Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
Gove is another misfit who got plenty of personal flak. It's the game.
I don't really get the chess thing, she was clearly very good, probably top 1% of all players, but not elite. To get to that level demonstrates a decent level of logic, planning and reasoning skills. To get to elite, does the same, but also requires a level of obsession that is probably unhealthy for a national leader.
A bit of internet digging suggests that she did little chess other than schoolgirl competitions. She doesn’t have a public ELO (chess ranking).
Now if she could say she was 2,000 ELO, close to a Master ranking, then she might be taken seriously in the chess world.
Huh? Why is this relevant? She’s proud of what she’s done and rightly so. If a politician rugby player had some end of season award he won from the Old Rubberduckians RFC on his desk it wouldn’t even be mentioned. Certainly no one would go carp about “lack of representative honours”
When you’re making it the centerpiece of your pre-budget photo, one is entitled to investigate.
Hands up who think 'charismatic' Alan Dershowitz and Dana Loesch reflect the vast majority of USonians? I'd sue if I were them.
Drop Site @DropSiteNews Bari Weiss says she wants to use her new perch at CBS News to “redraw the lines of what falls in the 40 yards of acceptable debate” in American political and cultural life. She says the aim is to sideline voices like Hasan Piker, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, and elevate “charismatic” figures such as Alan Dershowitz and Dana Loesch who reflect “where the vast majority of Americans actually are.”
Is there any point in having a budget when so.much is leaked?
All this budget leaking cannot be good for Mr Speaker's blood pressure. Some of it might be excused as press speculation, CCHQ psyops or even kite-flying but the pre-announcement of Wes's milkshake tax is pushing it.
Good Morning all. Was interested in the observations on the increases in National Living Wage.
If the issue is to make work pay, then you have to increase the rates of pay so that they provide an incentive to go to work even if, as @theProle states, some employees have difficulty* in doing so. So how do you make work pay? People may not be aware that UC is going up by more than inflation over the next few years in a rebalancing exercise. Add to that the increases in the Local Housing Allowance, and the net gap between working and being on benefits is tight.
So is all this Labour's fault? Well they did try to get some of the changes to benefits over the line but failed. The changes were changes to legislation** brought in by the Conservatives who you will already be aware have been in power for most of the time over the last 80 years. When you take over a government, you take over the legal detritus that comes with it - the legal dross from decades of tinkering.
Will this costs jobs? Yes and it should be welcomed as the disappearing jobs will be those that had marginal added value in the first place. Any of you in business (or still in business after the end of this parliament) will know you survive not by kicking your workforce or complaining, but by motivating them to achieve the policies you've set out. If you policies are crap, you'll reap your reward. Base in mind that high cost areas like the US with higher salaries than here seem to be able to generate the profits that are being used to purchase the rump of UK plc.
So hug a worker as they'll keep you in shoes for a while, if motivated.
* AKA Lazy bast**ds * * Benefits are only paid in line with the underlying legislation. They are a (legal) right and not a gift.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
As always, two things can be true at once.
Is some criticism of Reeves misogynistic? Yes, because misogyny exists and I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that woman are often held to different standards. If you accept that then it does of course naturally follow that some of the criticism she attracts comes from that place.
But let’s not conflate criticism of her as being a poor steward of the economy as being down to her gender. She’s a poor steward of the economy. Her decisions have been highly questionable. Her political tactics have all backfired. She has contributed to a significant amount of economic uncertainty and loss of confidence in the UK. Criticism does not always equal prejudice.
More fundamentally, chess champion/enthusiast or not, why would she have a chess set placed so prominently in front of her at her desk at work, if not for the photo op and to get people like us talking about her chess prowess? She's a Beyonce fan but I doubt she has it playing at work.
Back in the Dark Ages - say the 60s or 70s - it's the sort of thing where you might expect some eccentric minister to have a chess board (or three) set up on their desk and to be carrying on a number of games with different people who'd visit their office regularly - the permanent secretary, perhaps a journalist they're chummy with, the bloke who deals with the internal post, etc. And we'd only find out about it in an interview, or a memoir, decades later.
Now we have someone who has probably been too busy to touch a chess set for a couple of decades but gets it wheeled out for a photo opportunity. How the country has declined.
Does anyone know what happened to Sunak's chessboards, that he was going to have planted around the country? Did any of them ever get installed? What money ended up being spent on them (and the application process councils would have to go through to get the funding to put one in)? I almost expect there to be a chess blog somewhere who has travelled to them all to play a game of chess on each one. If there are any.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
Gove is another misfit who got plenty of personal flak. It's the game.
I don't really get the chess thing, she was clearly very good, probably top 1% of all players, but not elite. To get to that level demonstrates a decent level of logic, planning and reasoning skills. To get to elite, does the same, but also requires a level of obsession that is probably unhealthy for a national leader.
A bit of internet digging suggests that she did little chess other than schoolgirl competitions. She doesn’t have a public ELO (chess ranking).
Now if she could say she was 2,000 ELO, close to a Master ranking, then she might be taken seriously in the chess world.
Huh? Why is this relevant? She’s proud of what she’s done and rightly so. If a politician rugby player had some end of season award he won from the Old Rubberduckians RFC on his desk it wouldn’t even be mentioned. Certainly no one would go carp about “lack of representative honours”
When you’re making it the centerpiece of your pre-budget photo, one is entitled to investigate.
You’re entitled to “investigate” (although the word is overused - I once googled the late Stuart Dickson and made the mistake of outing myself by clicking his LinkedIn profile while logged into my own - you’d think I was stalking the fucker from the reaction) but your conclusion appears to be that she hadn’t earned it. Bollocks to that.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
Gove is another misfit who got plenty of personal flak. It's the game.
I don't really get the chess thing, she was clearly very good, probably top 1% of all players, but not elite. To get to that level demonstrates a decent level of logic, planning and reasoning skills. To get to elite, does the same, but also requires a level of obsession that is probably unhealthy for a national leader.
A bit of internet digging suggests that she did little chess other than schoolgirl competitions. She doesn’t have a public ELO (chess ranking).
Now if she could say she was 2,000 ELO, close to a Master ranking, then she might be taken seriously in the chess world.
Huh? Why is this relevant? She’s proud of what she’s done and rightly so. If a politician rugby player had some end of season award he won from the Old Rubberduckians RFC on his desk it wouldn’t even be mentioned. Certainly no one would go carp about “lack of representative honours”
When you’re making it the centerpiece of your pre-budget photo, one is entitled to investigate.
If it was just mention en passant that would be one thing but this persistent discovered attack from the opposition just feels a bit desperado to me.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
As always, two things can be true at once.
Is some criticism of Reeves misogynistic? Yes, because misogyny exists and I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that woman are often held to different standards. If you accept that then it does of course naturally follow that some of the criticism she attracts comes from that place.
But let’s not conflate criticism of her as being a poor steward of the economy as being down to her gender. She’s a poor steward of the economy. Her decisions have been highly questionable. Her political tactics have all backfired. She has contributed to a significant amount of economic uncertainty and loss of confidence in the UK. Criticism does not always equal prejudice.
Wasn't her "under 14 chess champion" a bit of an embellishment? I'm sure there is something on the web about it.
Cast iron citation
“I’m sure there is something on the web about it.”.
Can’t find more solid evidence than that.
Oh. Sorry…you were “just asking the question”. My bad
There is a cast iron law of nature that there is everything on the web about everything. If one delves deep enough - and some of us on PB are well on the way in their bathyscaphe - one can find detailed evidence* that Ms Reeves is a tentacled monster from the Cthulhu abyss, formerly Chancellor of the dead city of R'lyeh.
*Which, for the record, I do *not* believe for a moment.
I don't know whether it is just because Google made their search so rubbish, but I find this increasingly not to be the case. I expect the web to contain all information, but often it either isn't there, or it isn't findable (which amounts to the same thing). Information on paper seems to last longer.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
As always, two things can be true at once.
Is some criticism of Reeves misogynistic? Yes, because misogyny exists and I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that woman are often held to different standards. If you accept that then it does of course naturally follow that some of the criticism she attracts comes from that place.
But let’s not conflate criticism of her as being a poor steward of the economy as being down to her gender. She’s a poor steward of the economy. Her decisions have been highly questionable. Her political tactics have all backfired. She has contributed to a significant amount of economic uncertainty and loss of confidence in the UK. Criticism does not always equal prejudice.
Wasn't her "under 14 chess champion" a bit of an embellishment? I'm sure there is something on the web about it.
Cast iron citation
“I’m sure there is something on the web about it.”.
Can’t find more solid evidence than that.
Oh. Sorry…you were “just asking the question”. My bad
There is a cast iron law of nature that there is everything on the web about everything. If one delves deep enough - and some of us on PB are well on the way in their bathyscaphe - one can find detailed evidence* that Ms Reeves is a tentacled monster from the Cthulhu abyss, formerly Chancellor of the dead city of R'lyeh.
