Merry Christmas

To all of you, whoever and wherever you may be.

Here's a thought for the people at work safeguarding us over the holiday, for the prison staff and their charges, and for the families of prisoners, who often pay a heavy price for the crimes of their family member.

Here's to my 30,000 JP colleagues, only a few of whom will be called in to court today, and to our court staff who have endured yet another year of reorganisation and insecurity, much of it still unfinished business.

Here's to the wise and learned senior judiciary - I wish you well in your patient attempts to deflect Ministers from inflicting further injustice upon us.

Here's to the people in the print and broadcast media who take the humble blogger more and more seriously with each year that passes.

And here's to the quarter-million or so people who have had a look at this blog in the last year - I hope that I have shed as much light as I have generated heat.

I'm off to pop a cork.

Merry Christmas.