Jack Straw is an idiot

I once had the opportunity to stick a leg out and trip up Jack Straw as he, clad in sweaty vest and shiny shorts, and his close protection officers jogged past over Westminster bridge. It is a missed chance that I regret, if not daily then more and more often. Today being a case in point.

In an apparent attempt at rabble rousing, fearless Jack announced to the Labour conference that:

I am concerned about ‘no win, no fee’ arrangements, it’s claimed they have provided greater access to justice but the behaviour of some lawyers in ramping up their fees in these cases is nothing short of scandalous.

That would be why your extremely recent review of CFAs made no significant changes, eh Jack?

Then Spring-heeled Jack went on:

There are now three times as many lawyers in private practice but paid for by the taxpayer as there were three decades ago; the budget has grown faster than the health and education services. The challenge now is how better to spend these huge sums in the interests of justice; something I want to do with the legal profession and local government.

Oh, no, Jack, not those blood sucking legal aid lawyer leeches again. Firstly, I doubt these figures. Come on, show us the figures for private practice solicitors ‘paid for’ (paid a bit, wholly, or what?) by the tax payer over the last three decades to support this claim.

Secondly, if Jack is right about these teeming hordes of legal aid lawyers, one has to ask which way are they more likely to vote? My guess is that legal aid lawyers would tend to be labour voters. So at exactly the moment when labour needs every vote it can get, Jack choses to have a go at a professional group of labour voters. Just a stroke of brilliance.

Given that labour policy has generated a huge new demand for legal aid lawyers, what with just about everything being a serious criminal offence nowadays, Jack appears to lack the new labour understanding that they don’t do supply side economics these days, it is all about internal markets.

Labour criminal policy and criminal legal aid are a near perfect model of the symbiosis of public delivery and private practice, such that the NHS should be taking notes. But that means dancing to the provider’s tune, as any NHS manager will tell you. Of course, if you want very publicly adjourned trials, Jack…

Housing Minister underpants dance

Something tells me that Labour in Australia hasn’t quite got the hang of the po-faced morality of New Labour here. But even there, it appears that a housing minister dancing drunkenly in his underpants (or to be pedantic, only in his underpants) to loud techno music on a green Chesterfield sofa and simulating sex on an MP is cause for a resignation.

Matt Brown was a police minister for New South Wales, but before that, he was Housing Minister. In case you are curious, here he is:

Chesterfield sofa sex fiend

Mr Brown, during his energetic and all too fleshy display, apparently “mounted the chest” of Wollongong MP Noreen Hay and called out to Ms Hay’s adult daughter “Look at this, I’m tittie-fucking your mother!” Mr Brown disputes shouting anything about tittie fucking, but admits the rest, including the distasteful colour of the Chesterfield.

Naturally, before entering politics, Mr Brown was a solicitor.

Caroline Flint, you have a lot to live up to.

Bad times

Looking around at the glum and tense faces on my commute through the City, as jobs evaproate and hedge funds short sell every major financial institution going, the legal aid litigator has not a little sense of Schadenfreude. I love a good crisis.

So, in solidarity with newly jobless bankers….

Bad Times Just Around the Corner

Lawblog ’08!

Yes, up the narrow back stairs of the Harp, the way pointed by signs written in wobbly felt tip on kitchen roll, was Law blog 08, the ‘drink n chat a bit’.

We few, we mildly cheerful few, met up as investment banks tottered and financial systems quaked. There were notable absentees, presumably at home weeping over the read outs of their disintegrating portfolios. Most notably for me, both Charon and John Bolch were awol (at least up to 10 pm), leaving me as the only smoker. And what could console us for the lack of the Minx? Why nothing.

Geeklawyer, presumably in a last ditch attempt to shore up his self esteem now that his client base has lost all its money (and not to him), surrounded himself with his harem, although Ruthie was but a fleeting presence.

Still, chat and gossip was had, plans hatched and good people met. Your average Brit law blogger is an unusual and rather endearing creature, I think.

My plans for live blogging were embarrasingly let down by the refusal of my dongle to work (no really, it has never happened to me before…). But this is probably just as well or the utter lack of debauchery would have been revealed – save for Ms R demonstrating the fundamental fallacy of coupledom on the floor with two mobile phones and a beer mat. Never was it made more graphic- John, you should have been there, a divorce lawyer would have been taking notes.

And as for Carl and William – have your people call my people…

Way out

This was one I meant to put up a few week ago, soon after it happened.

One of the joys of a legal aid practice is being able to pop out at lunchtime to the sandwich shop and find yourself passing the site of a early am shooting. By the time I’d had the sandwich, it was murder.

Brava Perkins

As I confessed on Charon’s blog, I have a) been hooked by Maestro – the sleb to conductor show and b) a log-standing soft spot for Sue Perkins, reality show strumpet though she may be.

But, bias aside, she was a worthy winner in the final tonight (Yay Sue). Her version of the 1st Movement of Beethoven’s 5th was actually excellent, let alone for an amateur newbie. Goldie’s version reached for power and affect and at times, got there. But Sue’s performance had controlled power, elegance and above all, it danced with precise life.

I have a fair few versions of the Fifth (and the other 8). Of all those, I’d actually say Sue’s was actually closest to a Roger Norrington period version, in tempo, vivacity and (relative) subtlety, and I’d have loved to hear his comments. But it was not to be.

The whole thing has left me with the unfulfillable ambition (not even being able to read music any longer) to stand in front of an orchestra and bring the music to life. It is one of the most elaborate and therefore rich forms of collaboration and, at its best, creative trust and understanding that our culture has to offer.

But then the Maestro prize was to conduct at the Daily Mail fest that is the last night of the ‘Proms in the Park’, where even the less well known of the Enigma variations count as dangerous elitism. Which is when the dream crashes, screaming through its bloodied hands, into reality.