*Which, for the record, I do *not* believe for a moment.
I don't know whether it is just because Google made their search so rubbish, but I find this increasingly not to be the case. I expect the web to contain all information, but often it either isn't there, or it isn't findable (which amounts to the same thing). Information on paper seems to last longer.
In this case Alphabet is owned by the eldritch gods of R’lyeh so they have an interest in burying the true origins of the senior cabinet.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
What utter twaddle. I have been consistent in my opposition to this proposal and have suggested both above and BTL ways to raise money.
The justice system is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. This is not about saving money or not having the money to spend. It is a power grab by an illiberal and authoritarian minded bunch of third rate politicians with little understanding of or appreciation for our history, our freedoms and the fundamentals of a truly liberal democracy.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
As always, two things can be true at once.
Is some criticism of Reeves misogynistic? Yes, because misogyny exists and I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that woman are often held to different standards. If you accept that then it does of course naturally follow that some of the criticism she attracts comes from that place.
But let’s not conflate criticism of her as being a poor steward of the economy as being down to her gender. She’s a poor steward of the economy. Her decisions have been highly questionable. Her political tactics have all backfired. She has contributed to a significant amount of economic uncertainty and loss of confidence in the UK. Criticism does not always equal prejudice.
More fundamentally, chess champion/enthusiast or not, why would she have a chess set placed so prominently in front of her at her desk at work, if not for the photo op and to get people like us talking about her chess prowess?
Whenever I see a chess board strategically placed in a promotional photo I always check to see if it is correctly set up. You would be amazed how often the board is the wrong way round. Non-players might be surprised to know there is a right and wrong way. Regular players spot the mistake instantly.
I guess the job of placing the board is delegated to an oik and the chances of that person knowing about this is less than fifty-fifty.
I missed the PB discussion on this, if there was one, which I regret because it is an important topic and interests me. I had two spells of jury service and sat on four trials. Three were trivial and could have been much better dealt with by a small tribunal, or jury of much less than twelve. The fourth concerned the handling of £51,000 in counterfeit £20 notes and merited a jury trial.
One lesson I learned is that if you want to get off, you want to have a stupid jury. One I was on was exceptionally dim and preoccupied with getting home as quickly as possible. The counterfeit handler had the misfortune to have a number of very smart people on the jury, a couple of whom were able to pick up the barristers on some small errors in documents and evidence. He went down, and rightly so, I am sure.
My overall impression is that the whole system is extremely wasteful and inefficient and a lot of cases simply do not merit the attention they currently receive. The problem is where to draw the line between the serious and the trivial. I'm not sure where it should be drawn, but I think the current system is far too wasteful of resources.
By the way it may surprise my fellow pbers to learn that I appeared in court on a charge about eighteen months ago. My solicitor asked if I wanted a jury or magistrates trial. She reckoned I was almost certain to get off if I had a jury. She also thought I would be ok with magistrates but couldn't guarantee it because they can be a bit quirky. I nevertheless opted for magistrates because I regarded the whole thing as too trivial to warrant a jury and she agreed.
Naturally I got off. It made me think better of magistrates in general and that they could be used more to deal with the horrible backlog in the court system.
And if a magistrate or judge has a bias, there's no check on it at all without ordinary members of the public. Removal of juries could be a first step towards having magistrates or judges appointed/elected and being overtly political. Juries are not perfect but they are important.
Thanks Morris.
If there was any bias shown by the magistrate in my case it was against the prosecution.
As for juries, I am reminded of Bismarck's comment regarding the making of laws and sausages. If you like them, best not to observe how they are made. When you have been on a few juries you wonder how so many come up with plausible decisions. Of the four I was on I should say one definitely gave a wrong verdict, two probably got it right, and one unquestionably got it right. As mentioned above, three were trivial cases, and could in my opinion have easily been handled by a simpler and easier process.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
What utter twaddle. I have been consistent in my opposition to this proposal and have suggested both above and BTL ways to raise money.
The justice system is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. This is not about saving money or not having the money to spend. It is a power grab by an illiberal and authoritarian minded bunch of third rate politicians with little understanding of or appreciation for our history, our freedoms and the fundamentals of a truly liberal democracy.
I am certainly not supporting Lammy's move, although I suspect he is not aiming at that as an end goal either but using this position to shift the Overton window in order get the Leveson proposals through.
If we want to successfully reform our justice system from here, then we have to spend significant amounts of money. We have to be willing to pay more in tax.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
Gove is another misfit who got plenty of personal flak. It's the game.
I don't really get the chess thing, she was clearly very good, probably top 1% of all players, but not elite. To get to that level demonstrates a decent level of logic, planning and reasoning skills. To get to elite, does the same, but also requires a level of obsession that is probably unhealthy for a national leader.
A bit of internet digging suggests that she did little chess other than schoolgirl competitions. She doesn’t have a public ELO (chess ranking).
Now if she could say she was 2,000 ELO, close to a Master ranking, then she might be taken seriously in the chess world.
Huh? Why is this relevant? She’s proud of what she’s done and rightly so. If a politician rugby player had some end of season award he won from the Old Rubberduckians RFC on his desk it wouldn’t even be mentioned. Certainly no one would go carp about “lack of representative honours”
When you’re making it the centerpiece of your pre-budget photo, one is entitled to investigate.
If it was just mention en passant that would be one thing but this persistent discovered attack from the opposition just feels a bit desperado to me.
Perhaps she plays with somebody from Prague? That would be her Czech mate...
I missed the PB discussion on this, if there was one, which I regret because it is an important topic and interests me. I had two spells of jury service and sat on four trials. Three were trivial and could have been much better dealt with by a small tribunal, or jury of much less than twelve. The fourth concerned the handling of £51,000 in counterfeit £20 notes and merited a jury trial.
One lesson I learned is that if you want to get off, you want to have a stupid jury. One I was on was exceptionally dim and preoccupied with getting home as quickly as possible. The counterfeit handler had the misfortune to have a number of very smart people on the jury, a couple of whom were able to pick up the barristers on some small errors in documents and evidence. He went down, and rightly so, I am sure.
My overall impression is that the whole system is extremely wasteful and inefficient and a lot of cases simply do not merit the attention they currently receive. The problem is where to draw the line between the serious and the trivial. I'm not sure where it should be drawn, but I think the current system is far too wasteful of resources.
By the way it may surprise my fellow pbers to learn that I appeared in court on a charge about eighteen months ago. My solicitor asked if I wanted a jury or magistrates trial. She reckoned I was almost certain to get off if I had a jury. She also thought I would be ok with magistrates but couldn't guarantee it because they can be a bit quirky. I nevertheless opted for magistrates because I regarded the whole thing as too trivial to warrant a jury and she agreed.
Naturally I got off. It made me think better of magistrates in general and that they could be used more to deal with the horrible backlog in the court system.
We have a weird system largely due to the mix of English and French laws and customs.
In the Royal Court (equiv of Crown Court in UK) you only get a Jury for “serious” “Customary” offences like murder and Rape and you need a minimum of ten jurors out of 12 for a conviction.
Otherwise we have non jury trials, which aren’t magistrates court level, where the senior legal judges - Bailiff, Deputy Bailiff and Royal Commissioners sit alongside a minimum of two Jurats (lay persons who have had distinguished careers elected by a Commission of politicians and lawyers) for cases where punishment up to 4 years prison and minimum of 5 Jurats for more serious cases.
As a system it seems to work well however I’m not sure it could work in UK as the need for so many Judges/Jurats for each case to replace juries would be too onerous. The upside is that the decision of the court doesn’t rest with one judge.
I am going out to lunch at a pub overlooking the estuary, while I still have the money to afford it.
The existence of jury trials is NOT the reason for court delays. The reasons are:
1. Reducing court sitting days even though the Lady Chief Justice has said judges can sit for more days so there is no lack of availability. 2. Closure and selling of courts. 3. A lack of sufficient funding for the justice system at every level.
1 and 2 are easily remediable. You do not abolish an 800 year old fundamental principle because of a lack of short-term funding. Unless you're an illiberal cretin, that is.
This is a power grab by the state of one of the few areas in British life which really is democratic, generally - though not invariably - works well and, crucially, is not controlled by the state and cannot be pressured by it. And can tell the state to get stuffed when it overreaches eg Ponting, the Colston Four. That is why authoritarians hate it and want to get rid of it. It must be resisted by all possible means.
This proposal shows how much contempt Labour has for us and our liberties.
A very good post from DavidL on the previous thread where he describes eloquently how much time was taken up by the Jury system in a trial he's involved in. He ends by saying that the accused would be likely to get a better break with the existing system which is good but that's a different argument
Rachel Reeves has definitely done something that’s made her more physically attractive in the last year. I think it’s softening her hairstyle, which used to be quite fierce
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
As always, two things can be true at once.
