Lex Ferenda Over the last 50 years or so we have become victims of an experiment by liberal policy makers, exacerbated more lately by our attachment to Europe and the Human Rights Act. These naive policies, which have supposedly given individuals more freedoms, have in fact resulted in the majority having their freedoms eroded. In the case of crime, the  [ Read More ]

Lex Ferenda I can’t help watching cop programs on the TV. My favourite is Police Interceptors. Mostly, the officers are highly motivated and they know the law and arrest lots of bad guys, and that is how it should be. I get depressed when I see what the rest of the justice system does with  [ Read More ]

Lex Ferenda I went to Dale Farm weeks ago now and was sent home as a learned judge decided that he wanted more time to consider the case of the travellers before he confirmed the eviction could go ahead. When the eviction eventually took place I was away on holiday. I saw on the news  [ Read More ]

Lex Ferenda I was dismayed to see the funeral of Mark Duggan today. His family insist he was no gangster but we had a funeral akin to one of the Krays. I was pleased to hear some of the church leaders involved in the ceremony speaking out against violence and recriminations. I am not surprised  [ Read More ]

Lex Ferenda Some Magistrates seem to be miffed that they didn’t get to hear some of the cases against the rioters. From the comments on their blog we should all be grateful that they did not or they would all have been bailed and given community sentences. The city riots were an extraordinary event and  [ Read More ]

Henry Hill I recently discovered a couple of interesting articles in the Telegraph, one recent and one less so. Each of these outline proposals – an old set from the Conservatives in 2007 and a post-riots set from a Telegraph columnist – for creating a Territorial Army-style police reserve force. I was originally going to  [ Read More ]

Lex Ferenda I was going to write a few thoughts down regarding the aftermath of the riots. I am concerned that the Government seem to be happy to allow the Courts to wave the stick and there is a distinct lack of discussion on the policy changes required to reverse the mess we are in.  [ Read More ]

Lynne Featherstone Am I bovvered? That was the gag line from Catherine Tate – and we all laughed. But there was nothing funny about the real life representation of lots of young people who were not bothered at all. Their consciences weren’t bothered. They weren’t bothered about the victims of their actions. They weren’t bothered  [ Read More ]