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Friday, 25 February 2011
Hackney Has Fans in Australia
Saturday, 19 February 2011
Human Rights- British as Sausage and Chips
The overwhelming vote by MP's against implementation of a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights ("ECHR") to give prisoners the vote is only OK as a symbolic gesture to demonstrate the ultimate power of Parliament. However some of the speeches were a disgrace and muddied the waters in a populist media campaign that is ill informed and ill intentioned. If they don't now move on and compromise it will be an embarrassment and a disgrace.
The ECHR is not the same organisation as the European Economic Area ("EU") , which is fundamentally a customs and trade treaty. Instead the ECHR is an international Court set up after the war with one aim in mind- to enforce a commonly agreed standard of basic human rights.
Thus screaming "Europe!" to frighten people is either ill informed or wicked.
After the war Europe deliberately constructed a framework to ensure that Nazism and totalitarianism could never happen again. British and French Jurists were extremely influential in drafting a list of rights which includes the right to life A2 , the right not to be tortured A3, the right not to be discriminated against A14 and the right to a fair trial A6, as well as the right to respect for your family, privacy, correspondence and your home A8
As British as sausage and chips, surely?
One MP called the ECHR "A kangaroo court". Really? A court where respected judges including our own are sent to try and agree on tough cases over basic human values that unite us?
David Davis, co-sponsor of the bill uttered the word "lawyers" like he meant cat sick, and explained that until the lawyers came along there hadn't been a problem. Not being a lawyer became a badge of honour, and scarce 22 MP's dared to speak for the idea of obeying the law. How Jack Straw could sponsor the bill and defend the ECHR frankly I don't understand.
Banning lunatics and criminals from the vote only dates to the 1870's, and banning women was always traditional. Now women and people with mental health problems have the vote, and the idea is floating that some prisoners should get to vote too.
Strangely the story became that fat shark lawyers would bleed the government dry unless Parliament voted for the reforms, and therefore it voted against it. But then, this is a kangaroo parliament.
The Express and other newspapers have been shrieking at the prospect that 90.000 people who have been banged up (among the highest in Europe may I add) might get the vote. Something entirely irrelevant in electoral term in a nation of over 60 million people. Yet one of the functions of time in prison, and one of the cheapest ways of encouraging a prisoner to engage with the idea of how they will behave once they are released into society, is voting.
Frankly, I think many won't bother in line with national trends, some will add a desolate vote to Nick Griffin and other nutters, but some will start to come to their senses and will benefit from being able to make small gestures
Once again the Express is in paroxysms of delight today when a High Court Judge has rejected damages claims by frustrated prison voters as un-British and unconstitutional. What the Express fails to understand is that only the British Supreme Court is able to pass judgement on the conflict between our Courts and the ECHR. Thus the case will make its way up the Court Appellate process. Express notwithstanding.
Ill intentioned and ill informed, newspapers whip up clouds of confusion because lazy journalists know there is no point investigating and reporting the facts. Their editor will rip their research to pieces and impose the line their editors' paymasters dictate.
My worry is that our Judges, the best in the world, will bottle it in this media storm. But I'm a small cog in a big wheel. I hold my breath and have my hopes.
The ECHR is not the same organisation as the European Economic Area ("EU") , which is fundamentally a customs and trade treaty. Instead the ECHR is an international Court set up after the war with one aim in mind- to enforce a commonly agreed standard of basic human rights.
Thus screaming "Europe!" to frighten people is either ill informed or wicked.
After the war Europe deliberately constructed a framework to ensure that Nazism and totalitarianism could never happen again. British and French Jurists were extremely influential in drafting a list of rights which includes the right to life A2 , the right not to be tortured A3, the right not to be discriminated against A14 and the right to a fair trial A6, as well as the right to respect for your family, privacy, correspondence and your home A8
As British as sausage and chips, surely?
One MP called the ECHR "A kangaroo court". Really? A court where respected judges including our own are sent to try and agree on tough cases over basic human values that unite us?
David Davis, co-sponsor of the bill uttered the word "lawyers" like he meant cat sick, and explained that until the lawyers came along there hadn't been a problem. Not being a lawyer became a badge of honour, and scarce 22 MP's dared to speak for the idea of obeying the law. How Jack Straw could sponsor the bill and defend the ECHR frankly I don't understand.