Is some criticism of Reeves misogynistic? Yes, because misogyny exists and I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that woman are often held to different standards. If you accept that then it does of course naturally follow that some of the criticism she attracts comes from that place.
But let’s not conflate criticism of her as being a poor steward of the economy as being down to her gender. She’s a poor steward of the economy. Her decisions have been highly questionable. Her political tactics have all backfired. She has contributed to a significant amount of economic uncertainty and loss of confidence in the UK. Criticism does not always equal prejudice.
More fundamentally, chess champion/enthusiast or not, why would she have a chess set placed so prominently in front of her at her desk at work, if not for the photo op and to get people like us talking about her chess prowess?
Whenever I see a chess board strategically placed in a promotional photo I always check to see if it is correctly set up. You would be amazed how often the board is the wrong way round. Non-players might be surprised to know there is a right and wrong way. Regular players spot the mistake instantly.
I guess the job of placing the board is delegated to an oik and the chances of that person knowing about this is less than fifty-fifty.
Spot the deliberate mistake...
The king and queen on the top rank are on the wrong squares
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
What utter twaddle. I have been consistent in my opposition to this proposal and have suggested both above and BTL ways to raise money.
The justice system is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. This is not about saving money or not having the money to spend. It is a power grab by an illiberal and authoritarian minded bunch of third rate politicians with little understanding of or appreciation for our history, our freedoms and the fundamentals of a truly liberal democracy.
I am certainly not supporting Lammy's move, although I suspect he is not aiming at that as an end goal either but using this position to shift the Overton window in order get the Leveson proposals through.
If we want to successfully reform our justice system from here, then we have to spend significant amounts of money. We have to be willing to pay more in tax.
The total budget for the Ministry of Justice is ~£12bn, but the majority of that is on prisons, rather than the court system itself. You could fix the issues in the court system, without doing away with jury trials, for a sum of money that is less than a rounding error in the budget as a whole.
I am generally supportive of paying more tax, and I agree that the roots of the present crisis lie in the money saved from the Justice budget in the Coalition years, but I don't think your argument is on good ground here.
Talking of Russian, whatever happened to Dura Ace?
Would be mind blowing if he was one of Leon's creations. Though the immutable Banned Leon's Law means that his other creations get noisier when he is reduced to silence. Not looking at anyone..
I seriously doubt Leon is capable of quite the level of literary invention that would imply,
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
Gove is another misfit who got plenty of personal flak. It's the game.
I don't really get the chess thing, she was clearly very good, probably top 1% of all players, but not elite. To get to that level demonstrates a decent level of logic, planning and reasoning skills. To get to elite, does the same, but also requires a level of obsession that is probably unhealthy for a national leader.
A bit of internet digging suggests that she did little chess other than schoolgirl competitions. She doesn’t have a public ELO (chess ranking).
Now if she could say she was 2,000 ELO, close to a Master ranking, then she might be taken seriously in the chess world.
Huh? Why is this relevant? She’s proud of what she’s done and rightly so. If a politician rugby player had some end of season award he won from the Old Rubberduckians RFC on his desk it wouldn’t even be mentioned. Certainly no one would go carp about “lack of representative honours”
When you’re making it the centerpiece of your pre-budget photo, one is entitled to investigate.
If it was just mention en passant that would be one thing but this persistent discovered attack from the opposition just feels a bit desperado to me.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
That is not "just a little short of the highest in Europe". It's 57% in France, with other European countries above 44% including Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Slovenia/-akia.
So not Ireland, Switzerland, Iceland, the Czech Republic, Portugal etc who spend less than the UK as does Canada, Australia and the USA and New Zealand, Singapore etc. France spends more than all of them and has a massive deficit its governments seem incapable of getting to grips with, the left wanting no spending cuts at all just yet higher taxes on the rich
I missed the PB discussion on this, if there was one, which I regret because it is an important topic and interests me. I had two spells of jury service and sat on four trials. Three were trivial and could have been much better dealt with by a small tribunal, or jury of much less than twelve. The fourth concerned the handling of £51,000 in counterfeit £20 notes and merited a jury trial.
One lesson I learned is that if you want to get off, you want to have a stupid jury. One I was on was exceptionally dim and preoccupied with getting home as quickly as possible. The counterfeit handler had the misfortune to have a number of very smart people on the jury, a couple of whom were able to pick up the barristers on some small errors in documents and evidence. He went down, and rightly so, I am sure.
My overall impression is that the whole system is extremely wasteful and inefficient and a lot of cases simply do not merit the attention they currently receive. The problem is where to draw the line between the serious and the trivial. I'm not sure where it should be drawn, but I think the current system is far too wasteful of resources.
By the way it may surprise my fellow pbers to learn that I appeared in court on a charge about eighteen months ago. My solicitor asked if I wanted a jury or magistrates trial. She reckoned I was almost certain to get off if I had a jury. She also thought I would be ok with magistrates but couldn't guarantee it because they can be a bit quirky. I nevertheless opted for magistrates because I regarded the whole thing as too trivial to warrant a jury and she agreed.
Naturally I got off. It made me think better of magistrates in general and that they could be used more to deal with the horrible backlog in the court system.
And if a magistrate or judge has a bias, there's no check on it at all without ordinary members of the public. Removal of juries could be a first step towards having magistrates or judges appointed/elected and being overtly political. Juries are not perfect but they are important.
Thanks Morris.
If there was any bias shown by the magistrate in my case it was against the prosecution.
As for juries, I am reminded of Bismarck's comment regarding the making of laws and sausages. If you like them, best not to observe how they are made. When you have been on a few juries you wonder how so many come up with plausible decisions. Of the four I was on I should say one definitely gave a wrong verdict, two probably got it right, and one unquestionably got it right. As mentioned above, three were trivial cases, and could in my opinion have easily been handled by a simpler and easier process.
As the infamous Denning quote suggests, judges can be equally as capable of low down sausage manufacturing, and usually without the excuse of ignorance.
Talking of Russian, whatever happened to Dura Ace?
Would be mind blowing if he was one of Leon's creations. Though the immutable Banned Leon's Law means that his other creations get noisier when he is reduced to silence. Not looking at anyone..
I seriously doubt Leon is capable of quite the level of literary invention that would imply,
And one would expect the mods to take the prohibition on having multiple accounts seriously.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
What utter twaddle. I have been consistent in my opposition to this proposal and have suggested both above and BTL ways to raise money.
The justice system is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. This is not about saving money or not having the money to spend. It is a power grab by an illiberal and authoritarian minded bunch of third rate politicians with little understanding of or appreciation for our history, our freedoms and the fundamentals of a truly liberal democracy.
I am certainly not supporting Lammy's move, although I suspect he is not aiming at that as an end goal either but using this position to shift the Overton window in order get the Leveson proposals through.
If we want to successfully reform our justice system from here, then we have to spend significant amounts of money. We have to be willing to pay more in tax.
In the short term, we do need to pay more in tax. This is why this budget is so short-sighted and unhelpful. It doesn’t fix the problems, it tinkers round the edges, it doesn’t couple tax increases with efficiencies, and it will make the system more bloated. Labour were (a year too late) on the right lines by thinking more about income tax, however much it sticks in the craw.
But the solution to all things like this is not just “more tax.” In the immediate term, money is needed to fix things, and the government should be raising more by increasing rates of tax to do so. But moving forwards, its looking at how we grow the economy to produce more revenue, how we efficiently structure the state and society while keeping what we hold dear, and how we incentivise people to contribute.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I thought the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials came from the people who were most horrified by the Colston statue decision.
I was surprised by the wild support for Jury trials. At least a judge knows the law and hopefully has no axes to grind. Whereas a jury by the law of averages will have at least 4 Faragists amonst them. Who could want those bigots sitting in judgement on you?
Not a believer in the wisdom of crowds then
The problem with crowds, considering a subject of which they are ignorant, is that a leader will emerge (juries) or be appointed (citizens assemblies) or push to the front (Farage, Polanski) who will actually lead the crowd to agree with their own solution.
This is in contrast to those politicians (Starmer) who follow the crowd, and assume the media is reflecting the views of the crowd.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
What utter twaddle. I have been consistent in my opposition to this proposal and have suggested both above and BTL ways to raise money.
The justice system is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. This is not about saving money or not having the money to spend. It is a power grab by an illiberal and authoritarian minded bunch of third rate politicians with little understanding of or appreciation for our history, our freedoms and the fundamentals of a truly liberal democracy.
I am certainly not supporting Lammy's move, although I suspect he is not aiming at that as an end goal either but using this position to shift the Overton window in order get the Leveson proposals through.
