Voters back restricting trial by jury (but not for themselves) – politicalbetting.com
Voters back restricting trial by jury (but not for themselves) – politicalbetting.com
With the government proposing to scrap jury trials for crimes carrying a sentence of less than 5 years in order to try and clear the courts backlog, Britons are split on the proposalSupport: 41%Oppose: 36%yougov.co.uk/topics/polit…
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Just scrap the spend on digital ID and put it into the Justice Dept.
I think they have now missed the opportunity to be a reforming Government, at least without a second term.
It was not a manifesto commitment
Every Illegal Act Trump Committed in 2025 (So Far)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hybL-GJov7M
Starmer could also go nuclear and ask rhe King to appoint 300 peers so the Lords reflect the membership of the Commons.
From my experience you usually get three or four jurors who say nothing and just vote with the crowd.
Smaller numbers anyone?
Everyone who was expecting an ‘exit tax’ and planning accordingly, will now carry on doing so in the expectation that will now happen next year instead.
What I am not quite sure about is how one clears the backlog quickly without needing to recruit lots more staff at all the choke points in the legal sausage machine. And ending with a reasonable balance of stuff which is still useful in the future rather than being 'wasted'. THe Nightingale Hospitals were never used - though that can't be called waste: it wasn't predictable at the time.
The clear impression I get is of years, especially under Mr Osborne, of skimping and shutting down everywhere the HO could.
For instance modernising jury selection to the legal equivalent of ERNIE* doesn't help with a shortage of criminal lawyers, so the pay rates for defence counsel need to be increased (baaad acc to the DT and DM, which is as we all know what SKS is most terrified of, surpassing all else).
But if one worked through things ... eg nissen huts for courtrooms like Nightingale Hospitals ... or simply had a go at modernising the system permanently as one went along ...
*Which does fail in the sense of seeing justice to be done in front of you, in contrast to paper lots in a bowl. But if people are happy with Premium Bonds ...?
This is madness and it wont happen and to think it was being discussed and planned for under Starmer - a frigging human rights lawyer - is incredible.
What I have gleaned so far is a lot of clutter, some serious back ending of tax liabilities in future years and a general feeling of meh. Absolutely no attempt to address or even acknowledge our serious underlying problems (just like Reeves' first budget) and every chance that the entire quarter of paralysis is going to be repeated next year. There is some relief that it was not worse but worse would have been better if it was actually looking to achieve something other than the pretence of business as usual.
Patrick Bishop's biog I seem to remember reading - it was acceptable enough but I didn't feel the need to keep it. There is another biog by Routledge which I have not read.
"If you were guilty, which would give you a better chance of being found not guilty?"
Sometimes juries ignore the letter of the law. Sometimes they come out with a ridiculous verdict.
Unless you have a public-spirited employer you'll be out of pocket, you stand a small chance of getting a long case. It's a lot of "waiting to do nothing" and being to come back tomorrow
Then we have the Irish question. No change to the plan for norniron even though people go abroad a lot. No exemption for driving abroad. Apparently you will pay per mile abroad because you would if it was fuel duty - but you don't pay duty on fuel bought outside the UK. Being charged a tax on something not done in the UK with no tax due to the UK on any other vehicle? Will be a fun court case.
Metrics on my improv reaction video yesterday have been off the scale. I'm going to pick the details apart in another video next week. Will have less traffic but its still free money...
I wouldn't listen to the lawyers too much, they tend to only see the risks in things.
I recently fell down a social media rabbit hole and some Faragist type (very anti Ukraine/NATO) said that according to that prize idiot Enoch Powell, Airey Neave was assassinated by the Yanks to ensure a united Ireland would join NATO.
I mean why they didn't assassinate Roy Mason is bugging me, what was so special about Lt. Col Neave?
Whether its hurty words, burning religious books, or holding up banners supporting homicidal psychopaths, there's a history of juries holding up a single finger to an over energetic Crown wishing to curtail traditional concepts of liberty and freedom.
There's a lot on remand but are the govt limited in the rate at which they can clear the backlog by lack of prison space. Also maxed out. Does it require temporary prisons to absorb the backlog?
Where are additional legal counsel, CPS case workers etc coming from at short notice?
It's not as simple as extra funding. It looks like it will have to be cleared gradually.
I’m still of the opinion that if they knew the Budget was going to be unpopular, they should have bitten the bullet and raised income tax. At least they’d have generated decent money. Something like 5p on income tax 20% rate, while cutting employee NI by 3%.
Instead, as with last year, they’ve upset everyone without raising serious money.
You are a Labour politician/SPAD wanting to run something up the flagpole to see who salutes.
Do you leak stuff to a paper, like the Mail/Telegraph, that actively hates you?
edit/ Given his various wartime experiences with underground movements, you could argue that his political view on that was surprisingly naive?
