year showed that 41% think that French judges are either 'rather' or 'very' corrupt. Again perception matters.
Bear in mind that most of the big miscarriages of justice in the last few decades have not come about because juries 'got it wrong' but because of establishment corrupt behaviour which meant they never had a chance to 'get it right'.
Juries play a vital role of mitigating the worst excesses of state and judicial overreach. Anyone who thinks we should reduce them is contemptable.
We could start with fathers on the birth certificate as a default in all cases, absent an order from the Court.
The fact that case law makes such a huge part of E+W and yet without a tool like Westlaw it’s incredibly difficult to do any research as a layman, is a disgrace frankly.
One evening, while out drinking with old flatmate, we encountered a lawyer who appeared to be drinking himself to death. Being in a friendly, quiet kind of wine bar, we got chatting.
It seemed that he had got himself a job at a very high end firm, specialising in divorce and other family stuff. Very junior etc. Apparently his job was thus (for cases where the circumstances matched the conditions) -
- At the start of high end divorces, allegations would fly. The husband was Hannibal Lector multiplied by Vlad Dracul, with a side order of Hitler and Stalin. The wife was Elizabeth Báthory, without the concern for the servants.
- His job was to sit down with the wife and point out that (a) she hadn't worked in years, (b) all the income came from the husbands high end job, (c) if her allegations were true, the husband would get a criminal conviction (d) Criminal conviction = no money. (e) Goodbye high end lifestyle for her and the children
- All to be done in a way that meant he wasn't bending the law. Too much.
- Within a day, all allegations would be dropped. From her side.
His drinking was caused by his moral certainty that, in some cases, the allegations were true.
"The research reviewed here clearly begins to fill a gap in the literature. While there has been a great deal of research exploring juror and jury decisionmaking and a separate literature examining influences on judicial decisionmaking, there has been surprisingly little research comparing the decisions of juries and trial court judges. The most notable conclusion to be drawn from this emerging literature is that the decisionmaking of judges and jurors is strikingly similar. While there is evidence of some differences, there is a high degree of agreement between the groups, they appear to decide real cases quite similarly, and they show a great deal of similarity in responding to simulated cases designed to examine a variety of legal decisionmaking processes.
"One problem with comparing the decisionmaking of juries to that of judges is that to the extent that there are differences in the decisionmaking of judges and juries, there is not always a clear benchmark for determining which group’s decision is normatively better. Many of the studies reviewed here—either explicitly or implicitly— assume that judges are “right.” However, differences in the decisionmaking of judges and juries “do not speak for themselves.” For example, even if a large number of studies converged on the finding that judges are more likely to find for plaintiffs than juries or that juries are likely to award higher damages than judges, it would not be clear in the abstract which outcome was more “correct.”"
https://ir.law.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1261&context=lr
You have entirely missed the very easily understood point I was making. It isn't about corruptibility, it's about differential corruptibility (counting giving in to intimidation as a case of corruption).
And I didn't miss your point at all. It is just that, as usual, you are wrong.
This generates "PC KILLERS GET LIFE" headlines for next Friday - which I sense is needed and might just happen. But we will see.
I can only dream of what you think of my contributions.
But if you live in London, and are prepared to travel the 3 feet to leave the bubble of "the social group/class" you naturally swim in, you can find a great deal.
In this case, we were just being sociable with a chap who was sinking rather good red by the bucket.
That is the real joy of London.
Yet most wander round, like the Spanish summer language students in Oxford, when I was growing up.
Alone in their group, dressed the same, never talking to The Outsiders.
You don't seem very exercised by the point that most of the passes were sold in 1933. Why not? You seem not to understand that a principle that doesn't generalise is not a principle at all. It's like your ridiculous referendum - you are happy to go to war under the banner of democracy, innit? when you really need to be making the case or direct democracy, innit? and explaining why if it's such a good thing you never campaign for it in any other context. Why haven't you proposed a plebiscite on lockdowns, or mask wearing? Why didn't you propose a jury for the Iraq or Bloody Sunday enquiries*, or the brexit litigation? Because that's the thing: Bushel's case (which I meant when I said Penn's case, sorry) was about unlawful assembly. We don't usually prosecute for that sort of thing these days, we have other ways of skinning cats, and so jury cases aren't about constitutional stuff, they are about nasty little shits killing policemen.
*not a bad idea, actually, I'd respect Ed Mil a lot more if he had called for jury-led enquiries.
You'll have yourself in "muscles" BoJo shape if you keep that up.
I'm probably atypical but my only newspaper is and has been the Racing Post (and before that the much-lamented Sporting Life).
It's not cheap - £3.50 on weekdays and £3.90 on Saturdays - and I only buy the paper once or twice a week now. The RP website (and indeed other racing websites) is perfectly good for form analysis but it's not the same.
The RP stopped printing from late March to the beginning of June and I did wonder if it would return in print form but it's used in the betting shops so there will always be a need (presumably).
An increasing amount of website content which would be in the paper is now behind a subscription paywall but it's not difficult to get free race replays.
The paper is also available at race meetings but many people download the Timeform racecard (or similar from other websites). I'm sure the RP is going to stop in print form at some point.
The main thing has been getting my 5K time below 25 minutes which I've nearly achieved now.
Self awareness in a profession is a good thing.
Gravis also did polls in Michigan (Biden up 51-42) and Wisconsin (Biden up 50-42).
Gravis notes undecided voters look to be breaking strongly for Biden.
The English and the Welsh then sit down, ask if carrying on together is worth it, and probably conclude that it is. The two have been joined at the hip for seven centuries, are heavily integrated, and Wales has a weaker nationalist movement and a much stronger anti-devolution movement than Scotland does. That's not to say that this state of affairs will endure forever, but that's the way things are now and are likely to remain for some time.