If we want to successfully reform our justice system from here, then we have to spend significant amounts of money. We have to be willing to pay more in tax.
The total budget for the Ministry of Justice is ~£12bn, but the majority of that is on prisons, rather than the court system itself. You could fix the issues in the court system, without doing away with jury trials, for a sum of money that is less than a rounding error in the budget as a whole.
I am generally supportive of paying more tax, and I agree that the roots of the present crisis lie in the money saved from the Justice budget in the Coalition years, but I don't think your argument is on good ground here.
Within justice there is no point fixing the courts without fixing the prisons, we would just need to release more people earlier as we convicted them more speedily!
If everything else in the country worked fine, then sure you could fix one small part of govt spending without significant tax rises. But the same situation applies throughout much of the public sector, water, transport, education - crumbling out of date infrastructure, lack of motivated permanent staff, poor or negligible use of technology, with process taking priority over outcomes and common sense.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
What utter twaddle. I have been consistent in my opposition to this proposal and have suggested both above and BTL ways to raise money.
The justice system is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. This is not about saving money or not having the money to spend. It is a power grab by an illiberal and authoritarian minded bunch of third rate politicians with little understanding of or appreciation for our history, our freedoms and the fundamentals of a truly liberal democracy.
I am certainly not supporting Lammy's move, although I suspect he is not aiming at that as an end goal either but using this position to shift the Overton window in order get the Leveson proposals through.
If we want to successfully reform our justice system from here, then we have to spend significant amounts of money. We have to be willing to pay more in tax.
The total budget for the Ministry of Justice is ~£12bn, but the majority of that is on prisons, rather than the court system itself. You could fix the issues in the court system, without doing away with jury trials, for a sum of money that is less than a rounding error in the budget as a whole.
I am generally supportive of paying more tax, and I agree that the roots of the present crisis lie in the money saved from the Justice budget in the Coalition years, but I don't think your argument is on good ground here.
On the objections to 2), the person convicted this week for research would have been through the Judge briefing them about their duties and responsibilities, it made no difference.
This backlog, like the prisons and NHS, was created by the coalition's penny-pinching with no thought for the consequences, the system does not need much money but increasing numbers of Judges, counsel and CPS resources for case preparation will not be easy.
Though I suspect the whole thing would run a lot more efficiently with a far higher proportion of Solicitor Advocates.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
What utter twaddle. I have been consistent in my opposition to this proposal and have suggested both above and BTL ways to raise money.
The justice system is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. This is not about saving money or not having the money to spend. It is a power grab by an illiberal and authoritarian minded bunch of third rate politicians with little understanding of or appreciation for our history, our freedoms and the fundamentals of a truly liberal democracy.
I am certainly not supporting Lammy's move, although I suspect he is not aiming at that as an end goal either but using this position to shift the Overton window in order get the Leveson proposals through.
If we want to successfully reform our justice system from here, then we have to spend significant amounts of money. We have to be willing to pay more in tax.
In the short term, we do need to pay more in tax. This is why this budget is so short-sighted and unhelpful. It doesn’t fix the problems, it tinkers round the edges, it doesn’t couple tax increases with efficiencies, and it will make the system more bloated. Labour were (a year too late) on the right lines by thinking more about income tax, however much it sticks in the craw.
But the solution to all things like this is not just “more tax.” In the immediate term, money is needed to fix things, and the government should be raising more by increasing rates of tax to do so. But moving forwards, its looking at how we grow the economy to produce more revenue, how we efficiently structure the state and society while keeping what we hold dear, and how we incentivise people to contribute.
Absolutely but the only successful paths from here start with investment now. It is investment that can lead to sustainable lower tax, not cutting budgets slice by slice, year after year without any consideration of outcome.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
What utter twaddle. I have been consistent in my opposition to this proposal and have suggested both above and BTL ways to raise money.
The justice system is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. This is not about saving money or not having the money to spend. It is a power grab by an illiberal and authoritarian minded bunch of third rate politicians with little understanding of or appreciation for our history, our freedoms and the fundamentals of a truly liberal democracy.
I am certainly not supporting Lammy's move, although I suspect he is not aiming at that as an end goal either but using this position to shift the Overton window in order get the Leveson proposals through.
If we want to successfully reform our justice system from here, then we have to spend significant amounts of money. We have to be willing to pay more in tax.
The total budget for the Ministry of Justice is ~£12bn, but the majority of that is on prisons, rather than the court system itself. You could fix the issues in the court system, without doing away with jury trials, for a sum of money that is less than a rounding error in the budget as a whole.
I am generally supportive of paying more tax, and I agree that the roots of the present crisis lie in the money saved from the Justice budget in the Coalition years, but I don't think your argument is on good ground here.
Within justice there is no point fixing the courts without fixing the prisons, we would just need to release more people earlier as we convicted them more speedily!
If everything else in the country worked fine, then sure you could fix one small part of govt spending without significant tax rises. But the same situation applies throughout much of the public sector, water, transport, education - crumbling out of date infrastructure, lack of motivated permanent staff, poor or negligible use of technology, with process taking priority over outcomes and common sense.
I'd broadly agree except they are attempting to use technology, there's no choice because there's no money to do it properly the old way. And that itself can be a problem, as politicians dont focus on getting basics right, things crumble to low grade crapness, then tech is expected to magicalltly solve the fundamental issues.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
What utter twaddle. I have been consistent in my opposition to this proposal and have suggested both above and BTL ways to raise money.
The justice system is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. This is not about saving money or not having the money to spend. It is a power grab by an illiberal and authoritarian minded bunch of third rate politicians with little understanding of or appreciation for our history, our freedoms and the fundamentals of a truly liberal democracy.
I am certainly not supporting Lammy's move, although I suspect he is not aiming at that as an end goal either but using this position to shift the Overton window in order get the Leveson proposals through.
If we want to successfully reform our justice system from here, then we have to spend significant amounts of money. We have to be willing to pay more in tax.
In the short term, we do need to pay more in tax. This is why this budget is so short-sighted and unhelpful. It doesn’t fix the problems, it tinkers round the edges, it doesn’t couple tax increases with efficiencies, and it will make the system more bloated. Labour were (a year too late) on the right lines by thinking more about income tax, however much it sticks in the craw.
But the solution to all things like this is not just “more tax.” In the immediate term, money is needed to fix things, and the government should be raising more by increasing rates of tax to do so. But moving forwards, its looking at how we grow the economy to produce more revenue, how we efficiently structure the state and society while keeping what we hold dear, and how we incentivise people to contribute.
Absolutely but the only successful paths from here start with investment now. It is investment that can lead to sustainable lower tax, not cutting budgets slice by slice, year after year without any consideration of outcome.
Few give a monkeys fuck about the budget. Ot is what it is and we can't donanything about it. What it will do is make people determinedto stuff Labour at every available opportunity starting at the local elections.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
As always, two things can be true at once.
Is some criticism of Reeves misogynistic? Yes, because misogyny exists and I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that woman are often held to different standards. If you accept that then it does of course naturally follow that some of the criticism she attracts comes from that place.
But let’s not conflate criticism of her as being a poor steward of the economy as being down to her gender. She’s a poor steward of the economy. Her decisions have been highly questionable. Her political tactics have all backfired. She has contributed to a significant amount of economic uncertainty and loss of confidence in the UK. Criticism does not always equal prejudice.
Wasn't her "under 14 chess champion" a bit of an embellishment? I'm sure there is something on the web about it.
Cast iron citation
“I’m sure there is something on the web about it.”.
Can’t find more solid evidence than that.
Oh. Sorry…you were “just asking the question”. My bad
There is a cast iron law of nature that there is everything on the web about everything. If one delves deep enough - and some of us on PB are well on the way in their bathyscaphe - one can find detailed evidence* that Ms Reeves is a tentacled monster from the Cthulhu abyss, formerly Chancellor of the dead city of R'lyeh.
*Which, for the record, I do *not* believe for a moment.
I don't know whether it is just because Google made their search so rubbish, but I find this increasingly not to be the case. I expect the web to contain all information, but often it either isn't there, or it isn't findable (which amounts to the same thing). Information on paper seems to last longer.
Google does seem to have gotten pretty useless in the last few years, good thing they are basically a monopoly. Amazon seem to be going the same way - although a typically grasping company that treats workers like robots i could at least previously say they provided me a good service.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
To be fair it was the Chancellor who issued the photo with the chessboard in shot.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
As always, two things can be true at once.
Is some criticism of Reeves misogynistic? Yes, because misogyny exists and I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that woman are often held to different standards. If you accept that then it does of course naturally follow that some of the criticism she attracts comes from that place.
But let’s not conflate criticism of her as being a poor steward of the economy as being down to her gender. She’s a poor steward of the economy. Her decisions have been highly questionable. Her political tactics have all backfired. She has contributed to a significant amount of economic uncertainty and loss of confidence in the UK. Criticism does not always equal prejudice.