Charon’s bumper bag of blawgs

Being the all round excellent chap that he is, Charon has put together a pageflakes page with just about every UK law blog feed on it, the three last posts from each. An excellent resource for those of us who spend far too long skimming the law blogs and with some welcome introductions.

An upstanding member of the public

Gone Yet Still

In an art/blasphemy/censorship/outraged decency collision that was just waiting to happen, may I present the war of the tumescent Christ. In the wearily familiar cast list are the Baltic gallery – those wacky galeriens who have a history of inviting Northumbria plod to make decisions on artistic value – and, fresh from their inadvertent triumph of actually managing to get the offence of blasphemous libel by theatre or TV scrapped, the Christian Legal Centre. And featuring as a newcomer, the outraged public itself, Emily Mapfuwa, a 40 year old christian.

Mapfuwa, having apparently travelled from Essex to Gateshead in order to pop in to see some contemporary art, and ignoring warning signs about possible offence by artworks ahead, was offended by a Christ with a childishly modelled turgid phallus.

This was part of a work by Chinese artist Terence Koh, which also featured an erect Mickey Mouse and a remarkably up for it ET. In her public comments, Mapfuwa actually seems rather more offended by the lack of a Mohammed with the horn, imaginatively inventing a new offence of blasphemous discrimination.

Frankly I imagine the Baltic were more worried about the notoriously litigious Disney and Spielberg. Instead they found themselves dragged into Gateshead Magistrates Court by the unbending morality of Essex.

Now as a quondam art critic, I would have no hesitation in saying the work is rather crap. But what is going on here? Northumbria plod, fresh from their previous lessons in art appreciation responded to Mapfuwa’s complaint by saying there was no case to answer.

However, to Mapfuwa’s aid rode the Christian Legal Centre, who acted for her in bringing a private prosecution for outraging public decency and causing harassment, alarm and distress to the public. Gateshead Mags now have to decide whether the test for public decency is that an Essex happy clappy represents current standards of propriety such that her outrage is that of the public. I doubt it, but after the Islington registrar fiasco, who knows.

The Christian Legal Centre states that it

believes in freedom of expression but this statue served no other purpose than to offend Christians and to denigrate Christ.

thus producing a sentence of glorious oxymoron, unless, of course, one believes that free speech shouldn’t offend anyone at all.

The Christian Legal Centre also announce themselves as aiming to

promote and protect the biblical freedoms of Christian believers in the United Kingdom.

On the assumption that they don’t actually mean freedom to stone blasphemers, it is hard to see what ‘biblical freedoms’ are being protected here. But given that anybody who has wandered into an exhibition of contemporary art over the last 15 years knows that some degree of peurile attempts at provocation are pretty much inevitable, one can only presume that the CLC actually seek freedom from the accidental consequences of their own ignorance. Alas, that freedom is permitted to none of us. I think it was something to do with the Fall and original sin.

And your point is?

Now call me mischevious, call me a bit of an arsehole, but when I’m doing a spot of advocacy slash at court negotiation, like today, I am amused by opposing Counsel’s approach to certain situations. In fact so amused I will actually encourage them. I find it useful.

Today, for instance, the other side had made a hopeless, legally doomed application (I love Tomlin Orders) and their situation turned out to be even worse once we reached Court. Counsel for the other side did his best, but had no choice but to agree dismissal of the application, with costs to us, prior to heading into court. He had proposed an adjournment. I had very politely pointed out that my instructions were to seek a dismissal and that that was what I would do.

But then after the hearing he earned his fee, in effort, at least. He threw in everything, including kitchen sink, plug and U -bend in an effort to convince me that we should agree to his client’s proposals. He even, shall we say, overstepped the mark, with insinuations about a) my client and b) any future dealings between his clients and us. I was scrupulously polite, and, in a without prejudice context,  quite clear that we were quite open to negotiation. This produced a further series of assertions, accusations and insinuations, which I politely rebutted from the file, or just let lie.

The point was, his client was badly screwed and had no recourse save for an expensive and risky one. He knew it, I knew it, but he either didn’t know that I did (I was down as still a trainee, after all), or he was doing his job in a remarkably desperate way. I listened, politely. I said I was sure a resolution could be found. Finally I asked about his instruction on damages – none to be offered – and then, in a calm way, pointed out that we were not going to reach a resolution now and that matters would have to wait on further discussion or actions. As evidently his sole aim was to get an agreement with no damages involved, that rather put an end to things.

While I was reasonableness itself, even mildly confiding in chit chat about people we both knew, his client’s position was very weak and his repeated assault merely confirmed it. Counsel was apparently daft enough to take an aimiable ‘trainee’ as someone he could steamroller. The result was that he and his client came away with the knowledge that we were prepared to negotiate on our intial offer on damages, which was always our position. But he left with no figures. I came away with the knowledge that his client’s position is even weaker than we thought it was and that they are extremely vulnerable to enforcement action. And of course, we won on the application, with costs.

My point being? I feel slightly sorry for the position he had been put in, but I do love getting one over on these highly trained advocates. Still, if they are so daft as to make assumptions about their opposition, they deserve it. If they haven’t learned that a posture of affable openness – if it doesn’t actually involve giving away or any commitment at all – is also a negotiating tactic, then they need to, very quickly.

Now we go in for the kill, so to speak.

Family tech support

I always wondered what kind of people would get to a site by typing the full url into a google search box, then clicking on the first link in the results page. Now I know. It is my father. And my little sister.

Oh and my father’s cousin. That phone call was 50 odd minutes of my life I won’t see again. There is little to compare to the sinking feeling you get when the instruction ‘open a new window’ meets the response ‘I’ve got something called system preferences, is that it?’