My new reading list

Well, having just finished my last batch of reading matter, it’s time to set some reading goals.  For those who are interested, here’s my new reading list:

• 1984 – George Orwell
• A Town Called Alice – Neville Shute
• Where Angels Fear to Tread – E M Forster
• The Eustace Diamonds – Antony Trollope
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
• Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
• A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
• Wuthering Heights – Charlotte Bronte
• Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell

If you have any views on my choices (good or bad) or would like to suggest any other books, please feel free to comment!

 

The Bloody Apprentice

As Sir Alan himself might say, “You done good this week, so I’ve laid on a very special treat for you…”

“Now, get back to the bloody penthouse and I’ll see you on the next task.”

With thanks and acknowledgement to Cassette Boy, who spent hours editing hours of Apprentice footage to create and hone this fine specimen of televisual entertainment.

 

An amusing suggestion for fixing the economy

I have just received a forwarded email from one of my friends, which included someone’s jocular proposal for sorting out the UK’s current economic woes.  At least, I assume that it’s not intended to be taken seriously!  So, here it is:

There are about 20 million people over 50 in the work force.  - Pay them £1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations: 

1) They MUST retire.  Twenty million job openings – Unemployment fixed. 

2) They MUST buy a new British CAR.  Twenty million cars ordered – Auto Industry fixed. 

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage – Housing Crisis fixed. 

4) They must send their kids to school / college /university – Crime rate fixed 

5) Buy £50 of alcohol / tobacco a week there’s your money back in duty / tax etc 

It can’t get any easier than that!   But, if more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back there falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances.

 

Tory expense claims could be good news…really!

Whilst many Tory supporters may be inwardly groaning at the latest twist in the parliamentary expenses saga (see today’s Telegraph) and be disappointed by the prospect of the party’s current popularity being dented by these revelations, it is instead distinctly possible that Cameron may well have been dealt a royal flush.

Brown can hardly sack half his cabinet without causing irreparable damage to the government, but provided Cameron himself is clean on the issue he could seize the moral high ground, and the political initiative, by sacking the shadow cabinet ministers accused of the worst of the perceived excesses now coming under scrutiny.

Not only would such positive action kill the story completely in terms of how it affects the Tories, it would allow Cameron to go on the offensive and keep landing punches on Brown and the Labour Party with the issue. It would also provide Cameron with a means of reinvigorating the front bench team with some fresh blood, such as the self-exiled David Davies, which could be critical in maintaining Tory momentum and the current poll lead.

So, played right, it might not be such a bad day for the Conservatives after all.

 

“Halls of residence” for MPs

Although today’s revelations in the Telegraph have been less than earth-shattering, what they have perhaps highlighted more than anything else is that, at a time when many people are struggling to pay their mortgages or rent, MPs are perceived to be “on the make” – milking the expenses and allowances system to line their own pockets.

I suspect that most, if not all, of the reported excesses will be found to be within the rules, but what the public finds hard to stomach is, in some cases, the pettiness of the claims (such as 5p for a carrier bag), in other cases extravagent wastefulness (changing a boiler because the hot water it produced was too hot), and, in a substantial number of cases, home improvement and renovation projects that up the value if MPs’ properties at the public expense.

Perhaps the most scandalous “abuse” of all is the practice of MPs nominating their London property as their second residence, thus making it eligible for work to it to be carried out at the public expense. But worse is the ability of MPs (and it’s much taken advantage of) to then redesignate their constituency home as their second home and then have work carried out to that with public money. Embattled Chancellor, Alastair Darling, has done this not less than four times in as many years. Outrageous.

So, what to do about the vexed question of the cost of living in London? Well, why not adopt the siluipn favoured by universities – halls of residence. If course, I don’t suggest literally that all MPs should reside in one place – it would be a huge security risk for one thing – but perhaps it’s time that the state owned a portfolio of resudential properties in London for allocation to MPs.

 

Presumed guilty?