More fundamentally, chess champion/enthusiast or not, why would she have a chess set placed so prominently in front of her at her desk at work, if not for the photo op and to get people like us talking about her chess prowess?
Whenever I see a chess board strategically placed in a promotional photo I always check to see if it is correctly set up. You would be amazed how often the board is the wrong way round. Non-players might be surprised to know there is a right and wrong way. Regular players spot the mistake instantly.
I guess the job of placing the board is delegated to an oik and the chances of that person knowing about this is less than fifty-fifty.
Spot the deliberate mistake...
The king and queen on the top rank are on the wrong squares
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The problem is the pattern - we have lost control of public spending. Which results in starving spending on needed things.
Spend £700 million on court infrastructure and staff, say. Rather than saving a shop windows worth of salmon. Think how many clerks you could hire to prepare juries for the courts.
Merge NI & IT to reduce the admin overhead.
Buy the “world beating” ACV that actually exists - CV-90. Aside from it actually working, costing a fraction of what Ajax does, it will reduce the burden on the NHS.
Train U.K. medics overseas. Using the overseas aid budget - it will be supporting developing world health systems, after all. Then we have more medics - so less agency staff on the NHS (cheaper), less stress on the existing NHS staff (retainment), more U.K. citizens with qualifications for jobs which are in high demand…
This is about running procurement and government intelligently. Cost control and productivity - both are not being done.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
Sorry Boss. What are the rules?
Sorry. I forgot you were here. Let me explain.
I’m being “sarcastic”. I’m saying the opposite of what I mean.
Imagine if your teacher at the school you still go to spent all day talking about what colour socks you wore instead of helping you learn maths! I was annoyed because people are talking about silly things like:
1. Where the Chancellor keeps her chessboard 2. How she does her hair
instead of talking about her actual job (which is handling the country's money - super important stuff!).
It's like if everyone talked about what a doctor wore to work instead of whether they're good at helping sick people!
Does that make it easier to understand, even for you? Or do I have to explain like you’re 2, not 5, which I previously thought the appropriate level.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
Sorry Boss. What are the rules?
Sorry. I forgot you were here. Let me explain.
I’m being “sarcastic”. I’m saying the opposite of what I mean.
Imagine if your teacher at the school you still go to spent all day talking about what colour socks you wore instead of helping you learn maths! I was annoyed because people are talking about silly things like:
1. Where the Chancellor keeps her chessboard 2. How she does her hair
instead of talking about her actual job (which is handling the country's money - super important stuff!).
It's like if everyone talked about what a doctor wore to work instead of whether they're good at helping sick people!
Does that make it easier to understand, even for you? Or do I have to explain like you’re 2, not 5, which I previously thought the appropriate level.
Talking of Russian, whatever happened to Dura Ace?
On 31/8 he announced he would be going to Jeddah until Christmas for Arabic Immersion (whatever that means) and won't be posting. He did a similar thing earlier. Should be back soon.
Another benefit of not making one's profile private which has been banned but I note a lot of people are still doing it. I don't know why as there is nothing private in making your profile private and just makes life difficult for others to do what I was able to do re Dura.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
Sorry Boss. What are the rules?
Sorry. I forgot you were here. Let me explain.
I’m being “sarcastic”. I’m saying the opposite of what I mean.
Imagine if your teacher at the school you still go to spent all day talking about what colour socks you wore instead of helping you learn maths! I was annoyed because people are talking about silly things like:
1. Where the Chancellor keeps her chessboard 2. How she does her hair
instead of talking about her actual job (which is handling the country's money - super important stuff!).
It's like if everyone talked about what a doctor wore to work instead of whether they're good at helping sick people!
Does that make it easier to understand, even for you? Or do I have to explain like you’re 2, not 5, which I previously thought the appropriate level.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The problem is the pattern - we have lost control of public spending. Which results in starving spending on needed things.
Spend £700 million on court infrastructure and staff, say. Rather than saving a shop windows worth of salmon. Think how many clerks you could hire to prepare juries for the courts.
Merge NI & IT to reduce the admin overhead.
Buy the “world beating” ACV that actually exists - CV-90. Aside from it actually working, costing a fraction of what Ajax does, it will reduce the burden on the NHS.
Train U.K. medics overseas. Using the overseas aid budget - it will be supporting developing world health systems, after all. Then we have more medics - so less agency staff on the NHS (cheaper), less stress on the existing NHS staff (retainment), more U.K. citizens with qualifications for jobs which are in high demand…
This is about running procurement and government intelligently. Cost control and productivity - both are not being done.
The IMT training programme, which my girlfriend has applied for, seems to be up there with the most competitive years ever.
The below screenshot is from the BMA but it highlights how ridiculous the situation is. Luckily my partner has got an interview so fingers crossed. She can certainly do the job.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
To be fair it was the Chancellor who issued the photo with the chessboard in shot.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
Sorry Boss. What are the rules?
Sorry. I forgot you were here. Let me explain.
I’m being “sarcastic”. I’m saying the opposite of what I mean.
Imagine if your teacher at the school you still go to spent all day talking about what colour socks you wore instead of helping you learn maths! I was annoyed because people are talking about silly things like:
1. Where the Chancellor keeps her chessboard 2. How she does her hair
instead of talking about her actual job (which is handling the country's money - super important stuff!).
It's like if everyone talked about what a doctor wore to work instead of whether they're good at helping sick people!
Does that make it easier to understand, even for you? Or do I have to explain like you’re 2, not 5, which I previously thought the appropriate level.
I don't see the problem with raising trivialities. Perhaps oddly it doesnt trivialise important issues, it just breaks up what would otherwise be an exhausting focus, and takes some heat away from those important issues and sets an atmosphere which is actually then more casual and thus easier to raise competing views on those important issues.
Whereas if everything is treated as too serious for that it becomes performative parroting of views, not discussion - which includes the inane too.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
Sorry Boss. What are the rules?
Sorry. I forgot you were here. Let me explain.
I’m being “sarcastic”. I’m saying the opposite of what I mean.
Imagine if your teacher at the school you still go to spent all day talking about what colour socks you wore instead of helping you learn maths! I was annoyed because people are talking about silly things like:
1. Where the Chancellor keeps her chessboard 2. How she does her hair
instead of talking about her actual job (which is handling the country's money - super important stuff!).
It's like if everyone talked about what a doctor wore to work instead of whether they're good at helping sick people!
Does that make it easier to understand, even for you? Or do I have to explain like you’re 2, not 5, which I previously thought the appropriate level.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Talking of Russian, whatever happened to Dura Ace?
On 31/8 he announced he would be going to Jeddah until Christmas for Arabic Immersion (whatever that means) and won't be posting. He did a similar thing earlier. Should be back soon.
Another benefit of not making one's profile private which has been banned but I note a lot of people are still doing it. I don't know why as there is nothing private in making your profile private and just makes life difficult for others to do what I was able to do re Dura.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
Are you new to politics?
I remember in the aftermath of a budget the country was focussed of when and where the Chancellor and PM had their last pasty.
Oh for such innocent days, we’d all take an omnishambles budget like that today.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
Are you new to politics?
I remember in the aftermath of a budget the country was focussed of when and where the Chancellor and PM had their last pasty.
Oh for such innocent days, we’d all take an omnishambles budget like that today.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
Gove is another misfit who got plenty of personal flak. It's the game.
I don't really get the chess thing, she was clearly very good, probably top 1% of all players, but not elite. To get to that level demonstrates a decent level of logic, planning and reasoning skills. To get to elite, does the same, but also requires a level of obsession that is probably unhealthy for a national leader.
A bit of internet digging suggests that she did little chess other than schoolgirl competitions. She doesn’t have a public ELO (chess ranking).
Now if she could say she was 2,000 ELO, close to a Master ranking, then she might be taken seriously in the chess world.
Huh? Why is this relevant? She’s proud of what she’s done and rightly so. If a politician rugby player had some end of season award he won from the Old Rubberduckians RFC on his desk it wouldn’t even be mentioned. Certainly no one would go carp about “lack of representative honours”
When you’re making it the centerpiece of your pre-budget photo, one is entitled to investigate.
Pretty pathetic trying to prove how clever you are by sticking a chess board in teh picture, what a wally. She could not run a bath.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The problem is the pattern - we have lost control of public spending. Which results in starving spending on needed things.
Spend £700 million on court infrastructure and staff, say. Rather than saving a shop windows worth of salmon. Think how many clerks you could hire to prepare juries for the courts.
Merge NI & IT to reduce the admin overhead.
Buy the “world beating” ACV that actually exists - CV-90. Aside from it actually working, costing a fraction of what Ajax does, it will reduce the burden on the NHS.