And so, after Scotland leaves the UK, rejoins the EU and the border posts and fences go up, we end up with three states occupying (as good as) three islands, and we can all do our own thing.
For now it's: 25 minute 5K > getting bigger and stronger > 20 minute 5K
However, these things are all relative. There's a bloke at work that can get round 5K in 18 minutes, which is sickening enough. The track world record is under 13 minutes which, after you've ended up in a panting heap taking nearly twice as long as that, gives you a new appreciation of exactly how able even the also-rans in professional races really are.
Hope I'm as fast as you one day!
Getting faster is a good motivational tool for keeping going and getting fitter. It's rather like when I (felt like I) weighed as much as an elephant, and moving through all the targets - one stone, two stone, three stone, etc - helped to get to the eventual goal of not being an elephant.
When I find I hit the wall and find that I can't get any quicker (which probably isn't that far away) then I shall probably find it that much more difficult to maintain the motivation to do the exercise, which in turn keeps me in better condition and helps to stop the weight going back on. So I do appreciate the benefits of pushing myself.
https://twitter.com/McNaughtonArt/status/1286327028807905282?s=20
'Internationally acclaimed for his patriotic paintings such as The Forgotten Man. #MAGA'
The problem is the manner in which horse racing re-started after lockdown. Rather like the Sunak view every job had to be saved no matter the cost, racing authorities have tried to save every race in the Pattern (presumably to help the breeding industry).
That's meant all the big races which would have taken place over a four month period have been concertinaed into a two-month gap and that has inevitably meant congestion. MAGICAL might have run against ENABLE today but the Tattersalls Gold Cup, a Group 1 in Ireland normally held at the end of May, has been rescheduled to tomorrow and it's a much more attractive target as there is no travelling involved and she can pick up 147,500 euros.
There are many more bad horses than good ones and there's no point filling the programme with races for good horses because the horse population won't have the capacity and we get what we see today.
Like so much else, there's a desperate desire to "catch up", to "get back to normal", no one is thinking through the consequences of this mindset.
As a child I never purchased a paper, as a teenager/young adult (early days of the internet) I did, then post-graduation I never have again as I get everything online.
My whole newspaper buying days were about a 10 year period . . . if I was 10 years older I can't imagine I'd have ever bothered buying one. I can't imagine my children ever buying one when they grow up.
I think the central problem is that humans simply haven't had long enough to adapt to being bipedal, let alone having food readily and consistently available enough so that we don't need to lay down all our spare energy as blubber for times of famine. It'll all be so much easier in another 10 million years...
Some things moving a little bit back to normality - but I doubt my working in an office will return to normal even next year
(4 months plus WAH already and situation stays the same until at least new year)
My team were asked if any wanted to go back to office as it slowly opens - all replied no.
Town centres are going to take a hell of a hit.
But our expenses are waaaaay down ..............
I think some form of devolution was inevitable and right in the most centralised country in the democratic world, but, as I said below, how Blair did it - asymmetrically and obviously as a sop rather than because he genuinely believed in what he was doing - was almost certain to cause it to fail.
I play poker for fun online - a number of US players are changing user names to show their position re Trump.
Some of them on both sides are actually amusing, especially the haters tbh - but my surprise was they seem about equally split - at least in my buy in bracket.
Yet more evidence for TrumpToast.
Unfortunately, some organisations are resorting to coercion as they see the value of their office space disappear in front of them. I've heard of some who are operating at 25% capacity and now want all staff to come in one day a week - no reason given, just to fill the space I imagine.
This is another example of weak short-sighted management - for most organisations, the information and the people are the real assets not the bricks and mortar.
I should also at this point recognise the not inconsiderable part played by technology and a liberalised communications industry. Home broadband (however it is set up) seems to have so far proven robust and reliable. There may be some issues with products like Zoom but generally most businesses have been able to adapt and function perfectly adequately and as you say the employees like it too.
One would think the Prime Minister was more interested in supporting the commercial property industry which may or may not be large donors to the Conservative Party but that would just be cynical.
As one of PB's expat community, getting a physical paper has always been something that happens a day or two afterwards, at two or three times the price of the same paper in the UK, and often shorn of the weekend supplements that make the paper paper good value. Back in the UK, the Saturday Telegraph and the Sunday Times would contain a week's reading between them.
There's been various models of online content, from the strict paywalls of the Times and FT, through the not-so-strict paywalls of the Telegraph and the weekly magazines, to the open advertising-based models of the Mail and Sun.
My suggestion for a way forward is for the newspapers to host their own advertising, exactly as they do with the physical paper. Currently, they outsource the web adverts to companies like Google and Facebook, who use techniques like auto-playing video, popup ads and tracking cookies for social media, which combine to make the experience as obnoxious as possible for the end user - so the vast majority of people use adblockers. As someone who works in IT security, adblockers are now an essential part of the toolkit to prevent viruses, so if the media companies want people to see their ads, they need to host them from their own site.
My husband went so far as to suggest that Blair secretly desired all along to turn England, Scotland and Wales into separate states within the EU. I'm not so sure about that, but I certainly think that he deserves a box of chocs and some flowers from the Scottish Government when they finally get what they want.
Amongst all the political figures of the final years of the Union, Blair is the one most responsible for pulling it down.
I don't subscribe to the Telegraph but for some reason I still get it free because I subbed years ago.
TBH I would not especially miss any of them, and I may let most of them fall away.
I stopped paying my BBC licence fee a couple of months ago.Very liberating. Fuck the BBC.
There were two votes, one for a Parliament and one for it to have tax raising powers and both were comfortably carried.
As a move away from centralisation from Westminster but keeping a long way from outright independence, it seems reasonable but we bump up against the WLQ as we always do.