This government has done more to erode our civil rights and the protections long afforded by our criminal justice system than any previous UK government that I can think of.  So, it comes as no surprise that, in the wake of the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, it has done what it perceives as the bare minimum it can get away with to address the illegality of people convicted of no crime being among the 4.5 million DNA profiles held on a national database.

As a lawyer, I hold dear (and so, I suggest, should everyone) the presumption of innocence enjoyed by every person who is arrested, charged and tried for a criminal offence.  It is for the Crown (the state) to prove a defendant’s guilt; it is not for the defendant to prove his or her innocence.  I thought at the time that it was done that it was wrong to undermine a defendant’s right to silence, which was of course consistent with the presumption of innocence and the burden on the Crown to prove guilt, by changing the police arrest caution and the direction given to juries by judges, that a defendant’s refusal to mention under police questioning evidence that they later rely on in court may cause the jury to draw an adverse inference from that refusal.  Although unspoken, the clear subtext here is that only the guilty keep quiet and that, as it wasn’t mentioned at the time, the evidence in question may therefore be fabricated.

To my mind, this can never sit comfortably with the presumption of innocence.  If the Crown’s case is weak, why should a defendant risk bolstering it by his responses to questions?  After all, how many times have we all said something and moments later wished that we had chosen our language more carefully, as what we had just said had been taken to mean something other than what we had intended?  Or how often have we had an argument with someone and subsequently thought of a particular fact that would have supported our position but which, in the heat and stress of the moment disappeared from the mind?  It is not hard to see how, under stress, a suspect may easily be lead into difficulty under questioning, regardless of whether they are guilty or not.  As any lawyer will tell you, it is not particularly difficult to construct a line of questioning that will lead someone to say exactly  what you want them to say.  Pollsters with political agendas have been using such techniques for decades.

So, what of this database?  Well, should anyone who is suspected but not charged, or is tried but then acquited, have their DNA profiles held on a database along with convicted criminals?  Of course not.  To keep their DNA profile in this way is to continue treating them as suspects, as being potentially guilty of the crime of which they were suspected or of other crimes that have yet to be solved.  This cannot be right.  Few people would tolerate the notion of everyone’s DNA profile being held on a database (just look at the resistance to identity cards) – presumably because they take the view that those who have done nothing wrong should not have their right to privacy infringed in this way.  So, why should those who were never convicted of the offence that led to their arrest and a DNA sample being taken have their profiles held for between six and 12 years?

We stand by and watch our rights being chipped away at our peril.

 

Why swine flu might be just what the doctor ordered…

So, for months we’ve heard about precious little else in the news except the economy.  Doom, gloom and more doom. Well, now we have more bad news. Or is it?  In this blog post, I explore whether swine flu is all bad news.

I’ve long been saying that the economic downturn may not have been as bad, and that full-blown recession might have been avoided altogether, if the media had been less obsessed with it – and with telling us constantly how bad things were getting.  You see, to my mind, if you’re unwell and do nothing but dwell on how ill you feel, you’re going to probably make yourself feel worse and will almost certainly take longer to get better.  And so with the economy.  If people are fed a constant media diet of stories about how bad things could get and how they might lose their jobs or even houses, it will almost certainly make them more cautious about spending money.

The effect of so much bad news is obvious: people react by spending less and the economy begins to contract.  Then, the vicious circle is complete: the media stories sink to greater depths of despair, businesses begin to fail and people start losing their jobs.  Those who are still earning then become even more cautious and spend still less; those without jobs naturally have less to spend.  The economy contracts further and the media slavishly feed off the misery and reflect it back to us.  You get the idea.

So, why might swine flu be a good thing?  Well, I say this with tongue firmly in cheek, of course.  I’m certainly not saying that it’s good for those who get it, and I certainly don’t mean to make light of the tragic deaths it has caused.  Yet I can’t help but notice one thing.  The media aren’t talking about the parlous state of the economy.  And that must be a good thing.

If the media stops telling us how bad things are on a daily basis, who knows, perhaps things might start to get better?