Sorry....

Just a word to say why it's been a bit quiet here . Holidays and unexpected family visits have got in the way of our usual stuff, and something had to give. Lots of comment-worthy things have come up, so we hope to get stuck in soon.

Me Voici Encore

So here I am, back in the  Royaume Uni, refreshed, relaxed, and pretty well fed and watered. In a moment of weakness I took along my trusty iPad. Le weefy  is not as common in France as the guidebooks tell you (ask for le code weefy in a bar or restaurant and the waiter will charmingly say that it is hors service five times out of ten). Ever reliable is the world's most deservedly successful restaurant chain, known to the young as MaccyD's. Ronald's setup is illimité, and gratuit and works. So for 1.3 € for a coffee you can tap away as long as you like. I didn't (being reluctant to push my luck with my beloved's tolerance) but I made a point of downloading the day's 'Times' and reading as much of the Daily Mail as I could without gagging.

The team have managed to moderate the comments that have come in, and I have made a mental note of some of the issues that seem to warrant a bit more attention. (But give me a break, all you Anons - call yourself Anon 123 or anything you like, but give me a chance to know who is who or which or whom).  This request does not apply to MH because I can spot his style at a thousand yards in heavy fog.

In response to one query, the reasons for my failing to address the future of the magistracy are twofold:- The main one is that I haven't a clue how things will go because I am no longer one of the movers and shakers, and neither do I care that much,

Whatever ministry is to emerge from the next election is a total mystery and anyone who says that he knows is a fool or a knave.  A Minister will be appointed, and like so many of his predecessors he will have no clue where to start, other than peering into his empty purse.

Even the most crusty time server in the Civil Service will be able to recognise the presence of about 24,000 honest sincere and dedicated JPs. He will soon be told by the MoJ hardcore that professionals such as DJs are easier to manage (a chap on a £130,000+ packge might just be biddable, if only procedurally). So what will he do with these JPs who will be subject to natural wastage anyway?

Some rising 35 year-old probably knows the answer, but I am damned if I do. But I have had a bloody good run (pushing 30 years quite soon) and I shall help when I can and shut up when I can't.

Holidays - aren't they great?

A Busy Day - Eventually

Before getting down to our list today we were forced to hang about drinking coffee and grumbling while our courtroom was taken over to do the case management on a forthcoming tricky and sensitive trial. We finally got going at about 11.15, and from then on we were kept busy. We did a few 'allocation' exercises, deciding on the appropriate level of court that would handle cases, and then we dealt with numerous sentences, assisted (most of the time) by pre-sentence reports from Probation. Heroin, the curse of the underclass, featured strongly and I was reminded yet again of the unmistakable signs of the drug's abuse. Hunched shoulders, pinched and pallid features, hollow eyes, and a hunted expression were present as they so often are. One woman, 33 according to our list, but looking more like 53, was obviously 'clucking' having been away from her chemical comfort for half a day or more. The kindest thing to do was to get her remanded as soon as possible, and away to the meagre comfort offered by Holloway's medical wing.
Wife beater followed shoplifter followed drug dealer (over half a kilo of skunk in the wardrobe, three thousand quid in the bedroom, but it wasn't his - he was looking after the stuff for a friend whom he owed a favour. We decided to let a jury sort that one out.
We mostly stayed within the guidelines, but used our power to go outside them (which is all right so long as we give our reasons in open court).  We were done by 4.30, had a quick debrief with the clerk, and were on our way.

I wasn't sorry to get away as I am going away for a couple of weeks tomorrow. I shall take my iPad to stay in touch, but the Breton cottage we have rented doesn't have wi-fi. I told this to my son, who said: "What! Are they Amish?"

Back in a couple of weeks.

Unrelenting

The Mail is unsurprisingly one of the papers to feature the release on licence of Jon Venables, one of the boys who murdered James Bulger in 2001. James was two years old at the time, and the boys were ten. The Sun's coverage is more strident, but even BBC Radio news led its 11 am bulletin with the story.
As usual when the case is mentioned poor Denise Fergus, who suffered the trauma of losing a child in horrible circumstances, is wheeled out to tell a reporter that Venables should stay inside still longer. She has taken the place of the late Mrs. Bennett, whose agony at the murder of her son Keith by Brady and Hindley was regularly refreshed  by the press. Both women have suffered terribly, but it is a cruel deception to speak as if grieving victims have a veto on parole. That is why we have a well resourced and judicially supervised Parole Board.
Venables' case is uniquely difficult and I do not envy the Parole Board its task. Knowing that powerful and rich newspapers are keeping a lynch mob in the wings cannot make it any easier.

