Not Fit For Purpose

I’ve just finished the latest round of Judicial training, this time on the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, 2012.

I can’t speak for the Act in its entirety, and suspect that most of it will have little relevance to either the Magistrates’ Courts, or indeed the punishment of offenders, something this Government seems determined to avoid doing at all costs.
However, one clause, buried deep in Schedule 11, section 8, sub - section (3), paragraph (d) will have a considerable effect, on the courts, the administration of justice and the safety of the public in general, and it is this:

“A justice of the peace may not remand a person in, or commit a person to, custody if it appears to the justice of the peace that there is no real prospect that the person will be sentenced to a custodial sentence in the proceedings.”

So what does that mean in real terms?

Where a petty criminal, whose crime might not in itself merit imprisonment, comes before the court and who, on his or her past record will, as soon as they are released, go on to commit further offences, it will no longer be possible to give society some respite from his or her activities by keeping them in jail until they are sentenced. Out they will go to re-offend, and it all probability keep on doing so such that it will be impossible to ever keep them in one place (prison) long enough to sentence them.

Where a court has substantial grounds to believe that if released on bail an accused person will threaten or otherwise intimidate witnesses into not giving evidence against them, in a case where again prison might not be a realistic option, but a high-level community order might be, such as most cases of common assault and the less serious assaults occasioning actual bodily harm, then the court will have to release the accused and accept that witnesses will be intimidated and the case will never come to trial.

Where a court imposes conditions on an accused’s bail, such as residence, a night-time curfew, or staying away from their victim/s, in cases such as harassment or racially or religiously aggravated harassment where no violence is threatened, and the accused decides to ignore a condition, or all the conditions, the court will have no option but to release the person to go on doing whatever it is he or she wants.

Where the court knows damn well that if released the person before them will abscond and not turn up for trial, because he’s done it umpteen times before, but his crime is not so serious that he faces jail, then we will just have to let him go and accept we’ll never see him again.

Now if all this sounds to you like the “Punishment of Offenders” then you’ll be content.

Me?

I’m disgusted at this back-door attempt by a weak-willed government to reduce the prison population and it’s total lack of any attempt to tackle crime in this country.
The first duty of any government is the protection of its citizens – by that measure alone this government is not fit for purpose.

BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS

Mel Greig  

Michael Christian and 

Australian broadcaster 2Day FM

In memory of Jacintha Saldanha, 1966-2012

Jail Might Make You Depressed

Let's see if I've got this right:

A certain female ex-MP stole £53000 in the worst of all case of MP expenses fraud yet did not have to appear in court nor enter a plea to the 15 charges of false accounting and six of using false information she faced because the likelyhood of imminent imprisonment had made her too depressed to stand trial - well it would wouldn't it?

Despite a  jury in a rare ‘trial of issue’ finding that the case against this woman was ‘proved’ she will not be punished nor receive a criminal record.

I wonder how long it will be, now the cloud of two or three years in jail has been lifted from her thieving head, before she makes a remarkable recovery from her present 'depressed state'?

Answers on a postcard please to His Honour Mr Justice Saunders at Southwark Crown Court.

Shining a Light in the Dark

One of my Favourite ‘Blogs’ is Diary Of A Legal Eagle but trawling through it the other day I was surprised at how often the posts would, had they been written by a Magistrate, seem to be in direct contradiction of the Senior Presiding Judge’s edict (sorry – ‘guidance’) on ‘blogging’, ie “expressing opinions which, were it to become known that they hold judicial office, could damage public confidence in their own impartiality or in the judiciary in general”.

For example:
On Saturday, 13 October 2012 he called a decision of the Chief Magistrate “highly questionable” and on Friday, 19 October 2012 he was highly critical of certain police offices who, he implied, fabricated evidence in a motoring case

Magistrates also came in for criticism; on Wednesday, 29 August 2012, calling one particular bench “incompetent and uncompassionate”. On Tuesday, 14 August 2012 he implied that some Magistrates behaved “like some sort of extortion racket” during fine imposition or enforcement and on Wednesday, 22 February 2012 he accused some magistrates of bullying advocates during Case Management Hearings.

The court system itself didn’t escape either for on Sunday, 4 March 2012 he reported turning up for a 10am trial only to find the court had listed the case for 2pm but hadn't thought to tell anyone.

I could go on but won't for the point really is this:
all or any of the above comments might be thought by some, but not by me for I welcome anyone who shines a light in the dark, no matter if it shines on me, to damage public confidence.............in the judiciary in general”.

It seems to me there is one law, or 'guidanace' for some but not for others. And here I was thinking that all men were equal under the law!

Will I never learn?

Let Them Do Their Worst

Following the general outcry against the recent restrictions placed upon Magistrates 'blogging', or other wise expressing opinions 'on-line'

HERE

AND HERE

the Magistrates Liaison Group discussed the issue at its meeting on the 23rd October and the Chairman of Council of the Magistrates Association, John Fassenfelt, who supports the restrictions, presented the arguments for and against to the meeting.

The Group concluded that the 'guidance' had been approved by members of the Senior Judiciary and so it was not felt that there was a case to withdraw or amend it.

So much for the MA sticking up for the rank and file magistrate and the time-honoured concept of freedom of speech.

I for one intend to ignore the 'guidance' and let them do their worst.
European Court of Human Rights here I come.

Despair

I despair at the continuing inequalities in sentencing.

A Leeds football fan attacked the Sheffield Wednesday goalkeeper, leaving him essentially unarmed but 'shocked and dazed' and for Common Assault received a 16 week prison sentence.
Joanne Armstrong carried out a 'very violent' attack as the ringleader of a gang of thugs, stamping on her victim with her stiletto shoe leaving him with a fractured jaw. Having pleaded guilty to causing Grievous Bodily Harm she walked free with a derisory eight month suspended sentence.

Why is this so unequal?
Lets look at the Sentencing Guidelines, which all courts are bound to follow.
Common Assault
Injury less serious, = lesser harm and with no higher culpability factors puts it into category 3, or at the worse category 2.
Aggravating features, in a public place, mitigating features, single blow, cancel each other out.
Entry point for sentencing, at category 3 a fine, at category 2, a medium level community order.
16 weeks custody? How?

Now for GBH.
Serious injury (a broken jaw) and a sustained assault = greater harm
Use of a weapon (a shod foot) and a leading role in a gang = greater culpability which puts this firmly into category 1, for which the starting point for sentencing is 3 years imprisonment.
8 months suspended?
How?

I continue to despair.

21st Century Policing

What is it with the police?

Ian Tomlinson, a homeless newspaper salesman, was pushed to the ground by a police officer and an inquest jury ruled he had been 'unlawfully killed' and that the police officer used 'excessive and unreasonable force' which led to his death.

The Gwent Police attack the car of a 73 year old with boots and batons, so severely that they cause £9800 worth of damage, for nothing more than a minor traffic infringement.
Read it HERE

They are viewed by a large part of the population as the enemy rather than the protector of the public.

They present, and seem to relish, in presenting a frightening appearance, clad more like para-militarists than bobbies.

Now Chorley police attack a blind 62 year old man with a Taser, a 50,000 volt electric stun gun, for carrying a white stick which they thought was a Samurai sword!
I don't know which is worse, the fact that they attacked an innocent man, or that they can't tell the difference between a white stick and a sword.
See if you can differentiate between them

(the sword is on the right).

I wonder how much longer 'policing by consent' can survive in such circumstances, and while this seems to be the vision of 21st Century policing.