Train U.K. medics overseas. Using the overseas aid budget - it will be supporting developing world health systems, after all. Then we have more medics - so less agency staff on the NHS (cheaper), less stress on the existing NHS staff (retainment), more U.K. citizens with qualifications for jobs which are in high demand…
This is about running procurement and government intelligently. Cost control and productivity - both are not being done.
I'm not sure about "losing control" - it's more complex. I do agree co-ordination is lacking and financial management in places could be better but it was my experience financial monitoring was often over-zealous and project managers would spend more time updating trackers and reporting to senior people than managing the projects.
Too little monitoring and you lose control and oversight - too much and you stifle activity, there's a balance.
As to how you split the pie, that's a political decision.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
Sorry Boss. What are the rules?
Sorry. I forgot you were here. Let me explain.
I’m being “sarcastic”. I’m saying the opposite of what I mean.
Imagine if your teacher at the school you still go to spent all day talking about what colour socks you wore instead of helping you learn maths! I was annoyed because people are talking about silly things like:
1. Where the Chancellor keeps her chessboard 2. How she does her hair
instead of talking about her actual job (which is handling the country's money - super important stuff!).
It's like if everyone talked about what a doctor wore to work instead of whether they're good at helping sick people!
Does that make it easier to understand, even for you? Or do I have to explain like you’re 2, not 5, which I previously thought the appropriate level.
A very European looking poll, but hellish to try to make FPTP predictions on.
I think there's a few broad (and important) predictions you could make if those were the vote shares for the next GE.
1. Reform would win the most seats. A 6pp vote share lead is enough for that with FPTP, and the known geographical concentration/distribution of Reform votes, though the extent/efficacy of tactical voting would make a big difference to the final numbers and coalition permutations. 2. The Tories - losing more votes - would be likely to fall behind the Liberal Democrats in terms of seats. 3. A record number of seats would be won on very low shares of the vote with very small majorities. Consequently, much larger numbers of voters will not have voted for their local MP than has been normal, leaving more voters dissatisfied with the election result.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
Are you new to politics?
I remember in the aftermath of a budget the country was focussed of when and where the Chancellor and PM had their last pasty.
Oh for such innocent days, we’d all take an omnishambles budget like that today.
I think that's what S&R were aiming for with the milkshake tax.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The problem is the pattern - we have lost control of public spending. Which results in starving spending on needed things.
Spend £700 million on court infrastructure and staff, say. Rather than saving a shop windows worth of salmon. Think how many clerks you could hire to prepare juries for the courts.
Merge NI & IT to reduce the admin overhead.
Buy the “world beating” ACV that actually exists - CV-90. Aside from it actually working, costing a fraction of what Ajax does, it will reduce the burden on the NHS.
Train U.K. medics overseas. Using the overseas aid budget - it will be supporting developing world health systems, after all. Then we have more medics - so less agency staff on the NHS (cheaper), less stress on the existing NHS staff (retainment), more U.K. citizens with qualifications for jobs which are in high demand…
This is about running procurement and government intelligently. Cost control and productivity - both are not being done.
The IMT training programme, which my girlfriend has applied for, seems to be up there with the most competitive years ever.
The below screenshot is from the BMA but it highlights how ridiculous the situation is. Luckily my partner has got an interview so fingers crossed. She can certainly do the job.
Indeed
Some years ago, to try and end the evils of nepotism in the NHS, they introduced a hilariously rigid form to fill in to apply for jobs.
In one instance, a doctor was not given the option of putting in that he had done a full PhD on the exact specialism he was applying for (in addition to his other pill rolling degrees)
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The waste and overstaffing ( underworked ) is unbelievable. It would eb a dawdle to save 10% - 20% , some of which could be used on actually providing public services.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The problem is the pattern - we have lost control of public spending. Which results in starving spending on needed things.
Spend £700 million on court infrastructure and staff, say. Rather than saving a shop windows worth of salmon. Think how many clerks you could hire to prepare juries for the courts.
Merge NI & IT to reduce the admin overhead.
Buy the “world beating” ACV that actually exists - CV-90. Aside from it actually working, costing a fraction of what Ajax does, it will reduce the burden on the NHS.
Train U.K. medics overseas. Using the overseas aid budget - it will be supporting developing world health systems, after all. Then we have more medics - so less agency staff on the NHS (cheaper), less stress on the existing NHS staff (retainment), more U.K. citizens with qualifications for jobs which are in high demand…
This is about running procurement and government intelligently. Cost control and productivity - both are not being done.
I'm not sure about "losing control" - it's more complex. I do agree co-ordination is lacking and financial management in places could be better but it was my experience financial monitoring was often over-zealous and project managers would spend more time updating trackers and reporting to senior people than managing the projects.
Too little monitoring and you lose control and oversight - too much and you stifle activity, there's a balance.
As to how you split the pie, that's a political decision.
If you want to see a lack of budget control, look at Ireland. State expenditure in 2025 is now expected to be €12.5bn higher than the €96.6bn set out in the budget for the year in 2024. That's an overspend of nearly 13%.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The waste and overstaffing ( underworked ) is unbelievable. It would eb a dawdle to save 10% - 20% , some of which could be used on actually providing public services.
Just utter nonsense as Reform are already finding out
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
Sorry Boss. What are the rules?
Sorry. I forgot you were here. Let me explain.
I’m being “sarcastic”. I’m saying the opposite of what I mean.
Imagine if your teacher at the school you still go to spent all day talking about what colour socks you wore instead of helping you learn maths! I was annoyed because people are talking about silly things like:
1. Where the Chancellor keeps her chessboard 2. How she does her hair
instead of talking about her actual job (which is handling the country's money - super important stuff!).
It's like if everyone talked about what a doctor wore to work instead of whether they're good at helping sick people!
Does that make it easier to understand, even for you? Or do I have to explain like you’re 2, not 5, which I previously thought the appropriate level.
Oooh touchy!
Just literate.
I do like what she’s done with her hair though
has she changed from her German bunnet look
She has, and looks much the better for it.
But you know, I think Doug Seal is right. Politicians should be judged on policies rather than appearance. Perhaps none of them should be allowed to post photographs or videos on social media, unless it is to announce something of material importance to the nation. AI voiceover only, and text of the speech.
They should also be mandated to wear drab uniforms, including headwear, to the House of Commons, so no voter is influenced by attractive clothing or hairstyles
They are already doing a post-mortem on the budget that hasn't even happened yet. This from the 10AM news
"The Chancellor will drag a million more people into tax by raising the tax threshold though she herself criticised this in 2023..."
Freezing the basic rate threshold further beyond 2028 will be politically damaging to Reeves, the more so as she explicitly said in November 2024 that she would not do that and is also on record as you point out for criticising the current freeze previously. And that makes me wonder if it is really her intention to do so. Having ensured by either design or accident that all the attention is back on income tax thresholds, an unexpected decision to not extend the Conservatives' freeze on the basic rate tax threshold and to continue to apply the freeze only to the higher rate rate tax thresholds would I think be politically astute and (barring some other unexpected big nasties) allow the budget to be framed with justification as one protecting living standards of working people on average incomes while limiting the pain to those on higher incomes. There are votes to be gained from that, especially from those whose support Labour has lost since 2024.
That's not a prediction, because Reeves and Starmer have been so politically inept over the past 16 months that they may not appreciate both the danger and the opportunity. If they continue in that vein they really do deserve the boot from Labour MPs.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Criminal lawyers aren’t earning big sums of money
Indeed, a pupil criminal barrister will be on minimum wage while their graduate contemporaries who are trainees in London corporate law firms or pupils in commercial barrister chambers will be starting on £50k plus.
After ten years commercial lawyers will also be earning about double their criminal counterparts. Only if they become KCs can criminal barristers make six figures but city law firm partners and commercial KCs can make seven figure salaries
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The waste and overstaffing ( underworked ) is unbelievable. It would eb a dawdle to save 10% - 20% , some of which could be used on actually providing public services.
Just utter nonsense as Reform are already finding out
Indeed
Real productivity and spending control would maybe save maybe fractions of a percent per year. But would be cumulative.
Ongoing hard work rather than childish nonsense with chainsaws.
Same for reducing regulation costs on business. None of the “bonfire of red tape” stuff. Just a steady, considered reduction, year by year.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
I suggest a leg of darts to decide guilt or innocence and then a roll of the dice for the length of sentence. Stream it on netflix with decent product placement and we could not just save a fortune but get some revenue in too.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
Another vote for my plan to bring back Bills of Attainder and repealing the utter woke nonsense that is the 1870 Forfeiture Act
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The waste and overstaffing ( underworked ) is unbelievable. It would eb a dawdle to save 10% - 20% , some of which could be used on actually providing public services.
It really isn't that simple - it used to be that way, but an awful lot of the dead wood has been cut away already, and it is just deliberate misunderstanding to present it as if there's been no change in the last 15 years.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
As always, two things can be true at once.
