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Cyclefree gives her view Jonathan Sumption, former Law Lord, eminent historian of the 100 Years’ War, once described by Alastair Campbell as the “cleverest man in Britain” with a “brain the size of a planet” has had a long and distinguished legal career, having previously been a fellow of Magdalen College, specialising in medieval history. Like many with high intelligence he can, however, be naive about others’ baser motives. His Reith lectures raised important questions about the balance between law…

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Two Met officers appear at Westminster Magistrates Court today – one charged with misconduct in public office for abusing his position for sexual purposes and the other for misuse of computer systems. Neither of their names are published, unlike ordinary defendants. Even the Cumberland police are not immune: recently an officer was dismissed for running a pornographic Twitter account under a false name and not declaring it as an outside business interest. The Home Secretary over the weekend issued a…

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On Monday the government finally came up with a “take it or leave it” compensation offer to the subpostmasters. £600,000. It was described by Kevin Hollinrake, Minister for Postal Affairs, as “providing a generous uplift” on compensation payments already made. Let’s see how generous it really is. Some subpostmasters were convicted as long as 23 years ago, between 2000 – 2015, the majority in the earlier years. That is compensation of between £26,000 and £75,000 pa. The sums on offer…

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“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.” (Orwell -1946) The last 2 days have given us 2 examples of how language is used to obscure the indefensible. But not from the political world. For a change. Example No 1 The  announcement by BP that its CEO, Bernard Looney, left because, when providing answers in an earlier investigation about his relationships with colleagues, “he now accepts that he was not fully transparent in his previous…

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What on earth has been going on at the British Museum? For two decades it appears that Greek and other classical antiquities from the 15th century BC to the 19th century AD in store have gone missing, stolen or damaged. It is now estimated that around 2,000 items have gone missing. Their value is inestimable. Some reappear on eBay and elsewhere “for sale“. February 2021: An antiquities dealer, Ittai Gradel, notifies the museum that 3 items belonging to it – specifically…

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Admittedly, it’s early days and it’s by its Legal Department (which usually manages to maintain some modicum of integrity and competence – or tries to anyway.) Small mercies. What has it done? The Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, Alex Chalk, and Attorney-General, Victoria Prentis have announced an independent inquiry into the Andy Malkinson case. This will be into all the relevant authorities: the Greater Manchester Police (1 of 5 police forces in special measures), the Crown Prosecution…

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7 murdered babies. Attempts to murder 7 more. A hospital’s reputation in ruins. (Oh – and another inquiry to report on all the lessons to be learnt. Like the ones not learnt from previous inquiries. Just as these ones won’t be.) It is not too cynical to say that care for the hospital’s reputation – rather than investigating serious concerns about staff responsible for babies in their care – was almost certainly one of the main reasons why senior NHS…

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She had to go. You simply cannot have the CEO of a bank unable to understand that if a journalist sat next to you at dinner asks you about a live story involving confidential details about a customer of the bank, the only possible response is “I can’t talk to you about that. Mmm, isn’t the soufflé delicious.” Especially not when in a few days time you will be presenting the bank’s results and therefore are currently in possession of…

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