Tough but Unintelligible

So hug-a-hoodie  'Call me Dave'  Cameron in a major law and order speech says he wants a tough but intelligent approach to law and order, whatever that means.
What seems certain is that he will not countenance the provision of more prison places but will continue Ken Clarke's mantra of 'Community Punishments'.
He sugars this particular pill by saying that in future all 'community punishments' will contain an element of.........punishment!
Well I never, don't they now then?
Obviously not!

He also seemed to suggest that outside groups would be involved in the provision of non-custodial sentences, with 'payment by results'.
Given that over half of those sentenced to 'community punishments' go on to re-offend within twelve months it would take a brave organisation to take on a task which history tells us is doomed to failure.

A definition of insanity is continuing to repeat the same failed course of action in the hope of a different outcome next time, a good definition of 'community punishments'!

Trafalgar Day

Today is Trafalgar Day, the celebration of the victory won by the Royal Navy, commanded by Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson over the combined French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805

Legal Aid and Duty Solicitors, or the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Traffic court yesterday revealed an interesting aside to the Governments restrictions on legal aid, particularly the duty solicitor scheme which operates in all courts. For the uninitiated, duty solicitors provide free legal advice and representation to un-represented defendants in court, although their free help and advice only extends, in most cases, to those facing an allegation which upon conviction carries imprisonment.

Thus, those facing allegations of driving without insurance, or licence, speeding and other such offences, must either employ a solicitor of their own or represent themselves, which is what most choose to do.

A number of cases came before the court yesterday which illustrated the difficulty caused by un-represented defendants.

One was charged with 'no insurance', despite having an insurance certificate which clearly showed he was insured, to drive a third-parties car not belonging to him, and a police report from the Motor Insurer’s Bureau saying he was insured, but not to drive a third party's car!

This case had to be adjourned for further enquiries to be made as we could not be confidant enough of guilt to convict.

Another was a defendant accused of driving without a licence, despite producing a full clean licence to the court. In this case it was reported that the DVLA had rescinded (wrongly as it turned out) her licence, a quick check with the DVLA revealed that after being stopped by the police, and a DVLA check having been carried out, the DVLA, realising their mistake, had promptly re-instated her licence, at no time informing the luckless driver what they had done.

The CPS took the wise decision to offer no further evidence and the case was dismissed.

Another unfortunate driver, having been stopped by the police and given a 'producer', to produce his document within five days at a police station, was charged with having no insurance, no licence, no MOT and failing to produce his documents as required.

In court he not only produced documents showing he had a full clean driving licence, comprehensive insurance and an up-to-date MOT certificate, he also had a receipt from his local police station showing all these documents had been produced within the required timescale, and that they were all in order.

Again, an embarrassed CPS solicitor was forced to offer no evidence and invite us to dismiss the charges.

None of the above, and a raft of similar 'cock-ups' were the fault of the CPS, who can only work with the information given them, but each case took upwards of half an hour to resolve, given the difficulties a court always faces when dealing with un-represented defendants who know nothing of court procedures, and often little about road traffic law and regulations.

Had these defendants been able to call upon the Duty Solicitor it is likely that none would have taken more than a few minutes to resolve, and may not even have got into court. Instead, for those three cases alone, one and a half hours of court time, three magistrates, a court clerk, an usher and a Crown Prosecutor were engaged in fruitless activity while 'genuine' cases went by-the-by.

I can't begin to guess what the cost of all this was, but I'll bet my pension it far exceeds what twenty minutes of a duty solicitor's cost would be.

The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

Rooting Out Evil

There's a disturbing report in today's 'Mail Online'

read it here

regarding South Yorkshire Police, as if they haven't adequately blotted their copybook by a 23 year long cover-up of their deceit regarding the Hillsborough tragedy.

Documents released yesterday reveal that South Yorkshire Police turned a blind eye to allegations of the sexual abuse of white girls by gangs of Pakistani men for more than a decade.
It would seem that a string of warnings going back to 2000 were ignored by the authorities and in some cases police action was taken against the victims rather than the perpetrators, such as the 13-year-old girl, arrested for a public order offence after being found drunk at 3am in a derelict house with a ‘large group of adult males’ who had plied her with vodka and who the police allowed to just walk away.

In 2002, Home Office-funded research criticised officers for treating young victims as ‘deviant and promiscuous’ while ‘the men they were found with were never questioned or investigated’.

Research, reports and case files also reveal that Rotherham Council was desperate to cover up any racial link to the abuse of young girls. Revealing their fears, and their desperation to cover up the racial element of the abuse, a 2010 report from the Rotherham Safeguarding Children Board (?) said the crimes had ‘cultural characteristics ... which are locally sensitive in terms of diversity’, but warned of ‘sensitivities of ethnicity with potential to endanger the harmony of community relationships’.

As clear an indication of their political correctness and double-think as you could wish for.

This same Council even went so far down the road of denial that they offered a vulnerable white girl who was sexually abused by an Asian gang lessons in Urdu and Punjabi after her ordeal.

It's a disgrace, a profound miscarriage of justice and a gross disservice to the whole South Yorkshire community, be it Christian, Muslim, black, white or any other socio-racial grouping to sweep under the carpet something that has become all too apparent in Manchester, Bradford and elsewhere - that Asian men, unable to have extra-marital sex with girls of their own race, who's virtue is considered sacrosanct, seek out white girls, abuse them with drink or drugs, and use them for sexual gratification.
It isn't pleasant, it does no part of the Muslim community credit, but pretending, as Rotherham Council and South Yorkshire Police seem to do, that it just isn't happening, is not the way forward.

I quote Denis MacShane, MP for Rotherham, who said:
‘There’s a culture here of denial and cover-up and a refusal to accept the reality that we have men living in the Rotherham community who treat young girls as objects for their sexual pleasure. It’s time to tell the truth. We must root out this evil.’

Battle of Britain Day

"Never in the field of human conflict, was so much owed, by so many, to so few"

Winston S Churchill

Double Think on Freedom of Speech

Looking through one of my favourite blogs ‘The Diary of a Legal Eagle’ (and one wonders why lawyers are not precluded from blogging, as Magistrates are?) I came across an interesting bit of double-think.

In the 2012 case of Chambers v DPP (a case brought under s.127 of the Communications Act 2003), the Lord Chief Justice no less said in judgement for the plaintiff

"The 2003 Act did not create some newly minted interference with the first of President Roosevelt’s essential freedoms – freedom of speech and expression. Satirical, or iconoclastic, or rude comment, the expression of unpopular or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, banter or humour, even if distasteful to some or painful to those subjected to it should and no doubt will continue at their customary level, quite undiminished by this legislation."

A pity the Senior Presiding Judge, and the Chairman of Council of the Magistrates’ Association, didn’t have those words in mind when formulating their recent ban on Magistrates blogging.

As to the question I asked at the top of this post, it would seem that barristers, officers of the High Court, can publish blogs highly critical of certain decisions in the Magistrates’ Courts, going so far as to name the particular benches, a move quite likely to, in the SPJ’s words “damage public confidence in their own impartiality or in the judiciary in general”. 

They, the lawyers, can make such comments without risk of censure, is that because judges such as the Senior Presiding Judge are ex-barristers themselves, that all lawyers must stick together but Lay Magistrates are just ignorant little people to be controlled.

Surely not, for that would be an exhibition of extreme prejudice, and quite unthinkable.
 

