I was once told by a criminal practitioner that you never asked for the CPS to be ordered to pay costs as “it’s all the same pot money ultimately and they are slower than the LAA”. Is that true?

Closely watched by-elections are a sure fire predictor of national elections, which is why the Bermondsy by-election predicted the Alliance finishing first in the 1983 elections shortly afterwards.

Until a judge gets caught using an Ouija board to convict someone of murder, I will remain unrepentant.

Denning is hardly representative of a modern judge! And of course they aren’t a panacea, but (a) the deference to the guilty verdicts of the jury in those cases didn’t help (b) judges have to give reasons, in public. All things being equal that is better than a secret jury!

And of course immediately after he said that juries went on to oversee a variety of notorious miscarriages of justice.

Devlin is hardly a character to invoke, and in any event the jury in his time was totally unrecognisable to that we have today - property qualifications, far fewer women, no bad character or hearsay permitted etc.

The most acceptable jingoism amongst British lawyers it that only we have fair trials.

I think the suggestion that you don’t believe in human rights if you don’t believe in jury trials for *all* indictable offences is a little overblown.

Him being Robert, not Ian.

Its not like GM didn’t have a role in that - she (allegedly unwittingly) carried a suitcase of bearer shares across the Atlantic for him… (as you do, easy mistake to make)

I’m not sure exactly how much enforcement abroad the government actually does, but I suspect if they got advice saying it wasn’t possible in principle theyd have to move a lot of the notional debt into the bad debt category.

The reason the gov won’t do this is that the moment it’s a formal tax, they can’t enforce it abroad. So unless we want to introduce some Singapore style bond system, we’d have to swallow a different balance sheet hit.

I may be wrong, we will see.

In a three way fight where the Greens are drawing off Labour votes, I think this is very much about turn out of core Reform votes.

Assuming they even stand to benefit - I suspect a lot of Reform’s core vote is older and own their own homes?

We’ll see.

“Simple” in the sense that people who are aware of them who are employed and/or renters will see them as being in their direct interest.

And even if it did cut through, I really don't think people are as simple as this - many Reform voters can probably be persuaded to the idea that these laws protect undeserving people.

I am willing to bet this will have no cut through at all. I haven’t seen either of these measures feature at all in focus groups or polling.

Yes, passing both these measures have made the government immensely popular.

Say a D is charged with fraudulent evasion of tariffs - can they not raise a challenge in criminal court that there is simply no tariff to evade?

There is an interesting question here re jurisdiction - if the President simply lacks power to tariff (rather than any question of improper purpose etc) then why is a challenge restricted to a particular court?

Still. It was a magnificent and silly machine.

Tony Benn’s long term legacies as Minister of Technology were a uranium mine in Namibia used to support apartheid, and a machine used to ferry the rich from London to New York.

I’m actually surprised how comprehensible it is all the way back to the 1300s, as long as you’ve learnt to deal with the long s and know thorn and yogh.

As long as you know the long s, thorn and yogh, it’s surprisingly comprehensible all the way back to the 1300s, but then it gets quite difficult.

(a) should they not have settled, and forced Guiffre to go to trial?
(b) What has that settlement “enabled” him to do?

I suppose the gov could say it was good for the money, so the potential prejudice of a stay was diminished.

From recollection both courts below suspended their orders pending appeal. I don't really understand why they did that given the case was pretty clear cut. I doubt that there would be a stay in England in the same circumstances, even if the gov might have avoided the grant of an interim injunction.

I think the test for interim relief in JR cases is very much something like "irreperable harm" - see the refusals to grant any interim relief in the Rwanda and PA cases, where realistically money wouldn't be an adequate recompense.