Banning lunatics and criminals from the vote only dates to the 1870's, and banning women was always traditional. Now women and people with mental health problems have the vote, and the idea is floating that some prisoners should get to vote too.
Strangely the story became that fat shark lawyers would bleed the government dry unless Parliament voted for the reforms, and therefore it voted against it. But then, this is a kangaroo parliament.
The Express and other newspapers have been shrieking at the prospect that 90.000 people who have been banged up (among the highest in Europe may I add) might get the vote. Something entirely irrelevant in electoral term in a nation of over 60 million people. Yet one of the functions of time in prison, and one of the cheapest ways of encouraging a prisoner to engage with the idea of how they will behave once they are released into society, is voting.
Frankly, I think many won't bother in line with national trends, some will add a desolate vote to Nick Griffin and other nutters, but some will start to come to their senses and will benefit from being able to make small gestures
Once again the Express is in paroxysms of delight today when a High Court Judge has rejected damages claims by frustrated prison voters as un-British and unconstitutional. What the Express fails to understand is that only the British Supreme Court is able to pass judgement on the conflict between our Courts and the ECHR. Thus the case will make its way up the Court Appellate process. Express notwithstanding.
Ill intentioned and ill informed, newspapers whip up clouds of confusion because lazy journalists know there is no point investigating and reporting the facts. Their editor will rip their research to pieces and impose the line their editors' paymasters dictate.
My worry is that our Judges, the best in the world, will bottle it in this media storm. But I'm a small cog in a big wheel. I hold my breath and have my hopes.
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
Skating towards Perdition says Jonathan Djanogly
“I would dispute that we have a roller skate legal service in this
country. I think it’s actually demeaning to the professions and to the excellence of the quality of service that most people receive [from Legal Aid].” Tory legal aid minister Jonathan Djanogly told legal bigwigs on 7.2.2011.
As a moderately depressed geezer working at the coalface this seemed like quite cheerful news. We'd all been worried about cuts of £350 million and 50% cuts to Civil Legal Aid services.
Oh wait, to paraphrase the rest of Jonathan's japes at the Westminster Policy Forum, therefore he's going to proceed to cut £350 million and ensure that 500,000 people will lose access to Civil Legal Aid.
So that's all right then. Cuddly Jonathan thinks that although we don't yet have a roller skate legal system, we should have, and this will make working in legal aid less demeaning.
Government consultation on massive legal aid cuts closed at 12 pm St Valentine's Day, as Chancellor Ken Clarke received thousands of e-Valentine cards asking him scrap his plans to cut legal aid.
On 31 January 90 lawyers, charity workers and union members met with clients to plan a fightback at Hackney Town Hall. Already in just 14 days 1,000 Hackney residents have signed petitions to save Legal Aid. 500,000 people will lose free legal advice for problems such as debt, housing, and family, which is half of the number who are receiving civil legal aid now.
A member of the public who came to the meeting with her disabled mother said that she was a refugee who had been helped by Legal Aid when they were both homeless. She now has a university degree and is working as a dietician with Council services to improve school meals. “I wanted to give something back” she said.
12 Courts will close over the next 2 years in London. Nationally 3,000 jobs will be lost, but it's not about the jobs.
We put in a petition with 232 signatures by real people. People who put a mobile phone number and a post code, and a scrawl. Mums with prams and kids, pensioners apprehensive about meeting a lawyer but hoping they may get help, worried and confused people from many walks of life with threatening letters and court papers they don't understand, smart people we only have to give a little knowledge to who go away and sort out their problems for themselves, frightened teenagers who have been trafficked as maids, then thrown out when they became 18, broken old men stuck low by drug problems and decades of homelessness and heroin, elderly people crippled by cancer, blindness, renal failure, who should be talking to doctors not lawyers, volunteers coming in day after day to help us run our cases.
232 people said No to LA cuts.
I'm sure there's more out there.
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
St Valentine's day massacre for Legal Aid?
Government consultation on massive legal aid cuts closed at 12 pm St Valentine's Day, as Chancellor Ken Clarke received thousands of e-Valentine cards asking him scrap his plans to cut legal aid.
On 31 January 90 lawyers, charity workers and union members met with clients to plan a fightback at Hackney Town Hall. Already in just 14 days 1,000 Hackney residents have signed petitions to save Legal Aid. 500,000 people will lose free legal advice for problems such as debt, housing, and family, which is half of the number who are receiving civil legal aid now.