The Wonderful World of IT

Court today and an opportunity to see the CPS's new digital process in operation.

see here for the plan

The Crown Prosecutor's laptop looked like something found in a skip, and performed like one! Time after time her attempt to connect to the Internet, and so access various case files, failed.
Records of past offending, vital under the new Guidelines for assessing seriousness - not available!
Details of convictions previously dealt with by a Conditional Discharge, and liable for re-sentencing - not available!
Current bail conditions - not available (although the defendant kindly provided them himself)!

It's not the Prosecutors' fault, they are doing their best with inadequate equipment and a system not up to the task, but that's no help to the Courts.

Welcome to the future.

Good news, and not so good

The good news is that I'm delighted to be proved wrong.!
See here
It would seem the Crown Prosecution Service has had a rush of common sense and instructed the Leicestershire Police, after three days in custody, to release the man and wife who shot two burglars at their home.
They are not to be charged but the burglars are - hooray!

Some more good news is that, at long last, the Government intends to make squatting a criminal offence, time will tell just how the police will react to such matters in the future.

The best news of all is that at last we are rid of Ken Clarke as Justice Secretary, how his successor will fare we shall have to wait and see, but he can't be any worse.

The not so good news comes fromTeeside Crown Court where a true disciple of Ken Clarke, His Honour Judge Peter Bowers, a self-proclaimed 'softie', praises the courage of a three-times burglar!
Now it must be obvious I'm no fan of the Sentencing Guidelines but they're there and we, and Judge Bowers, are stuck with them.
It would seem that Richard Rochford broke into three houses, two of which were occupied at the time, one by a 73 year old man and his 71 year old wife, and attempted to burgle another one, stealing a considerable amount of property including making off with one of his victim's cars.
If the Guidelines on sentencing had been followed then such multiple offences, committed at night to occupied properties and under the influence of drugs, ought to have resulted in a sentence of 3 years imprisonment, reduced to 2 years for a guilty plea. In fact Judge Bowers imposed a 12 month sentence, suspended for 12 months and his praise for the criminal has led to a number of complaints, and an official investigation into his comments by the Office for Judicial Complaints, although, regrettably, not into his sentencing.

It has been said that Judge Bowers is one of the tougher judges at Teeside Crown Court, God help us if that's the case.

Swift and Sure? Or An Admission of Failure

I've been reading the White Paper, "Swift and Sure Justice: The Government’s Plans for Reform of the Criminal Justice System".

Yes I know, I need to get a life!

Whilst there is a lot in the proposals with which I agree the over-riding conclusion is that it represents an admission of failure by the Government to deal with the Criminal Justice System.

For example:
The paper says "The unprecedented rise in the use of out-of-court sanctions ...... has raised concerns about whether they have been used appropriately".

Well Magistrates have been saying this for some time, it's taken long enough for the Government to realise this folly of its own making.

Also, "alcohol related harm is estimated to cost society £21 billion each year" and "The Government’s Alcohol Strategy........includes introducing stronger powers for local areas to control the density of licensed premises including making the impact on health a consideration".

Isn't this the because the last Government introduced a free-for-all in licensing hours, and removed from local Magistrates the power to control alcohol licensing?

On community sentences, the paper is proposing reform:
"to make them an effective and credible means of tackling the high rate of re-offending".

Could this be an admission that they are neither effective or credible?

On IT, and I've mentioned this before, here the paper admits that:
"Significant resources have been invested in technology over the last decade. However, the public has not seen sufficient return on these substantial investments..................projects such as Libra, in the magistrates’ courts, and C-NOMIS for offender management suffered severe delays, ran over budget and did not deliver the functionality promised.
Poor investment decisions led to wasted resources, with programmes implemented in a way which reinforced the silo working approach, rather than helping to overcome it. There are few examples of criminal justice agencies sharing services; the agencies’ systems are not well integrated with one another" .

What an admission of failure!

It doesn't get any better, on video the paper admits it will aim to:
"create a unified infrastructure that will allow full interoperability of all different HMCTS video equipment so that every camera can be used with every screen".

Because at present it doesn't, often the police provide video evidence that the court's video player can't read, you couldn't make it up!

I don't know what to make of the proposals to:
"empower a lay magistrate, sitting alone, to deal with certain low-level uncontested cases, in some cases outside traditional court buildings".
The paper says it is about
"magistrates, engaging with the people in their communities ".

This from a Government that has presided over the wholesale slaughter of local justice in the closing of hundreds of local court houses, no wonder they talk of dealing with cases "outside traditional court buildings".

That's because there aren't any truly 'local' ones anymore!

A Rotten State

It can't be right that 70 year old man, born in what was then British India, to a British Army Officer father and who can trace his British ancestry back to the 14th Century has had his passport revoked and is facing deportation!

The Home Office and UK Boarder Agency are congenitally incapable of deporting thousands of illegal immigrants, and such undesirables as the Muslim hate cleric Abu Qatada, but give them a decent upstanding citizen whose family has served this country faithfully and well for 120 years and they're lightning fast with the deportation order.

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark".
Hamlet (Act 1 - Scene 4), Marcellus to Horatio

Just Deserts?

Four men break into a house during the night and two of them are shot, not fatally, by the homeowner.

One might think that a dose of buckshot up the behind is just what they deserved.

Needless to say, the police see things differently and the homeowner and his wife are arrested.

Despite the Governemnt's assurance last November that 'the law is on their side' when homeownwers try to protect themselves and their homes against intruders, what's the betting that the would-be burglars will be let off with a 'Community Punishment', if they are even charged, but that the easy-target homeowner will end up in jail?

On This Day

At 11 o'clock, 73 years ago today, the British ultimatum to Germany, to withdraw its troops from Poland, expired and a state of war thus existed between Britain and its Empire and Nazi Germany.

Australia declared war on Germany along with Britain, France at 5 pm the same day, South Africa followed on 6th September with Canada's declaration coming on the 10th.

Thus began a conflict which echos to this day and from which stemmed directly the rise of Russia and the USA to super-power status, with the concurrent demise of both the French and British Empires as their colonies and dependencies moved towards independence.
It led to the Cold War, the European Convention on Human Rights, the formation of the EU and the founding of the State of Israel.

It also caused the deaths of over 60 million people, more than 2.5% of the world's population.

First Again

Since India announced it was planning a mission to Mars, that it was spending £1000,000,000 on buying three warships from Russia, and that the Indian economy has grown by more than the £280 million pounds in aid we provide there as been an outpouring of consternation at our largess.
Well you read it  here
and here first!

Magistrates and Blogging

Along with other Magistrates who 'blog' it would appear that I shall shortly have to amend my blog to conform to a diktat issued by the Judicial Office and supported by no less than the Deputy Senior Presiding Judge and the Magistrates' Association.

The essence of this supposed 'guidance' is:

"Officer holders who blog (or who post comments on other people’s blogs) must not identify themselves as members of the judiciary. They must also avoid expressing opinions which, were it to become known that they hold judicial office, could damage public confidence in their own impartiality or in the judiciary in general.


The above guidance also applies to blogs which purport to be anonymous. This is because it is impossible for somebody who blogs anonymously to guarantee that his or her identity cannot be discovered.

Judicial office holders who maintain blogs must adhere to this guidance and should remove any existing content which conflicts with it forthwith. Failure to do so could ultimately result in disciplinary action."