"Her new [property] tax – a toxic mix of two hated levies, council tax and IHT – is equivalent to detonating a time bomb under Middle England."
"Socialism is back, and the property-owning democracy is out. Labour has declared war on social mobility, on petit bourgeois values, on the consumer society and on conservative Britain."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/26/britain-now-socialist-country-what-reeves-budget-means/
Barring unexpected scandals or disasters Starmer and Reeves should now be safe until the May local elections, giving themselves time to shore up support. But the cost of choosing this [less bold] option is that, once again, the truly difficult decisions have been put off for later and little has been done to deal with the big problems facing the country.
https://x.com/laraincornwall/status/1993749174404444230
Can we talk about the business rate value reassessment. Our pub: £18,500 to £73,500.
Please explain @RachelReevesMP
I’m numb.
#hospitality
OTOH, it does demonstrate the power of doing a flat 0.75%/1% charge instead - much easier to defend in the media than the complicated thing they have actually come up with.
That is impossible. But it is the job of strong, good governments to communicate and take people on that journey with them. Labour have ceded any chance of being such a government, and we will all pay for it as a result.
And if pubs like that go under, it's fewer jobs and no business rates at all.
Borrowing is set to be higher than previously forecast in 2025-26, 2026-27, 2027-28 and 2028-29, before falling below the previous forecast in 2029-30. This means that despite the significant consolidation, total borrowing is expected to be £57 billion more over the five years to 2029-30 than expected in March.
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/autumn-budget-2025-initial-response#:~:text=Borrowing is set to be,30 than expected in March.
https://www.gov.uk/introduction-to-business-rates/revaluation
And relief for pubs etc:
https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-business-rate-relief/retail-discount
Getting the immediately coming year's figures to balance was the difficult part.
There's plenty of stuff they could do of far greater significance, outside of the budget process.
*Cough* planning and regulatory reform.
But that would also require a degree of bold radicalism.
Thanks for the link.
I'm not especially a fan of the jury system for relatively minor offences, and the long delays seem to me a more serious problem. But it does create an insight into crime which many of us simply don't have.
One point in case: sentencing is often delayed because pre-sentencing reports are not completed in time. Apply additional resource to solving that. It may then result in sentencing being delayed because of X or Y. Then focus on that.
The problem with many politicians (and the media/voters) is they only care about an arbitrary goal - they don’t think about continuous improvement
They really don't want White Brits to enjoy anything in life.
https://x.com/snurfliquor/status/1993958490046648758?s=61&t=c6bcp0cjChLfQN5Tc8A_6g
Think about what a pub is and provides. Communists like Rachel hate that. Pubs allow people to get together to talk share stories etc. Be a community. I have said it before but hospitality should bar politicians make them unwelcome politely of course they work against you.
https://x.com/ataylorfpga/status/1993951172940714335?s=61&t=c6bcp0cjChLfQN5Tc8A_6g
The day after this feels like a very old Labour budget, but lacking the old Labour hope. Three stand outs: Nothing tough on benefits class, including on that smaller group the benefits junkies; nothing much tough on pensioners (though slightly raised tax on savings). But no comfort for workers apart from much poorer ones with loads of children (a group I am on the side of!).
Borrowing: dire
Growth plan: dire
Vision: zero
Back ending: loads - so much that it feels like a government expecting to hand over the poisoned chalice by 2028/9.
Missed: the chance (which will not come again to this government) of a truly reforming budget. Gladstone, Howe, Clarke have not been toppled.
Conclusion: Social democracy done badly, unsteady as she goes.
(The IFS is incredibly useful as a resource, especially for those who can't access the FT).
I see this disconnect often in IT due to the great personality gap between most managers and most techies but I'm sure it's the same in many other industries too.
Still some honesty boxes in north Cumberland at the end of farm tracks and smallholdings.
I totally agree about the absence of real reform though. I'd like to see something much bolder but we won't get that from Starmer and Reeves.
Scale it all down. As for Juries. Why would twelve random people with their own prejudices be better than say three who are trained and who could be regularly assessed?
I was hoping that Osborne's Jack-in-a-Box £175k transferrable allowance would go, amongst other things. But no dice.
But to do it properly would require changes to the Gift regime, especially the gifts out of "not required" income being tax free. That is a charter for useless loafing offspring of very wealthy people *.
* See Charlie Gilmour.
1) not spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon risks violating human rights and international law.
2) using automated facial recognition, which has an extensive history of bias and abuse is awesome.
3) trying to get rid of end to end encryption online is awesome. It’s used to protect people in horrible regimes around the world - aside from protecting everything we do.
4) removing the right to jury trial for most offences is no problem. Just admin