Is some criticism of Reeves misogynistic? Yes, because misogyny exists and I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that woman are often held to different standards. If you accept that then it does of course naturally follow that some of the criticism she attracts comes from that place.
But let’s not conflate criticism of her as being a poor steward of the economy as being down to her gender. She’s a poor steward of the economy. Her decisions have been highly questionable. Her political tactics have all backfired. She has contributed to a significant amount of economic uncertainty and loss of confidence in the UK. Criticism does not always equal prejudice.
More fundamentally, chess champion/enthusiast or not, why would she have a chess set placed so prominently in front of her at her desk at work, if not for the photo op and to get people like us talking about her chess prowess?
Whenever I see a chess board strategically placed in a promotional photo I always check to see if it is correctly set up. You would be amazed how often the board is the wrong way round. Non-players might be surprised to know there is a right and wrong way. Regular players spot the mistake instantly.
I guess the job of placing the board is delegated to an oik and the chances of that person knowing about this is less than fifty-fifty.
Spot the deliberate mistake...
The king and queen on the top rank are on the wrong squares
Hmm, isn't it the lower rank K&Q, actually?
Yes I think you are right, assuming the bottom rank is white.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
The Thatcher ideologues will never get it, nor will the lefties who are passionate about fairness with zero interest in the detail.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
As always, two things can be true at once.
Is some criticism of Reeves misogynistic? Yes, because misogyny exists and I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that woman are often held to different standards. If you accept that then it does of course naturally follow that some of the criticism she attracts comes from that place.
But let’s not conflate criticism of her as being a poor steward of the economy as being down to her gender. She’s a poor steward of the economy. Her decisions have been highly questionable. Her political tactics have all backfired. She has contributed to a significant amount of economic uncertainty and loss of confidence in the UK. Criticism does not always equal prejudice.
More fundamentally, chess champion/enthusiast or not, why would she have a chess set placed so prominently in front of her at her desk at work, if not for the photo op and to get people like us talking about her chess prowess?
Whenever I see a chess board strategically placed in a promotional photo I always check to see if it is correctly set up. You would be amazed how often the board is the wrong way round. Non-players might be surprised to know there is a right and wrong way. Regular players spot the mistake instantly.
I guess the job of placing the board is delegated to an oik and the chances of that person knowing about this is less than fifty-fifty.
Spot the deliberate mistake...
The king and queen on the top rank are on the wrong squares
That's what I first realised. Then I thought, "Hang on a minute, the pieces are all white."
Who knows if the artist (Yoko Ono) intended this. She's still among us. Someone should ask her.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
All the budget measures are announced already; what else are we supposed to talk about while we wait to see if they change their minds again?
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
I suggest a leg of darts to decide guilt or innocence and then a roll of the dice for the length of sentence. Stream it on netflix with decent product placement and we could not just save a fortune but get some revenue in too.
Nonsense.
Instead of trial and prison - a TV show where the suspects are hunted by the public/professional hunters.
If they are caught, they die. If they stay alive and free for 30 days, they get a cash prize.
Turn justice into a profit centre, with popular participation.
I am going out to lunch at a pub overlooking the estuary, while I still have the money to afford it.
The existence of jury trials is NOT the reason for court delays. The reasons are:
1. Reducing court sitting days even though the Lady Chief Justice has said judges can sit for more days so there is no lack of availability. 2. Closure and selling of courts. 3. A lack of sufficient funding for the justice system at every level.
1 and 2 are easily remediable. You do not abolish an 800 year old fundamental principle because of a lack of short-term funding. Unless you're an illiberal cretin, that is.
This is a power grab by the state of one of the few areas in British life which really is democratic, generally - though not invariably - works well and, crucially, is not controlled by the state and cannot be pressured by it. And can tell the state to get stuffed when it overreaches eg Ponting, the Colston Four. That is why authoritarians hate it and want to get rid of it. It must be resisted by all possible means.
This proposal shows how much contempt Labour has for us and our liberties.
Was Colston overreach? Not everyone agrees that its ok to vandalise things you don't like. I'd have preferred them found guilty but with a minimum penalty. I.e. they did the crime, but we understand and sympathise with why.
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
As always, two things can be true at once.
Is some criticism of Reeves misogynistic? Yes, because misogyny exists and I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that woman are often held to different standards. If you accept that then it does of course naturally follow that some of the criticism she attracts comes from that place.
But let’s not conflate criticism of her as being a poor steward of the economy as being down to her gender. She’s a poor steward of the economy. Her decisions have been highly questionable. Her political tactics have all backfired. She has contributed to a significant amount of economic uncertainty and loss of confidence in the UK. Criticism does not always equal prejudice.
More fundamentally, chess champion/enthusiast or not, why would she have a chess set placed so prominently in front of her at her desk at work, if not for the photo op and to get people like us talking about her chess prowess?
Whenever I see a chess board strategically placed in a promotional photo I always check to see if it is correctly set up. You would be amazed how often the board is the wrong way round. Non-players might be surprised to know there is a right and wrong way. Regular players spot the mistake instantly.
I guess the job of placing the board is delegated to an oik and the chances of that person knowing about this is less than fifty-fifty.
So if it is £12K for a cash ISA will the stocks and shares element still be £20K ?
20 in total, isn't it? So 12 can be cash and the next 8 has to be s+s, I guess.
The only time I've used the entire allowance is when I've had inheritances to deal with. Saving that much tax-free really is a nice bung for the very comfortably off.)
Thanks, that makes sense.
I used it twice. Once when my wife sold her house and once when she get her pension lump sum from the NhS.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
The Thatcher ideologues will never get it, nor will the lefties who are passionate about fairness with zero interest in the detail.
We are doomed to more of the same I fear.
Ah yes, the “Just let us have this one splurge, we won’t waste the money. Then costs will go down. Honest.”
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
Gove is another misfit who got plenty of personal flak. It's the game.
I don't really get the chess thing, she was clearly very good, probably top 1% of all players, but not elite. To get to that level demonstrates a decent level of logic, planning and reasoning skills. To get to elite, does the same, but also requires a level of obsession that is probably unhealthy for a national leader.
A bit of internet digging suggests that she did little chess other than schoolgirl competitions. She doesn’t have a public ELO (chess ranking).
Now if she could say she was 2,000 ELO, close to a Master ranking, then she might be taken seriously in the chess world.
Huh? Why is this relevant? She’s proud of what she’s done and rightly so. If a politician rugby player had some end of season award he won from the Old Rubberduckians RFC on his desk it wouldn’t even be mentioned. Certainly no one would go carp about “lack of representative honours”
When you’re making it the centerpiece of your pre-budget photo, one is entitled to investigate.
You’re entitled to “investigate” (although the word is overused - I once googled the late Stuart Dickson and made the mistake of outing myself by clicking his LinkedIn profile while logged into my own - you’d think I was stalking the fucker from the reaction) but your conclusion appears to be that she hadn’t earned it. Bollocks to that.
I've just had a bit of a Google and apparently this is an art piece from the 1960's by Yoko Ono. On websites that cover it the initial setup was correct, see here: https://robinlevertonart.com/2024/04/09/youre-overthinking-yoko-ono/ . So I assume this photo is from the latest installation but they've set the pieces up wrong. Has anybody checked to see if they have any upside-down Pollocks as well?
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
Gove is another misfit who got plenty of personal flak. It's the game.
I don't really get the chess thing, she was clearly very good, probably top 1% of all players, but not elite. To get to that level demonstrates a decent level of logic, planning and reasoning skills. To get to elite, does the same, but also requires a level of obsession that is probably unhealthy for a national leader.
A bit of internet digging suggests that she did little chess other than schoolgirl competitions. She doesn’t have a public ELO (chess ranking).
Now if she could say she was 2,000 ELO, close to a Master ranking, then she might be taken seriously in the chess world.
Huh? Why is this relevant? She’s proud of what she’s done and rightly so. If a politician rugby player had some end of season award he won from the Old Rubberduckians RFC on his desk it wouldn’t even be mentioned. Certainly no one would go carp about “lack of representative honours”
When you’re making it the centerpiece of your pre-budget photo, one is entitled to investigate.
Pretty pathetic trying to prove how clever you are by sticking a chess board in teh picture, what a wally. She could not run a bath.
Comments
If the issue is to make work pay, then you have to increase the rates of pay so that they provide an incentive to go to work even if, as @theProle states, some employees have difficulty* in doing so. So how do you make work pay? People may not be aware that UC is going up by more than inflation over the next few years in a rebalancing exercise. Add to that the increases in the Local Housing Allowance, and the net gap between working and being on benefits is tight.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10358/
So is all this Labour's fault? Well they did try to get some of the changes to benefits over the line but failed. The changes were changes to legislation** brought in by the Conservatives who you will already be aware have been in power for most of the time over the last 80 years. When you take over a government, you take over the legal detritus that comes with it - the legal dross from decades of tinkering.