In my opinion, this 'guidance' is in direct contravention of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees 'Freedom of expression' and of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, which states that:

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

and I have so informed both the Judicial Office and the Magistrates' Association, time will tell as to the extent of the bollocking I will no doubt receive, but I'll keep you advised. Until then I'm not making any changes or, like some bloggers, entering into a pretence as to who writes this blog. If forced then no doubt I'll be able to come up with some subtefuge, which will fool no-one but which may satisfy our 'masters'.

And they wonder why the ordinary Magistrate has lost faith with those who are supposed to support him or her.

The Olympic Games

I can’t let an occasion like the 30th Olympiad pass without some comment and the one that most compels me to write, but doesn’t surprise me, is that the Director General of the BBC has reportedly issued a memo ordering staff covering the Olympics to tone down their ‘patriotic reporting’ and instead focus more on other country’s achievements, (just like the French, Australians and Americans do for us – I don’t think).

Needless to say, once the memo became public the BBC claimed the Director General’s directive had been ‘misinterpreted’, well they would wouldn’t they?

This attitude does no more than reinforce the view of many that the BBC is ashamed of Britain and all things British, epitomised by David Bland talking over the National Anthem during the Olympics.

I’m proud to be British and consider that I have indeed ‘won first prize in the lottery of life’, to miss-quote Cecil Rhodes, and I’m proud of all that our English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish athletes have achieved, in whatever discipline, and of the planners, Architects, designers and builders who have translated Lord (Seb) Coe’s vision into reality.

When it was first announced that London had been selected to host the 2012 Games there was an avalanche of nay-sayers, mostly in the media, the BBC included, who were only too ready to do Britain down and forecast a disaster in the making: that it wouldn’t be ready in time, that the organisation would be chronic, that London would be grid-locked and that we wouldn’t win a thing – and they’ve been wrong on every point.

The Games have been an outstanding success from every viewpoint, even the Olympic chiefs proclaiming it ‘the best Games ever’ and the 2016 hosts, Rio, asking London for advice - and that’s without a record toll of medals for Team GB!

How it must eat out the hearts of those doom-mongers at the BBC and elsewhere.

Soft Sentences

So another judge gives the lie to the oft-made assertion that courts are 'soft' on sentencing.
His Honour judge Rodger Hayward, sentencing two yobs who stole a car and crashed it into an innocent young woman, causing her devastating injuries, laments the fact hat he can only jail them for 18 and 16 months.

Without doubt these are 'soft' sentences but judge Hayward makes it clear that it's not for the lack of will on his part but that he is constrained by Parliament as to the sentences he can impose.

One day it is to be hoped the press and other media will begin to make it clear to the electorate where the responsibility for these 'soft' sentences really lies - WITH THE GOVERNMENT - and that their continued lies about being tough on crime will finally be exposed for what they are, the machinations of a liberal elite with no regard for the welfare of the people. 

What a stinker!

It was informative to listen to David, ‘call me Dave’ Cameron on London’s LBC phone-in program trying to justify the £12,000,000,000 spent by this Government on Foreign Aid to a woman denied the drugs, freely available in Germany, to treat her cancer.

Apparently the ‘moral obligation’ ‘call me Dave’ thinks we have to the dictatorships of Africa does not extend to the people of these islands and that ‘breaking promises (on Foreign Aid)is not the right thing to do’.

Ok to break promises to the those who elected him though.

What a stinker!

The Outrageous

Apparently Government Ministers are ‘outraged’ that fewer than 1 in 20 of those convicted of Benefit Fraud are sent to prison, laying the blame on ‘soft-touch’ courts.

Tory MP Pritil Patel is reported as saying ‘It is vital the courts start getting to grips with this problem’ and that those who rip off the system should be ‘properly punished’. Johnathan Isaby of the Tax Payers’ Alliance is reported as saying ‘it is deeply worrying that that so few are sent down’.

Both these gentlemen, and the ‘outraged Government Ministers’ aught to take a close look at the Sentencing Guidelines for Benefit Fraud imposed on the courts by these same ‘outraged Ministers’ and passed through Parliament by none other than the said MP Priti Patel.
Most Benefit Fraud is for sums less than £12,500 and falls into the category of ‘not fraudulent from the outset’, ie they were originally claiming benefit legitimately but continued to claim even after they became ineligible, for example by finding work.

Such a one was Stephen Stockton who fraudulently claimed benefit totalling £5,631 between October 2009 and March 2011 by failing to declare that he was working as a fork-lift driver.

Or those who acquire a live-in lover, like the woman who failed to notify the authorities that her working husband had returned to the household and fraudulently claimed £6359

In both of the above the amount fraudulently obtained was less than £12,500 and the Government tell us that in such cases we must impose a medium level Community Order, which is what the courts did, and what so ‘enrages’ those who seek to blame others for their misdeeds.

It is galling to be criticised by the Government, MPs and their ilk for carrying out their orders, if ‘they’ want the courts to impose sterner sanctions, for this and any other form of crime, then tell Ken Clarke to build more prisons and free the courts from the shackles of these ‘Sentencing Guidelines’.

The Weather

As a change from legal/social issues I thought I’d digress into the Englishman’s favourite topic – the weather!
I’m not sure I agree with Lord Byron when he said,
“The English winter - ending in July, to recommence in August” 
but we are certainly not having much of a summer.

It’s not so long ago that ‘experts’ were predicting the desertification of Great Britain due to the myth of ‘Global Warming’. Indeed the then Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn said, when launching the UK Climate Projections 2009 report (UKCP09):

“By 2080, London will be between 2C and 6C hotter than it is now.
Every part of the UK is likely to be wetter in winter and drier in summer, according to the projections.
Summer rainfall could decrease by about 20% in the south of England and in Yorkshire and Humberside, by the middle of the century”.

In 1996 the BBC weatherman Bill Giles said, with absolute certainty that within 20 years, ie by 2016, just 4 short years hence, Dundee would be as balmy as Berkshire, France would be virtually uninhabitable as the Dordogne turned into a desert and the English Midlands would become an American mid-west-style dust bowl.

I wonder what they think now, in the middle of the wettest summer on record?

Of course, it’s still ‘global warming’ that’s to blame, only now it’s for the rain; funny how quickly these ‘experts’ can turn their coats in an attempt to justify their discredited cause.

The only reliable prediction of the UK’s weather I’ve ever found, and even it has been beaten of late, is that of Alexander Buchan, a Scottish meteorologist who pioneered research into recurring weather spells during the 19th century.

For what it’s worth, I repeat it below:
(The periods in bold type denote better known spells)

Early Jan - Stormy, variable temperatures
Mid to late Jan - Mild followed by stormy spell, possibly snow
Early Feb - Stormy with variable temperatures
Feb. 7-14 - Buchan cold period
Early Mar – Stormy, 'Comes in like a lion'
Mar. 22-26 - Springlike with 'borrowed days from April'
Early April - 'Blackthorn winter' with 'borrowed days from March'
April 11/14 - Buchan cold period
Late April - Warmer period followed by showers
May 1/15 - Changeable
May 11/14 - Buchan cold period, (Includes the Ice Saints' festival 11 to 13th).
Late May - warmer spell, 'Crown of Spring'
Early June - Thundery spell.
June 15/18 - Warmest period of month
June 29/July 4 - Buchan cold period
July 12/15 - Buchan warm period, hottest days/warmest nights of month.
Aug. 6/11 - Buchan cold period
Aug. 12/15 - Warmest period of month
Sept. 3/12 - Warm period
Sept. 21/30 - Stormy period, Equinoctial gales
Early-mid Oct - Quiet period, ('St. Luke's summer' on or before St Luke's Day, October 18th)
Nov. 1/5 - Stormy period
Nov. 6/13 - Buchan cold period
Nov. 23/26 - Stormy period
Dec. 7/14 – Cold spell
Dec. 15/21 - Stormy period
Dec. 23/26 - Mild period
Late Dec - Stormy period.

