Everyone has a right to my opinions
On the morning of 24th June 2016 I wrote a post on my blog entitled ‘Here’s What We Need To Do Now’.
The ‘we’ in that post were the Remainers. I recommended we refrained from moaning about racist, insular Brexiteers and instead adopted a conciliatory attitude. To accept that a bad decision had been made but then endeavour to make withdrawal from the EU work.
None of that happened, of course. Continue reading “Why Are We Following Panic Brexit?”
Ant McPartlin’s drink driving conviction and record £86,000 fine in Monday gives me an excuse to finally publish a post that has been sitting in blog purgatory for eight years.
Ant’s car crash is the latest example of fabulously wealthy TV and sports stars behaving badly in vehicles. Yaya Touré was handed a record-at-the-time £54,000 fine for drink-driving in 2016. Further back in time, we may recall the former Chelsea defender Ashley Cole was clocked doing 104mph in his Lamborghini, and John Terry has a penchant for parking in disabled bays.
Continue reading “Social Exclusion at the Top”
The United Kingdom Supreme Court today handed down its judgment in the case of R (UNISON) v Lord Chancellor – a case about the charging of Employment Tribunal Fees. The court ruled that the way the government was charging fees for tribunal claims hampered access to justice, and was therefore unlawful. A defeat for the government and a success for UNISON, the union that brought the case.
The Court’s judgment [PDF] is 42 pages long, but lawyers on Twitter have been urging everyone to read the section entitled ‘The constitutional right of access to the courts’. Lord Reed, writing the unanimous verdict, reminds us that access to the courts is “inherent in the rule of law” and that the people, even those of slender means, must be able to access the courts in order to have the laws passed by parliament enforced. Continue reading “People Are Sharing This UK Supreme Court Judgment And It's Democratic AF”
The incredible gravity of the U.S. Presidential election pulled all of our attention towards Donald Trump and his scandalous behaviour. His unexpected victory will have us reeling for weeks to come. His forthcoming presidency will probably be a permenant distraction. Just as his presidential primary rivals failed to get their message across, so other pressing issues will surely be crowded out by a general obsession and fascination with Mr Trump.
Here is one such issue that has not received the attention it deserves: the Republican-controlled Senate’s refusal to confirm, or even hold hearings on Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s choice for the United States Supreme Court.
Continue reading “The Disgraceful Behaviour of the Senate on the Supreme Court Opening”
Last month, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) published a report on Violence Against Women. It received significant pick-up in the media due to the high number of revenge porn prosecutions that have been brought since a new law was introduced.
I made a Freedom of Information request to the CPS, to ask whether they could tell me how many of the victims in the cases they prosecuted were women. I assumed they would have this information to hand.
I received a reply to my request today. It turns out that they do not keep track of that information. Continue reading “I Made A Freedom of Information Request About Revenge Porn Prosecutions, and What I Learned Will Be Mildly Diverting If You're Interested in This Sort of Thing”