Will this costs jobs? Yes and it should be welcomed as the disappearing jobs will be those that had marginal added value in the first place. Any of you in business (or still in business after the end of this parliament) will know you survive not by kicking your workforce or complaining, but by motivating them to achieve the policies you've set out. If you policies are crap, you'll reap your reward. Base in mind that high cost areas like the US with higher salaries than here seem to be able to generate the profits that are being used to purchase the rump of UK plc.
So hug a worker as they'll keep you in shoes for a while, if motivated.
* AKA Lazy bast**ds
* * Benefits are only paid in line with the underlying legislation. They are a (legal) right and not a gift.
Now we have someone who has probably been too busy to touch a chess set for a couple of decades but gets it wheeled out for a photo opportunity. How the country has declined.
Does anyone know what happened to Sunak's chessboards, that he was going to have planted around the country? Did any of them ever get installed? What money ended up being spent on them (and the application process councils would have to go through to get the funding to put one in)? I almost expect there to be a chess blog somewhere who has travelled to them all to play a game of chess on each one. If there are any.
The justice system is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. This is not about saving money or not having the money to spend. It is a power grab by an illiberal and authoritarian minded bunch of third rate politicians with little understanding of or appreciation for our history, our freedoms and the fundamentals of a truly liberal democracy.
If there was any bias shown by the magistrate in my case it was against the prosecution.
As for juries, I am reminded of Bismarck's comment regarding the making of laws and sausages. If you like them, best not to observe how they are made. When you have been on a few juries you wonder how so many come up with plausible decisions. Of the four I was on I should say one definitely gave a wrong verdict, two probably got it right, and one unquestionably got it right. As mentioned above, three were trivial cases, and could in my opinion have easily been handled by a simpler and easier process.
If we want to successfully reform our justice system from here, then we have to spend significant amounts of money. We have to be willing to pay more in tax.
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
In the Royal Court (equiv of Crown Court in UK) you only get a Jury for “serious” “Customary” offences like murder and Rape and you need a minimum of ten jurors out of 12 for a conviction.
Otherwise we have non jury trials, which aren’t magistrates court level, where the senior legal judges - Bailiff, Deputy Bailiff and Royal Commissioners sit alongside a minimum of two Jurats (lay persons who have had distinguished careers elected by a Commission of politicians and lawyers) for cases where punishment up to 4 years prison and minimum of 5 Jurats for more serious cases.
As a system it seems to work well however I’m not sure it could work in UK as the need for so many Judges/Jurats for each case to replace juries would be too onerous. The upside is that the decision of the court doesn’t rest with one judge.
I am generally supportive of paying more tax, and I agree that the roots of the present crisis lie in the money saved from the Justice budget in the Coalition years, but I don't think your argument is on good ground here.
But the solution to all things like this is not just “more tax.” In the immediate term, money is needed to fix things, and the government should be raising more by increasing rates of tax to do so. But moving forwards, its looking at how we grow the economy to produce more revenue, how we efficiently structure the state and society while keeping what we hold dear, and how we incentivise people to contribute.
This is in contrast to those politicians (Starmer) who follow the crowd, and assume the media is reflecting the views of the crowd.
I don't know which is worse.
If everything else in the country worked fine, then sure you could fix one small part of govt spending without significant tax rises. But the same situation applies throughout much of the public sector, water, transport, education - crumbling out of date infrastructure, lack of motivated permanent staff, poor or negligible use of technology, with process taking priority over outcomes and common sense.
This backlog, like the prisons and NHS, was created by the coalition's penny-pinching with no thought for the consequences, the system does not need much money but increasing numbers of Judges, counsel and CPS resources for case preparation will not be easy.
Though I suspect the whole thing would run a lot more efficiently with a far higher proportion of Solicitor Advocates.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
That's roughly equivalent to what the NHS spends on obesity every single day; every 8 hours of you include damage to the economy.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8e9kj8n9kko
What it will do is make people determinedto stuff Labour at every available opportunity starting at the local elections.
"The Chancellor will drag a million more people into tax by raising the tax threshold though she herself criticised this in 2023..."
And the mug with her name on it.
Spend £700 million on court infrastructure and staff, say. Rather than saving a shop windows worth of salmon. Think how many clerks you could hire to prepare juries for the courts.
Merge NI & IT to reduce the admin overhead.
Buy the “world beating” ACV that actually exists - CV-90. Aside from it actually working, costing a fraction of what Ajax does, it will reduce the burden on the NHS.
Train U.K. medics overseas. Using the overseas aid budget - it will be supporting developing world health systems, after all. Then we have more medics - so less agency staff on the NHS (cheaper), less stress on the existing NHS staff (retainment), more U.K. citizens with qualifications for jobs which are in high demand…
This is about running procurement and government intelligently. Cost control and productivity - both are not being done.
I’m being “sarcastic”. I’m saying the opposite of what I mean.
Imagine if your teacher at the school you still go to spent all day talking about what colour socks you wore instead of helping you learn maths! I was annoyed because people are talking about silly things like:
1. Where the Chancellor keeps her chessboard
2. How she does her hair
instead of talking about her actual job (which is handling the country's money - super important stuff!).
It's like if everyone talked about what a doctor wore to work instead of whether they're good at helping sick people!
Does that make it easier to understand, even for you? Or do I have to explain like you’re 2, not 5, which I previously thought the appropriate level.
Another benefit of not making one's profile private which has been banned but I note a lot of people are still doing it. I don't know why as there is nothing private in making your profile private and just makes life difficult for others to do what I was able to do re Dura.
The below screenshot is from the BMA but it highlights how ridiculous the situation is. Luckily my partner has got an interview so fingers crossed. She can certainly do the job.
Whereas if everything is treated as too serious for that it becomes performative parroting of views, not discussion - which includes the inane too.
I remember in the aftermath of a budget the country was focussed of when and where the Chancellor and PM had their last pasty.
Oh for such innocent days, we’d all take an omnishambles budget like that today.
Too little monitoring and you lose control and oversight - too much and you stifle activity, there's a balance.
As to how you split the pie, that's a political decision.
1. Reform would win the most seats. A 6pp vote share lead is enough for that with FPTP, and the known geographical concentration/distribution of Reform votes, though the extent/efficacy of tactical voting would make a big difference to the final numbers and coalition permutations.
2. The Tories - losing more votes - would be likely to fall behind the Liberal Democrats in terms of seats.
3. A record number of seats would be won on very low shares of the vote with very small majorities. Consequently, much larger numbers of voters will not have voted for their local MP than has been normal, leaving more voters dissatisfied with the election result.
Some years ago, to try and end the evils of nepotism in the NHS, they introduced a hilariously rigid form to fill in to apply for jobs.
In one instance, a doctor was not given the option of putting in that he had done a full PhD on the exact specialism he was applying for (in addition to his other pill rolling degrees)
And suspects are always guilty. Otherwise they wouldn’t be suspect, would they?
Send him down for 20 years. Just in case.
Mind you Pinniped as a lawyer? That’s sounds suspicious. And anything suspicious is a bit… suspect…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c2emg1kj1klt
But you know, I think Doug Seal is right. Politicians should be judged on policies rather than appearance. Perhaps none of them should be allowed to post photographs or videos on social media, unless it is to announce something of material importance to the nation. AI voiceover only, and text of the speech.
They should also be mandated to wear drab uniforms, including headwear, to the House of Commons, so no voter is influenced by attractive clothing or hairstyles
That's not a prediction, because Reeves and Starmer have been so politically inept over the past 16 months that they may not appreciate both the danger and the opportunity. If they continue in that vein they really do deserve the boot from Labour MPs.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
barrister chambers will be starting on £50k plus.
After ten years commercial lawyers will also be earning about double their criminal counterparts. Only if they become KCs can criminal barristers make six figures but city law firm partners and commercial KCs can make seven figure salaries
Real productivity and spending control would maybe save maybe fractions of a percent per year. But would be cumulative.
Ongoing hard work rather than childish nonsense with chainsaws.
Same for reducing regulation costs on business. None of the “bonfire of red tape” stuff. Just a steady, considered reduction, year by year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#Setup
We are doomed to more of the same I fear.
Who knows if the artist (Yoko Ono) intended this. She's still among us. Someone should ask her.
Instead of trial and prison - a TV show where the suspects are hunted by the public/professional hunters.
If they are caught, they die. If they stay alive and free for 30 days, they get a cash prize.
Turn justice into a profit centre, with popular participation.
I used it twice. Once when my wife sold her house and once when she get her pension lump sum from the NhS.
That has never worked, in all of history.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
https://players.chessbase.com/en/player/Reeves_Rachel/685806