I’ve been guided by Buchan for some years now and give or take a day or two either side have found it to be remarkably accurate, certainly as good if not better than the Met Office’s long-range forecasts, even with their multi-million pound computers!

It Baffles Me

Motoring court again today, and something I found difficult to understand.
Five motorists, all caught driving a little over the 30mph limit, nothing too serious, 35 or 36mph and all had been offered attendance on a speed awareness course as an alternative to either a Fixed Penalty or a prosecution.

Now such courses involve a half-day attendance and cost the same as the fixed penalty, but incur no criminal record and  no penalty point endorsement on a driving licence - a 'no-brainer' one might think.

All five declined the offer,  failed to pay the alternative fixed penalty, and made no response to the summons which naturally followed. Consequentially, all five where fined substantial amounts and had their licences endorsed with 3 penalty points.

But why?

I wish someone would explain to me the logic of their thinking for I confess, it baffles me.

Crime and Soft Justice

A report published today by the think-tank Civitas
read it here

says that the detection of crime by the police, the imposition of longer jail terms by the courts, and that criminals should serve more of their sentences than at present, would result in a substantial decrease in crime.
Now as a statement of the bleeding obvious this takes some beating although predictably the Ministry of Justice has dismissed the report as 'flawed', no surprise there then.

It's unlikely that the current Minister of Justice, Ken Clarke, will lose any sleep over the report, or change his liberal view, and it seems equally unlikely that soft judges such as His Honour Judge Gareth Hawkesworth will suddenly have a Damascene Conversion.

This is the judge who last week blamed 'society' for the actions of a 14 year old boy who raped a 5 year old girl, and handed him a community sentence, rather than a custodial one.
Mind, that's par for the course for this soft judge who last year declined to jail 26 year old Turon Ali who had groomed a 14 year old girl for sex as he was, 'a young man unable to control his sexual urges', which means he was, and presumably still is, a danger to any female he takes a fancy to, reason enough to teach him the consequences of his actions by the imposition of a substantial jail term.

One question I was asked when I applied to be a Magistrate was did I have any problems sending people to jail when necessary, it seems judges don't have to give a similar assurance........pity!

Government Greed and Hypocrisy

I see that the press are soundly condemning the BMA for sanctioning a strike by doctors, the first for almost 40 years, over proposed government reforms to their pensions.
As with other Public Sector workers these ‘reforms’ amount to the doctors paying higher pension contributions, and working longer, up to age 68, before they can retire.

As an ex-Local Authority officer I don’t claim to be impartial, just the opposite, I’m firmly on the side of all those resisting these government-imposed ‘reforms’.

Lets be clear as why this ‘pension crisis’ occurred in the first place.

The UK, prior to 1997, had what is widely acknowledged to be one of the finest pension schemes in the world, until the government got greedy and abolished tax relief on income from share dividends, a key source of cash for pension funds and which effectively robbed those funds of nearly £12,000,000,000 leaving huge shortfalls and forcing hundreds of firms to wind up their final salary schemes.

Since then the government’s cack-handed handling of the economy has resulted in the present depression and accompanying financial crisis, with falling investment income, derisory interest returns on savings and industrial stagnation.

The government’s response is to force those still in final-salary pension schemes to pay more, get less and work longer for it and to throw the rest of the working population onto the tender mercies of the financial markets and providers, you know, those bankers and financiers that the government thinks are little better than loan-sharks.

If there really is a ‘pension crisis’ and pension schemes have become ‘unsustainable’ – whose fault is it?
It’s not the pension funds themselves, still less is it their working members – IT’S THE GOVERNMENT’S FAULT!

If the government got it’s sticky little fingers out of working peoples pension funds, and got to grips with it’s reckless over-spending, there would be no ‘crisis’ and people who’ve worked all their lives, paid their taxes and been good little boys and girls could look forward to retiring at a sensible age with a decent pension instead of having to work until they drop into some God-awful care home when the government can seize anything they have left to pay for their so-called ‘care’.

What a set of hypocrites they all are.

A Deluded Man

So Ken Clarke thinks that the newspapers are to blame for the size of the prison population, saying it’s their fault that thousands of criminals are in jail needlessly.

see here

These are the same ‘needlessly jailed’ criminals who’ve had chance after chance of avoiding jail by being given so-called ‘community punishments’ and include the 52812 criminals who’ve been given more than one ‘community punishment’ in a single year, a figure highlighted by MP Mr Pritl Patel who also revealed that one such criminal had received no less than 20 ‘community punishments’, all of which had manifestly failed to either reform him or turn him away from offending.

These are facts which Mr Clarke, in his zeal to do anything rather than jail criminals, would prefer to ignore as it doesn’t conform to his misguided, skewered view of ‘justice’. 

The sad fact is that justice will not prevail, nor will the inexorable rise in criminal behaviour be reduced while we have a ‘Justice Secretary’ who does not believe in punishment.

An Interesting Day

Busy day in court today – remands; early first hearings; committals to Crown Court; a bit of sentencing, this is what the Magistrates’ Court should be rather than the rigid ‘matrix’ it’s become of late with road traffic cases on Wednesday, domestic violence on Thursday and trials on Friday, to the exclusion of everything else.

Time was, and my age is showing now, all days were like today, solicitors in-and-out, prisoners up-and-down and never knowing what would crop up next.

Days like today keep you on your toes and test your competence and knowledge in a variety of ways, very satisfying all round.

We managed to upset a couple of solicitors along the way, not least by being more conversant than they with the law on one particular issue, that of R vs Povey, the benchmark case governing possession of an offensive weapon, but I won’t lose any sleep on that account.

Far too often solicitors, or at least some of them, treat us, the Magistrates, as being ignorant of the law and malleable to whatever they say. Time was of course when Magistrates were actively discouraged from even thinking about what the law actually said, or meant, that was for the Legal Advisor to determine, but times change!

Nowadays, more and more we are directed by the higher courts, and by the Sentencing Council, to be aware of the Law and to apply it, taking advice when unsure, and some solicitors seem to be finding it hard to come to terms with this new reality.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Case Management Hearings when trials are timetabled, witness lists agreed and the issues to be tried are agreed.
Whereas, this was once the private preserve of the Clerk and the advocates, now, on the direction of the Lord Chief Justice no less, it is for the bench to examine the issues and to question the advocates on the strength of their respective cases and the need for witnesses to attend and solicitors, in my experience, do not on the whole take kindly to being cross-examined by ‘mere’ Magistrates, especially those with a working knowledge of the Criminal Procedure Rules (shock horror – a Beak who knows what he’s doing).

The caveat to this is, of course, that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing and one must be very sure of one’s ground before arguing the toss with someone who has spent his or her working life immersed in the vagaries of English Law, and this is where the Legal Advisor comes into his or her own. When in doubt is the time to take advice, best done before one puts one’s foot in it.

