If you want to understand (and you really should want to) how gender ideology – the belief that men can turn into women simply by saying so based on some internal feeling they have – captured so many public institutions and members of the political class in recent years, how, in particular, it led to the Gender Recognition Reform Act in Scotland (blocked by the UK government), how Scottish women mobilised and fought back against it and the price they…
The Post Office Scandal – Where Now? It would be a glorious apotheosis of the great big Post Office scandal if all the defendants stood trial together in a specially constructed cage, like those used for Mafia trials in Sicily – investigators, lawyers, consultants, accountants, Board members, civil servants, Ministers, the whole damned lot of them. Sadly, it ain’t gonna happen. It would not be very British, and in any case, there isn’t a cage or court room big enough. The numbers…
This week the government will – after the usual pro forma apology – finally announce payment of compensation to the victims and their families of the blood contamination scandal. The scandal started in the 1970’s. Three-quarters of the victims are dead. No-one has been held accountable. Other countries facing the same issue have managed to pay compensation and hold some of those responsible accountable. Inordinate delays after scandals seem to be an example of British exceptionalism at its worst. Given…
9 September 2013: there is a meeting between Brian Altman KC and the Post Office’s in-house and external lawyers. A key witness, Gareth Jenkins of Fujitsu, who gave oral evidence at Seema Misra’s 2010 trial, was tainted. Following advice from Simon Clarke, a barrister with Cartwright King, the Post Office had asked them to review its prosecutions since 2010. Its GC had agreed to this as the cut off date even though it excluded the Misra case. What should the…
Scandals and misconduct do not come out of nowhere. When people misbehave there is usually a clue, often more than one, usually ignored (even if carefully collected and correctly filed) or hand-waved away as unimportant (see the Angiolini Report on Wayne Couzens, for instance). The same applies to scandals involving organisations and actions (or a lack of action) by many people. There were warnings; there were whistleblowers; people were told. Coupled with this is a failure to take this information…
Senator Howard Baker’s question: “What did the President know and when did he know it?” went to the heart of the Watergate scandal. But it was another question, asked almost as an aside, which provided the damning evidence: the question to Alexander Butterfield, a Nixon aide, about what recording devices, in addition to the taped instructions given by Nixon to his secretary, there were in the White House. Those tapes provided the evidence that the conspiracy went right to the…
“You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.” (LBJ) Wise advice. A great pity it was not heeded by Scotland’s Justice Minister in 2021 when The Hate Crime and Public Order Act was passed. It is one of the SNP’s most badly drafted, illiberal and dangerous laws, despite stiff competition from the…
Irish voters have inflicted a comprehensive and humiliating political defeat on Ireland’s political and NGO class, which overwhelmingly supported proposals presented as “progressive” measures updating the Constitution. Why? Shortly, the changes were badly drafted, unclear as to their purpose, erased women and seemed to reduce the state’s obligations to vulnerable groups, particularly the disabled and their carers. Some background Ireland’s 1937 constitution reflected a conservative Catholic approach to social matters. Article 41.2 referred to a woman’s “life within the home”…