Local resident and human rights barrister Liz Davis, chair of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers said that since 1949 Legal Aid had been the fourth pillar of the welfare state, along with the NHS, free education and the benefits system. The cuts would cripple services that Hackney residents depend on.
A member of the public who was there with her disabled mother said that she was a refugee who had been helped by Legal Aid when they were both homeless. She now has a university degree and is working as a dietician with Council services to improve school meals. “I wanted to give something back” she said.
12 Courts will close over the next 2 years in London.
We put in a petition with 232 signatures by real people. People who put a mobile phone number and a post code, and a scrawl.
Monday, 7 February 2011
7 Days to Save Legal Aid. Things I wished I'd said before it's gone.
I went to a meeting of court users. I'm a lawyer, that's my job. A professional in human misery I am.
Once a year your local court will meet with the people who use its services most often, and try to find out how best taxpayers money may be spent.
You would meet housing officers, civil servants, lawyers working for the Councils and other social landlords, legal aid solicitors and charity workers , as well a private firms. And Judges. All fighting each other but trying to agree.
One housing officer said that too much legal mail was directed to a building that was knocked down 10 years ago. Sadly the files with the information for stopping this might have been inside the building at the time. We scratch our heads a bit about that one. Mail will be arriving for years to come.
The Judges have a straw poll about legal bundles. It seems mostly double sided bundles are ok, but unless you can deliver your bundles in person using a lever arch means that the bundles get crunched in the post, and crunch the Judges' fingers. Not a good way to win your case.
15,000 jobs are cut from the Justice payroll. 4,000 staff will be cut from the Courts, and London will lose 12 Courts. Let's hope our big society's going to be a bit fairer.
I wish I could have said to the Judge's faces look, do ye think that cutting off all these basic legal services will improve people's lives? But it's not their fault as they don't hold the purse strings.
I wish I could have said to the Judge's faces look, do ye think that cutting off all these basic legal services will improve people's lives? But it's not their fault as they don't hold the purse strings.
What I was thinking was 500,000 people will lose advice for common legal problems. I want to jump up and down and shout SAVE LEGAL AID!!!! But like a lawyer I hum and haw.
7 Days to Save Legal Aid. Things I wished I'd said before it was gone. Don't make my mistake.
Sunday, 6 February 2011
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Legal Aid Activists in Hackney Town Hall
100 Friends of Hackney Community Law Centre met on 31.1.11 to launch a local drive to halt Legal Aid Cuts and Court Closures.
Liz Davis, an experienced social welfare barrister and Chair of the Haldane Society reminded us that in 1949 when Legal Aid was created it was viewed as the fourth pillar of the welfare state, along with the NHS, education and a universal benefits system. At the time of its creation the Legal Aid system was capable of providing a service to 80% of the population (the other 20% being deemed to be sufficiently rich to pay for their own).
In recent years the proportion has fallen to 26%, and proposed cuts would mean that only those who were “virtually destitute” would receive a service if it still existed. Up to 50% of civil legal aid would be wiped out, and 500,000 people will lose a service
A young Somali woman who was present with her disabled mother spoke movingly from the floor, explaining how Legal Aid had saved them from being deported and led to them receiving refugee status. She had recently completed her degree and was working for her local council because she “wanted to put something back.”
A pensioner who used to work for the Court staff described a case concerning a woman who had been released from hospital to a police cell where she died. Her daughter was unable to obtain Legal Aid at the Inquest when the police, NHS and various other agencies all had their own barristers. Thus she was not allowed to ask questions effectively.
Legal Aid cuts would fall disproportionately on women, children, the elderly and the disabled, in other words the most vulnerable. One young lawyer in a Legal Aid firm said that clients who received services were ordinary people stuck in extraordinary circumstances. Often a small amount of help when a family was facing a crisis turned its future around.
12 Courts are to close in London over 18 months, 4,000 jobs could be lost to Court and Tribunal staff, and 11,000 in the Prison and Probation services. This shutting down of the legal system does not look promising.
There are concerns that with substantially less lawyers able to help extraordinary individuals in sadly all too common and ordinary difficulties, the Big Society we are apparently working in will become meaner and smaller.
100 people doesn't sound like very much, but each of these people knows 10 people who know these savage cuts are barmy. Ask those 10 people to sign up to http://www.justice-for-all.org.uk/Take-part/Love-legal-aid and pass on the message.
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