One issue did come to the fore today, which gives me some concern. In two of the cases, and there was a similar one before me last week, it was clear that a previous bench had failed, somewhat spectacularly, to assess the seriousness of a case by reference to the Sentencing Guidelines. Such carelessness, and it can be nothing else, places the sentencing bench in an invidious position.
If the previous assessment is too low the defendant and his solicitor feels hard-done-by when sent to the Crown Court after a previous bench had determined that it fell within their powers to sentence.
Perhaps worse, and such a case occurred today, was when the assessment of seriousness had clearly been set far too high and had been sent to the Crown Court who promptly sent it back, instructing us to deal with it ourselves.

In each case a careful study of the guidelines, and a word with the Legal Advisor, would have prevented a situation which reflects badly upon the overall competence of the Lay Bench and does nothing to inspire confidence in its decisions.

St George's Day

Today is the day to celebrate England's patron saint, and everything English; Shakespeare said it best:


This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,—
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

King Richard II. Act ii. Sc. 1.

A Betrayal

I admit to being astounded at the recent decision at Basildon Crown Court to sentence a 16-year-old to just 60 hours of community service, a three-month curfew and a three-year supervision order after he admitted wounding with intent and affray.
The youth, one of a gang of three, stabbed a 46 year old man three times in his back in an attempt to rob two schoolboys.

Now the Sentencing Guidelines for Wounding with Intent to do Grievous Bodily Harm, contrary to the Offences against the Person Act 1861 (section 18) says that, for a category 2 offence, which this undoubtedly was, the starting point should be 6 years imprisonment.
Even at the lowest category the starting point is one of 4 years custody.
Just carrying a knife, and where it’s not used should, according to the Court of Appeal in the 2008 case of R vs Povey, result in 12 weeks custody.

It takes a leap of the imagination which eludes me to find so much mitigation in sentencing to go from 6 years custody to 60 hours of un-paid work!

I can only assume the judge was influenced more by Ken Clarke than he was by the Sentencing Guidelines for last October our notoriously soft Justice Secretary said, to a Commons committee, that he opposed the concept of automatically locking up young knife criminals, saying it was wrong to suggest that every 13-year-old caught using a knife should be sent to jail.

It is frankly farcical to have the Government appointed Sentencing Council saying one thing, and the Justice Secretary saying exactly the opposite.

It’s little wonder the general public has lost faith in this government’s commitment to law and order, and to the protection of the people who elected it. I suspect they will pay dearly for this betrayal at the ballot box.

Big Brother is going to watch you.

The government says is considering including a Bill in next month's Queen's Speech to extend its ability to monitor all phone calls, emails and Internet use in the UK, a Bill which would force ISPs to install hardware on their servers which would enable GCHQ, the government's spy headquarters, to access "on demand" communications data stored on them without the necessity of first obtaining a court order.

This would allow the government to monitor everyone in the UK's emails, phone calls and which web sites they have visited.

Every email to your child, every status update for your friends, every message to your mistress, all would be monitored by GCHQ, at all times.

The Home Office Minister, James Brokenshire, has denied that it is the government's intention to form a giant database,"absolutely not" he says, and insists that the content of the calls, emails etc will not be monitored - just where and when they were made or sent, and to whom, and of course we believe him, and who will be able, once this facility is in place, to prove otherwise.

He has also said that the reading of people's Facebook conversations by GCHQ would be "disproportionate", although he doesn't say they won't do it, and does admit they could be "looked at", and if that isn't 'reading' what is?

When the last Labour government tried to introduce a similar Bill the present coalition partners opposed it, it hasn't taken them long to change their minds.

Nick Pickles, director of campaign group Big Brother Watch, has said the move is "an unprecedented step that will see Britain adopt the same kind of surveillance seen in China and Iran".

Conservative MP Dominic Raab says it would "fundamentally change the nature of the relationship between the state and the citizen" and turn every individual "into a suspect".

At present, our freedom and privacy is protected by the courts by saying: 'If you want to intercept someones private conversations and it is a terrorist or a criminal, go and ask a Magistrate to approve your request.'

Conservative MP David Davis said the planned changes would remove that protection

and in an interview with the BBC went on to say that "you shouldn't go beyond that in a decent, civilised society, but that is what is being proposed."

The cost of installing the tens of thousands of specialised pieces of hardware to monitor the country's Internet traffic by ISPs is expected to run into billions of pounds, a cost which Internet Service Providers would have little choice but to pass it on to their customers so that British Internet users would be paying extra to allow their government to spy on them more effectively.

Big Brother would not only be watching you, but would be charging you for the privilege.

Some, particularly government ministers, in an attempt to justify these plans, will no doubt say what, throughout history, every tyrant that ever existed has said to excuse their mechanics of repression and surveillance:

"It's for your own good''

"It's for the greater good of all"

"It's to combat dissidents"

"Law-abiding people have nothing to fear"

These very same sentiments were expressed by Hitler, Stalin and Chairman Mao and are used now by tyrannical regimes worldwide, be it China, Iran or North Korea.

David Morrish, a long serving Liberal Party councillor expounded the Liberal Party's principles before the last election when he said that the party was born out of the struggle for individual freedom and that "We will fight excessive government interference".

The Liberal Party's main pre-election manifesto stated quite clearly that they, the Liberal Party existed to create a liberal society and that they opposed the “Database” State.

The Colchestaer Conservative Association articulated the principles of the Conservative Party by saying that the core Conservative principles which provide the basis for all policy are that Conservatives stand for less interference from the state – freedom for individuals, families, voluntary groups and businesses and that they believe that the more you trust people, the more power and responsibility they are given, the stronger they and society become.

I never thought I would live to see the day that a Conservative-led government, in partnership with the Liberals, would be prepared to ignore these sentiments.

It shows that their so-called principles are no such thing and that they will set them aside, and all the traditions of freedom that countless millions have given their lives for, in their pursuit of power, power pure and simple over what was once a free people.

Been there, seen that and got the tee shirt.

So David Cameron wants to toughen up non-custodial community sentences with new sanctions.

Seemingly admitting that community sentences are seen as a soft alternative to prison, which they are, the Prime Minister is proposing to include new ‘tougher’ measures in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, though whether he’ll get his proposals past the arch-softy Ken Clarke is another matter.

A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said:

"We want to reform community sentences to ensure that offenders are properly punished for their crimes and effectively rehabilitated and we are still considering a variety of options. We will publish a consultation setting out our proposals in due course."

Umm, been there, seen all that before.

Over the last 20 years I’ve seen various ‘initiatives’ to ‘toughen up’ non-custodial sentences. We’ve had ‘Community Service’; ‘Un-Paid Work’; ‘Community Payback’; Accredited Programs’; ‘Specified Activities’; ASBOs; restraining orders; football banning orders; exclusion orders and a host of other ‘sanctions’, none of which has made the slightest impression on either re-offending rates or the public’s perception that successive governments care more about money and social engineering than protecting the public.

And statistically it’s not looking good either.

In December, the National Offender Management Service said that during 2010/11 one in four offenders who had been given community sentences, or released from prison early on licence, failed to comply with the terms set by the authorities.They went on to say that of the 198,725 orders and licences that came to an end during that period, only 150,632 were completed successfully, a failure rate of one in four.

Crass Stupidity

The crass stupidity of Local Councils never ceases to amaze me.

Latest in a long line competing for Britain’s most stupid Council, and pretty near the top of the list, must be that of Poole in Dorset.

Scout Leader Roy Farnham, fearing for the safety of young people attending the local Scout meetings, accessed down a pot-holed lane, took action to correct the danger and filled in the potholes himself.

Poole Council’s response?

