Author: Matthew

You might think that the most important part of a judge’s job is to sit on the bench and listen to the evidence, and that the least important part is sitting in chambers waiting to be called into court. The Judicial Conduct Investigations Office, on the other hand, appears to think that how a judge behaves in the privacy of his chambers is more important than how he does his job in court.

Three judges have been sacked for watching pornography. District Judge Timothy Bowles, Immigration Judge Warren Grant and, Deputy District Judge and Recorder Peter Bullock. In the great scheme of things there have been greater injustices, but I think they have been treated rather harshly. Bullock has perhaps got off the lightest of the three as he was not a full-time judge. No doubt he can return to private practice without too many problems. Bowles and Grant were full-time judges and they have lost their livelihoods. Possibly they will be able to return to practice as lawyers but failed and disgraced ex-judges don’t command a high premium in the competitive world of legal recruitment. Continue reading “Were the three porn viewing judges rightly sacked?”

Has Jimmy Savile driven The Guardian mad? The tabloids, unsurprisingly, seek out the most sensational stories about the now disgraced disc jockey, as though to atone for their devotion to the man when he was alive. One would like to have thought that more serious newspapers would adopt a more sober tone.

The Guardian sometimes prints drivel. One expects nothing else from some of its star columnists, such as Seamus Milne who likes to write approvingly of Vladimir Putin and wistfully of the Soviet Union.

Its editorial columns are usually rather more sensible.

Last Thursday was an exception. Under the headline “Oblivion’s Too Good For Him,” the newspaper that remains required reading for the British left published an editorial that was so hysterical and so bizarre that it suggested the writer (who is sadly unnamed) might require a few weeks leave to calm himself down.

Its subject was Jimmy Savile. Bemoaning the fact that no Hell exists in which Mr Savile could be condemned to “eternal torment,” the editorial went on to make an extraordinary comparison:

“If there is one thing to make the most benign agnostics wish that there were a God to punish sinners with eternal torment, it is the contemplation of history’s monsters. Oblivion is too good for the likes of Pol Pot, and for Jimmy Savile, too.”

Continue reading “Has the Guardian gone mad about Jimmy Savile?”

Unless a miracle occurs around about 2 a.m. UK time tomorrow morning, 22 year old Saman Naseem will be hanged.

The usual Iranian method of hanging is unusually cruel and gruesome. The condemned prisoner is simply suspended from a rope by his neck. There is no drop; no attempt to break his neck. He is slowly strangled to death as he kicks and struggles. Death takes minutes. Sometimes the executions are public, though more commonly they take place inside a prison. Continue reading “Saman Naseem will hang tonight. George Galloway has appealed to save his life”

In August last year Fathers For Justice campaigner Martin Matthews climbed onto the roof of Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s house and unveiled banners in a protest against the family justice system.

He had with him a screwdriver and some screws which he used to screw fixings for his banners into Mr Grayling’s bitumen.

The police were called and Mr Matthews was arrested.

There was, however, a problem. What crime, if any, had been committed? Continue reading “Was Mr Grayling’s felt penetrated or just his bitumen? What a waste of public money”

The appalling attack on Charlie Hebdo’s Paris offices is, as almost everyone has noted, an attack on free speech and an attack on those of us who think that free speech is the most important of all our freedoms.

It is intended to intimidate people who take it for granted.

If we ever allow what we write or say to be affected by a mob, or by the threat of violence or murder we might as well stop writing and stop thinking. We will have been defeated.

It is quite absurd that even now, after ten of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo have been murdered and others critically wounded, most newspapers, including it seems The Guardian, are still not publishing the cartoons that led to their murder. The only explanation would seem to be cowardice.

All websites, from the largest to the smallest should now publish Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

Bloggers usually get readers by being outraged. To suggest that something really doesn’t matter very much is the way to lose readers.

On the other hand to suggest that Western Civilisation is at stake can grab the attention.

So I ought really to be getting outraged over former Apprentice contestant and Sun columnist Katie Hopkins and either denouncing her, or the alleged threat to prosecute her, in the strongest possible terms. Continue reading “Empty Threats to Prosecute Katie Hopkins are not a threat to Western Civilisation”