Exams are finished!!
Yes, after months of torment, finally I need no longer feel guilty that I am spending time doing something that is entirely unrelated to law. What, I wondered, would be the best way of celebrating this event? And then it hit me. I shall write an article that is, ironically enough, obliquely related to law!! What an excellent idea.
This was largely prompted by John Reid following in the hallowed footsteps of the Blunkett and Clarke eras by, quite frankly, being a moron. Specifically, jumping on the bandwagon to criticise a judge for giving what he believes is too lenient a sentence.
The point is not the correctness or otherwise of the sentence. The point is that it's nothing to do with the Home Secretary. It is not the place of politicians to stick their noses into judicial decisions. They have no idea about the judicial process and they don't have a clue how the legal system works in reality. The whole point of having an independent judiciary is that they judge each case on its merits rather than taking any notice of public opinion. Politicians do nothing but take notice of public opinion, which is why they should stick to their proper constitutional role and stay out of the judicial process.
To my absolute lack of surprise, everyone's favourite idiot-sheet, The Sun, has come out in favour of Mr Reid. They are campaigning for judges who make "loony" sentencing decisions to be sacked. Possibly someone should explain to them that judges are unsackable precisely because they must be able to carry out their functions without worrying about pleasing the politicians.
If The Sun had its way, our legal system would disintegrate into trial by tabloid. Judges would be at the mercy of journalists who don't know a sentencing tariff from their backside. What fun.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
"Exam replaced after papers leaked"
...was the headline that struck me when I last looked at the BBC News website.
How, I thought, was it possible for exam papers to leak? And even more significantly, what exactly were they leaking? Was it simply water, or something more sinister? Was there an oily trail of knowledge oozing out of them, soon to be lost beyond all recall? Or was it blood, or some ghostly form of ectoplasm? Scenes from Poltergeist and Ghostbusters flashed through my mind.
Woe to ye who fail to use the passive tense correctly when writing headlines. And woe to pedants - I hate people who pick holes in everything.
How, I thought, was it possible for exam papers to leak? And even more significantly, what exactly were they leaking? Was it simply water, or something more sinister? Was there an oily trail of knowledge oozing out of them, soon to be lost beyond all recall? Or was it blood, or some ghostly form of ectoplasm? Scenes from Poltergeist and Ghostbusters flashed through my mind.
Woe to ye who fail to use the passive tense correctly when writing headlines. And woe to pedants - I hate people who pick holes in everything.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Hitting Balls with Hammers
Croquet is, apparently, less painful than its conceptual description seems to suggest. It's a sport that I've always considered to be simply a gentle pastime for the elderly, when they become too decrepid to withstand crunching sliding tackles. Bless them.
But apparently I was mistaken. According to the BBC News website, and seemingly every newspaper in the country, it's actually an amazingly vicious game. Curious as to the basis of this claim, I read further. Was there, I wondered, a dimension to this game that I had entirely missed? In between each round, did the competitors lay down their hammers and undertake a fist-fight? Or, more promisingly, did they keep hold of their hammers and have a highly entertaining hammerfight? Was the aim of the game, in fact, to bludgeon one's opponent to death, and all the hitting of balls merely an elaborate form of foreplay?
Sadly, I could find no such feature to the game. I say sadly, because there is seldom any game that could not be improved by the addition of violence. But nay, the sole justification I found for the claims of brutality was:
"At the same time you would try and position your balls in a certain place, you can hit your opponent's ball off the lawn."
So in other words, at the same time as trying to win, you try to make your opponent lose. I must confess to being slightly dubious as to the uniqueness of this aspect of the game.
The reason why the newspapers have been so excited about croquet is, of course, that John Prescott was pictured playing it. This, bizarrely enough, actually took up the entirity of the front page of that well known oasis of intelligent comment, The Sun. The accompanying article seemed to suggest that his previous misdemeanours of groping every female within reach, presiding over the most demoralised and unhappy department in government (an impressive achievement, considering the continued existence of the Home Office), punching people, and having an affair with a civil servant, were trivial in comparison, and that he should be sacked immediately.
The most worrying thing about the whole incident is it meant that, for the first time in history, I actually found myself defending John Prescott. When that happens, you know that something is very, very wrong with the world.
But apparently I was mistaken. According to the BBC News website, and seemingly every newspaper in the country, it's actually an amazingly vicious game. Curious as to the basis of this claim, I read further. Was there, I wondered, a dimension to this game that I had entirely missed? In between each round, did the competitors lay down their hammers and undertake a fist-fight? Or, more promisingly, did they keep hold of their hammers and have a highly entertaining hammerfight? Was the aim of the game, in fact, to bludgeon one's opponent to death, and all the hitting of balls merely an elaborate form of foreplay?
Sadly, I could find no such feature to the game. I say sadly, because there is seldom any game that could not be improved by the addition of violence. But nay, the sole justification I found for the claims of brutality was:
"At the same time you would try and position your balls in a certain place, you can hit your opponent's ball off the lawn."
So in other words, at the same time as trying to win, you try to make your opponent lose. I must confess to being slightly dubious as to the uniqueness of this aspect of the game.
The reason why the newspapers have been so excited about croquet is, of course, that John Prescott was pictured playing it. This, bizarrely enough, actually took up the entirity of the front page of that well known oasis of intelligent comment, The Sun. The accompanying article seemed to suggest that his previous misdemeanours of groping every female within reach, presiding over the most demoralised and unhappy department in government (an impressive achievement, considering the continued existence of the Home Office), punching people, and having an affair with a civil servant, were trivial in comparison, and that he should be sacked immediately.
The most worrying thing about the whole incident is it meant that, for the first time in history, I actually found myself defending John Prescott. When that happens, you know that something is very, very wrong with the world.
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