Not ‘thank you for a public spirited action,’ dear me no! They instead threatened to fine Mr Farnham for fly-tipping!

The Council’s Highways officer, Sophia O’Sullivan admits the Council have no money to improve the lane but this sorry lot are damned if they’ll let anyone else do it.

It would seem that they’d rather a child fell due to potholes as big as 5 feet wide and 18 inches deep, even daring to lay any blame for such an accident on Mr Farnham.

It would be interesting to see the response from a court if this matter ever got that far, I know what mine would be!

That Fake Traffic Warden

I’ve said before that it’s always dangerous to comment on cases which you’ve only a newspaper report to go on read here

but the sentence for the crook, Christopher Povey, who issued fraudulent parking tickets to his neigbours does seem somewhat overly lenient.

The magistrates’ sentencing guidelines suggest that a fraud characterised by a degree of planning (Povey made fake parking tickets on his computer and set up bogus bank accounts to receive the cash) and which involved multiple transactions (he issued 150 fake tickets) should result in a sentence of at least 26 weeks custody.

It’s a long way from 6 months in jail to what he was actually given, a conditional discharge!

You Can't Do This To Me

There are those we meet in court on a regular basis who seem to think that the rules just don't apply to them. Be it bail conditions, the requirement to attend court, completing community penalties or co-operation with the Probation Service in the preparation of reports, they project an 'I can do as I please' attitude.

Only when the court resorts to 'if you won't comply you'll go to prison' does reality kick in along with the inevitable whine of "you can't do this to me, I've not done anything wrong".
And truly they don't believe they have!

The offender bailed on condition they don't contact their victim, and does so; the one given an un-paid work requirement and who 'can't be bothered' to turn up and those who fail to attend for interview with Probation so that a Pre-sentence Report can be prepared for the court all face the same ultimate fate - jail! Whether as a sentence or a remand in custody they consider themselves 'hard done by' and demonstrate the consequences of lax discipline both in the home and at school, as well as within the judicial system.

By the time a court finally loses patience with them and commits them to prison it's often too late to counter the by then well-established conviction that they are a law unto themselves. Until we as a society abandon the pretext that discipline is repressive and grasps the nettle of personal responsibility these misconceptions will continue to flourish.

The True Face of Islam?

Is this the true face of Islam?

Young Libyans, some wearing combat fatigues and carrying guns, desecrate the Cross of Sacrifice and the war graves of 198 Commonwealth soldiers who died in the Western Desert during World War Two.

During their attack on the Commonwealth War Cemetery at Benghazi they showed no shame at their despicable action but were proud to film themselves carrying out this atrocity, crying “This is the grave of a Christian” and “These are dogs”, and to post the resultant video on Facebook.

These are the same Libyans who obtained their independence from Italy due to the sacrifice of those soldiers whose graves they now so casually violate, and were freed from the Gaddafi regime by the actions of the western nations they so despise.

It may be that the Christian nations are not at war with Islam, but is Islam at war with us?

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains war cemeteries in 150 countries across the world. They’re in Japan, in Turkey, in Germany, and in Italy, all countries which at one time or another Great Britain and it’s Commonwealth has been at war with but in all these countries the laws of civilised behavior ensure that although they are the graves of a one-time enemy they are treated with absolute respect.

Is it only Islamic nations who are incapable of civilised behavior as they pursue their war of hatred against the Christian world?

The Sentencing Guidelines

I read a couple of newspaper reports over the weekend bemoaning the low level of fines imposed on parents who fail to ensure their children attend school on a regular basis.
The reports cited recent cases where fines had amounted to less than 16p per day of missed school.

read here

I don't disagree that such fines are pitifully low, but they are not unique in that regard.

The level of fines for all offences are set by the Government's Sentencing Council whose 'Sentencing Guidelines' stipulate that fines are to be set as a proportion of income, and that such fines are automatically reduced by one third in the event of a guilty plea.

These 'guidelines' further stipulate that anyone on State Benefit has an income of £100 per week, no matter how much benefit they actually receive. So a fine set at Level A, ie 50% of income, comes out at £50, less one third off for a guilty plea which means just £33 to pay!

For the record, the Sentencing Council has 15 members - 7 judges, the Director of Public Prosecutions, one law professor, the CEO of Citizens Advice, the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, a defence solicitor, a chief probation officer, a District Judge and, despite the Magistrates' Courts handling 92% of all criminal cases, just one Justice of the Peace!

And their much vaunted 'guidelines'?

Guidelines are, or should be, "for the guidance of wise men and the blind obedience of fools", a quotation attributed to Douglas Bader, but in the case of the Sentencing Council, their 'guidelines' must be followed. In this regard they are not guidelines at all, they are inflexible sentencing rules set by a goverment appointed body.

Their 'sentencing guidelines' are nothing more that sentencing by a complicated, abstract formula, denying to courts any real discretion or the application of local knowledge and common sense. It is a 'one size fits all' approach, and as such results in such travesties as the '16p a day' cases mentioned above.

It ill-becomes the Government’s Behaviour 'Tsar', Charlie Taylor, to criticise his employer's policy on sentencing, and those like Margaret Whellans, Strategic Director for Learning and Children at Gateshead Council, Nick Seaton of the Campaign for Real Education and miscellaneous newspaper reporters would be better advised to take their concerns to their MP for it is those who have shackled the courts to these ever-growing, constantly revised and universally disliked 'sentencing guidelines', rather than criticising magistrates whose discretion to sentence fairly and properly has been removed by this and past governments.

Freemen On The Land

There was an interesting article in the February issue of ‘Benchmark’ concerning a movement calling themselves ‘Freemen On The Land’ which, it would seem, originated in the USA (where else?) in the 1970s and came to prominence in the UK some time in 2008.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freeman_on_the_land

Freemen on the land believe they can declare themselves independent of government jurisdiction on the grounds that all statute law is contractual, and only applicable if an individual consents to be governed by it. They believe the only "true" law is their own somewhat bizarre version of common law.
They maintain that individuals can choose to ‘opt out’ of statutory law using the concept of "lawful rebellion".

They further believe that everyone has two strands to their existence: their flesh and blood body, and their legal person, represented by their birth certificate. What they term ‘The Strawman’ is created when a birth certificate is filed, and is the entity which is subject to statutory law. Their physical self is referred to by a slightly different name, rather than John Smith it would be "John of the family Smith", and it is this persona which is the ‘Freeman’ and that this change of name entitles them to deny the jurisdiction of the courts, and so escape sanction.

However, where these contentions, being based largely on wishful thinking, have been tested in court, those proponents of the movement have met with little sympathy and no success to date.

Gavin Kaylhem, of Grimsby, received a 30-day sentence for willfully refusing to pay his council tax. He had claimed he had no contractual obligation to pay under Common Law because he was a “freeman”.

http://www.thisisgrimsby.co.uk/Freeman-refused-pay-council/story-14114588-detail/story.html

Norfolk odd-job man Mark Bond, AKA ‘Mark of the Family Bond’, was arrested for non-payment of council tax in 2010

http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/norfolk_tax_dodger_arrested_after_writing_to_queen_1_745681

Despite handing police a notice of intent stating that he was no longer a UK citizen, and his pseudo-legal wrangling, he was handed a suspended three-month jail sentence on condition that he pay £20 a week off the debt.

