Author: Matthew

Should we trust our doctors, teachers and priests?

Keir Starmer QC, who recently stepped down as Director of Public Prosecutions, believes we should not. Instead we should place our trust in the criminal law and the lawyers of the Crown Prosecution Service.

That is the conclusion one is driven to from his demand for a new offence of failing to notify the authorities of a reasonable belief that a child has been sexually abused. Continue reading “Child abuse: Keir’s law didn’t help Gerry Adams’ niece and it won’t help other children either”

Barristerblogger can’t stand sanctimonious left-wingery and as a result tries hard to be right-wing. But it is very difficult when some Conservative MPs try to pass laws that are mind-bogglingly, catatonically stupid.

Next month (probably on 10th January) a fine example of such a proposal is being debated in Parliament. It is an attempt to amend the criminal law. Surprisingly it emanates not from the Lord Chancellor – a notably practised political buffoon – but from two Northamptonshire Conservative MPs: Messrs Phillip Hollobone (Kettering) and Peter Bone (Wellingborough). Their proposal is characterised by the sort of stupidity, I suppose one could call it bone-headed, that drives one close to despair. Continue reading “Phillip Hollobone and Peter Bone: Could they be the stupidest men in Parliament?”

Theresa May has set herself the breathtakingly ambitious task of making it illegal to be annoying. It would be a difficult enough task if it was confined to adults. After all, a short gaol sentence managed the seemingly impossible task of making Chris Huhne even more annoying than he was before. Be that as it may, her objective is no more and no less than to put a stop to the annoying behaviour not only of adults but of children too. We must hope that her crackdown is successful. Continue reading “Home Secretary vows to crack down on annoying children”

What do Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ursula Brennan and Chris Grayling have in common?

 The answer is that all of them, though not lawyers, have been elected as honorary benchers of Gray’s Inn. It is a great honour, especially for non-lawyers.

I am grateful to utterbarrister for digging out the Inn’s selection criteria for the appointment of honorary benchers. (The Standing Orders point out that Honorary Benchers should be appointed “sparingly”). Continue reading “Gray’s Inn honoured Grayling and Brennan. Now they’ve got them for eternity”

I am a barrister in private practice specialising in criminal prosecution and defence. I have been in practice since 1986 and have worked exclusively from Pump Court Chambers (chambers of Oba Nsugbe QC). I entirely agree with the submissions of the Western Circuit and the Criminal Bar Association and just wish to add a few remarks based on my own experience. I believe that these proposals, if implemented, will spell the death of the criminal bar as it exists today with disastrous consequences for our justice system. Continue reading “My Response to MOJ’s second Consultation on legal aid reforms”

I am delighted to bring you a little vignette from Geoffery Birch, one of the South Eastern Circuit’s best advocates, who tells a very good  story about a theft case he did in Welwyn Garden City a year or two ago.  Continue reading “Barista Barrister confusion: guest post by Geoffery Birch”

Recent and proposed cuts to legal aid are likely to force more and more people to represent themselves in court without lawyers. It is a daunting prospect as I know from personal experience.

During my career I have generally shared the profession’s somewhat disdainful attitude towards those who have dispensed with the services of solicitors and counsel and conducted litigation on their own. I have groaned with the ushers and sighed with the judges as litigants in person have tried to extricate themselves from personal and financial catastrophe without the assistance of lawyers. Then I have retreated to the robing room to chuckle over their absurd mistakes.  The sort that we would never make ourselves. Continue reading “Representing yourself in court: horrible even for a barrister”

About twenty years ago I remember a much liked and respected colleague beginning a characteristically eloquent closing speech with the old rhyme:

My mother said

I never should

Play with gypsies

In the wood.

Nobody batted an eyebrow and the colleague went on to become a distinguished circuit judge.

He would never have dared to incorporate a rhyme about, let’s say Jews stealing children and drinking their blood, and to be fair to him nor would he have been inclined to do so. Belief in the blood libel, or even joking about it, at least in western Europe, is largely a thing of the past. Continue reading “Anti-gypsy prejudice is as repulsive as any other racism and much more respectable”

When I wrote 950 words for the October edition of Standpoint about why Conservatives should support the European Convention on Human Rights I anticipated a certain amount of kerfuffle from some of the magazine’s most articulate and formidable contributors. I am astute enough to know that the mere mention of human rights law is apt to drive a few otherwise reasonable Standpoint readers and contributors to something approaching apoplexy.

At first nothing much seemed to happen. There was the odd tweet, largely from slightly touchy-feely liberal lawyers that habitually drink the milk of Human Rights in preference to the red blood of National Sovereignty. There was a single, somewhat cryptic comment, which I took to be favourable, on the Standpoint website. I steeled myself for evisceration by the terrifyingly intelligent Douglas Murray or the polite but devastating (and terrifyingly intelligent) Daniel Hannan but when none came I started to relax. Continue reading “The danger of agreeing with Jesse Norman”

When a new headmaster takes over a school there are three strategies that can work. He can be relaxed, friendly and cheerful; he can impose an iron discipline from the word go and send miscreants into detention without hesitation; or he can start by terrifying his pupils, before eventually relaxing a little once they know who is boss. Something a little similar applies to new judges.

When it comes to criminals Baron Thomas of Cwmgledd the new Lord Chief Justice obviously does not favour the relaxed and friendly approach. He is said to be “extremely clever” with a “brain like a squash ball, bouncing off all the walls,” and some say he is “testy and does not suffer fools gladly.” The distinguished artist Graham Ovenden and Neil Wilson, who was an unknown sex offender until achieving notoriety when his prosecutor called his victim “predatory”, may this week feel that it is they, rather than Lord Thomas’s brain, that have been bounced off the beautiful oak-panelled walls around the court of the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. Continue reading “Stern justice from Cwmgledd: some first impressions”