Where's The Logic?

Bystander N has posed the following question:

At seventy years plus one day I am too old to sit as a magistrate, despite possibly having enormous experience.

At seventy five years less one day I am fine to sit on a jury, despite possibly never having done it before.

Where's the Sense?

Way Way Off Topic

I was born a few miles from the then London Airport, and it was an ever present part of my young life. We could predict the weather from the direction in which flights were landing; Runway 23 meant winds from the south west, and that meant rain. Similarly, if we could smell coffee from the Nestles factory, rain was on the way. (Just a note to our pedants; anyone calling it 'Nestlay' would have been  regarded as a pretentious idiot).
I saw my first 747 Jumbo in  1968, on final approach to the westbound runway, over Hounslow. I was awed by its sheer size and the illusion that it was flying  very slowly.
This post is prompted by the fact that I am sitting  in my garden to the west of London and a steady stream of airliners is passing to my south, en route to LHR. Among them is the occasional A380 superjumbo, and despite its ungainly mien, that reminds me of some of  the gormless looking fish that are hauled out of the Mediterranean, it has a commanding presence in the air, but still looks slow.
Sorry to bother you, but it fascinates me.

Straight In Or A Bender?

Constrained as we are by ever-more-detailed  guidelines, we nevertheless still come across clear yes-no decisions that we have to take.
A recent example was a man whose offence clearly crossed the custody threshold, and the question was whether we should suspend it. The guidelines say that we must always consider suspending a custodial sentence, so consider is what we did. On the one hand it was tempting to impose a salutary immediate prison sentence and send him down the steel stairs to the Serco guards. The alternative was to suspend the sentence and impose conditions such as a curfew or unpaid work as well as probation supervision. But the real choice was between a four-month sentence (i.e. six months less a third off for the early plea) of which he would serve half. As his offence was not violent or sexual he would probably be released on a tag after a few weeks. A suspended sentence order with 200 hours of unpaid work would not attract any reduction, and would dispose of his spare time for a good few months, and allow him to continue his not-too-special job.
So an SSO it was. We had to balance the reality of either choice of sentence, and in the end the SSO seemed the best solution for him.

The Bottom Line

We sat on a simple little trial the other day. I usually sit in the middle chair, but this was one of my chances to sit as a winger. We heard the crown's case, and its only witness, who was not shaken in cross examination. The unrepresented defendant, a young woman only just old enough to vote, admitted her presence at the scene, and to being upset and angry, but she staunchly denied that her anger was expressed outside the house concerned - so the issue was whether this all happened 'in a public place' . We heard from her, and we retired to think about it. To be frank, we were convinced that she had been in a temper, and that her language was to say the least indelicate,  but the case boiled down to whether the incident happened in a public place.  Of that we could not be sure to the (very high) criminal standard of proof, so we agreed to acquit her. Did she do it? Probably. Did the prosecution prove it to the required standard? No they did not, so off she went.
Call me an old softy if you must, but I found it satisfying to find a not-very-bright young woman who lives near the bottom of the heap not guilty, despite her not having legal assistance.
 

A Worthwhile Speech From A Top Wig

Lord Justice Moses recently gave an interesting after dinner speech.

It's worth taking the time to read it.

Déjà Vu Yet Again

Governments of all parties and of none habitually announce new initiatives (often described as 'Crackdowns') that have little or nothing new about them but are intended to garner a few headlines; this technique is especially common in the Silly Season when grown-up journalists go on holiday and the kids are left in charge of the newsroom.

And so it is with the recent fuss about so-called Middle Lane Hoggers, tailgaters and suchlike motorway nuisances. Driving without due consideration is already illegal, as, of course, is careless driving. The change is to make Due Care a fixed penalty offence, which takes those picky old courts out of the process of fining drivers. Now the thing about Due Care is that the wide variation in the seriousness of bad driving has led to courts having the option of imposing between three and nine points or a disqualification, which is just the sort of thing that a bench of justices is very good at assessing. That judgement will now be made by a police officer, but here is the best bit :- the number of police patrols continues to decline, so that very few of the tickets are likely to be issued.

In the last few days I have travelled several hundred miles on motorways, and apart from 90 boring minutes sat on the M4 with the engine switched off while a fiercely burning lorry was extinguished I saw nary a patrol car, so I could have hogged the middle lane with impunity.