It’s not just the UK either, in Ireland Bobby Oliver Sludds or Bobby of the family Sludds as he referred to himself, failed to escape a series of motoring fines and convictions for driving without insurance last September.

http://www.wexfordpeople.ie/news/bobby-of-the-family-sludds-may-be-jailed-2878029.html

The movement has its own website and forum

http://www.fmotl.com/

which advises people how to oppose such things as Council Tax demands and fixed penalty notices, and suggests that by following the tenants of the Freedom on the Land movement you will be successful, which is not only self-delusional but encourages people to oppose the law and the jurisdiction of the courts.
Despite what these people, including David Icke (yes it's him again) might think, changing your name is not a legal loophole entitling you to opt-out of what they call ‘The Grand Deception’ and give you freedom from what they consider to be police intimidation and harassment, the law courts and ‘those official-looking brown envelopes’!

I look forward to having one of these ‘freemen’ in court; it should prove an interesting diversion.

Councillor Florence Anderson

Councillor Florence Anderson, a past deputy leader and a member of Sunderland Council's Community and Safer City Scrutiny Committee has been suspended by her local Labour party for the comments she has made on a Facebook site.

It is said that she is a member of the Facebook Group "Margaret Thatcher doesn’t have to be dead before we give her a funeral"and the web site “I’ll dance on Thatcher’s grave, even if she's buried at sea”.

It is alleged that she has 'liked' a Facebook comment that the IRA should blow up the next Tory conference and that she has previously said that she hopes Margaret Thatcher would "burn in hell"!

Despicable though these comments are, this woman is not without her supporters, Dave Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners Association, has said "there wouldn’t be much sympathy if things like that did happen" ...... "certainly there will be a lot of people who will be very, very pleased to see the demise of people like Thatcher"and "I’ll not be shedding any tears for the demise of any Tories."

Given that the IRA killed about 500 British soldiers I doubt the good people of Sunderland and esewhere who lost loved ones to this evil organisation will be particularly enamoured with her remarks, and my personal disgust knows no bounds.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the last Conservative goverment, and Lady Thatcher herself, she is a human being and deserves the same respect we all do, gloating at or wishing for another's death is the action of the lowest of the low, people without a shred of human decency.

Cllr Anderson is, however, completely without remorse saying "I stand by what I said".

In this she, and those like Dave Hopper, demonstrate the intolerance and hatred of the hard left who lecture everyone else on tolerance and diversity but in truth are nothing more than increasingly hate filled hypocrites.

Knife Crime

I came across this web site yesterday

http://www.knifecrimes.org/

and was quite disturbed to read that West Yorkshire had, in 2007/08, the forth worst incidents of knife crime in the UK after the mass urban conurbations of Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and the London Metropolitan Police Area.

Following the Court of Appeal's decision in R vs Povey, McGeary, Pownall and Bleazard [2008], generally known as 'Povey', the lowest level of knife crime ie possession of a bladed instrument, not in dangerous circumstances and not used to threaten or cause fear, should result in a 12 week prison sentence for a first-time offender who has pleaded guilty.
Any more serious case should be sent to the Crown Court for sentence.

Magistrates, if they will only apply this Court of Appeal guidance, have a crucial role to play in sending out a clear message that simply to carry a knife, which always has with it the danger that it will be used, however inadvertently, will result in a prison sentence.

One Year Old

I've just noticed that this blog is now one year old - Happy Birthday blog!

When I first conceived the idea for a blog I anticipated it would deal primarily with the 'interesting' cases that I dealt with in court. However, I've come to realise that, for the most part, the cases we get to deal with aren't that interesting to the general public and above all I wanted the blog to be both interesting and challenging.

It seems now, from reading the postings over the last 12 months, that I've tended to concentrate on 'other people's cases' and those things, not necessarily legal, that I see as being unjust, unfair or downright perverse.

The blog has become, in a way, my rant at those aspects of society which appear to be at odds with what I perceive to be 'fair'.

Umm!

Not what I originally intended at all, I sound like the quintessentially grumpy old man!
So will I continue in like manner? Almost certainly, that is until I sit on an 'interesting' case, which is also capable of sufficient amendment to conceal its true identity without destroying its worth as a blog posting, something which I've found easier said than done.

Sean Penn and the Falkland Islands

What is it with the rabid anti-British Americans like Sean Penn who in their rush to condemn anything British choose to blind themselves to the truth?
In a speech in Uruguay he condemns British ‘colonialism’ with regard to the Falklands Islands, calling Britain a ‘colonial dinosaur’.
Now that’s a bit rich, and typical of American hypocrisy, when the greatest colonial power in the world today is, not Britain but the United States of America!

Consider a list of the current American ‘colonies’, although they don’t of course call them that, because America decries colonialism doesn’t it? No, the American colonies are face-savingly referred to as ‘unincorporated territories’, here are just a few of them:

Baker Island
Jarvis Island
Howland Island
Kingman Reef
Johnston Atoll.
Navassa Island
Midway Atoll
the Serranilla Bank
the Bajo Nuevo Bank.
Puerto Rico,
Guam,
American Samoa
Wake Island
The Panama Canal Zone
The Virgin Islands and the
Northern Mariana Islands

The Americans even have an official philosophy to excuse their rampant colonialism, it’s called American Exceptionalism and refers to the theory that the United States is superior to, and occupies a special niche, among the nations of the world and so is excused from acting as other nations and is both above and an exception to the law, specifically the Law of Nations.

Let us further explore American hypocrisy.

In 1942 an island group, lets call it Hawaii, thousands of miles from America, but to which the USA claimed ownership by right of conquest (isn’t that colonialism?) and with no indigenous American populace, was attacked by a country under the control of a military dictatorship.
America responded with a full declaration of war against this military-led country and atom bombed two of it’s cities to destruction.

In 1982 a group of islands thousand of miles from Britain, with a 100% indigenous British population, were attacked and occupied by a country under the control of a military dictatorship. Britain responded with a limited engagement to secure the removal of the invading force, with the full approval of the United Nations, and refrained from following America’s object lesson in 1945 and slaughtering hundreds of thousands innocent civilians.

Sound familiar? It should as this was the Falkland Islands conflict to which Americans like Sean Penn so hypocritically refer to as an example of British colonialism.

I wonder is it jealousy that fuels this naked hatred of anything British amongst a certain type of American?

Whatever the root cause of American hypocrisy and anti-British sentiment, (surely by now they’ve forgiven us for burning the White House in 1812), the stupidity of Sean Penn and his acolytes can only fuel an expectation amongst Latin American countries, and Argentina in particular, that America is ‘on their side’ and does not support it’s only real ally, the only one it can rely on to send troops and add support during conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan (not many Uruguayans and Argentineans fighting alongside US Marines in Helmund Province).

Let us not forget a couple of other facts which the USA chooses to disregard:
America and the United Nations Charter are committed to the right of any people to self-determination, that is, the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference. Indeed, it is the very cornerstone of the United States Declaration of Independence.



The people of the Falkland Islands are indigenously British and have expressed, time without number, their wish to remain sovereignly and politically British. Would America deny them that right they claimed for themselves in 1776?
Ah yes of course it would, American Exceptionalism at work again, although one might consider it more American Hypocrisy!

One last word, this country, Argentina, that Sean Penn so enthusiastically supports is the same one which in 1945 provided a safe haven for numerous Nazis fleeing the consequences of their barbarity and which currently, almost solely amongst nations, is assisting Iran with the development of its nuclear program in order that it can build an atom bomb so the lunatic in charge, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can fulfil his pledge to use it to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.

Sounds like just the sort of ‘friend’ America deserves.