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Perhaps it is just age, but every General Election seems to me more inconsequential and boring than the one before. I do not particularly blame the individuals concerned. We vote for them after all. The trouble is that there are no longer any solutions that we are capable of implementing, because we ourselves have been overcome by the problems themselves. Looking back over my e-diaries, I now realise that everything I have moaned, despaired and laughed about in the legal system could be replicated in every other area of life.
This was brought home to me by an incredibly bright woman whose jobs straddle the executive, the legislature, the judiciary and the church, but whose name few would know, at least for now, and who has an extraordinary capacity to analyse problems and predict the likely effects they will cause. We met by pure chance. We had both been invited to a secondary school in the Midlands as speakers and prize-givers one evening. We bonded in that way that those facing a common foe, in our case a large number of schoolchildren, do. We knew they were the foe because we were once sitting in two other halls belonging to two other schools listening to people handing out our prizes and waiting for them to make the slightest slip. Mia gave a much better speech than I did and I suspect from the pain in my arm the next morning that she also had a much better technique for shaking hands.
The prize-giving started rather bumpily. I had decided to look at each book I handed out and make a witty comment about its title but abandoned this after the first pupil, a very junior one, marched smiling up the steps to the stage to receive his prize for best starter in the school. He was quite a small lad wearing what looked like a very new white turban. I picked up the first book from the pile only to see it was Mein Kampf! – a book about which humorous quips are in short supply. I handed it to the boy, and he left the stage with a puzzled look. It turned out later that the books had all become mixed up and the classic horror book was for a sixth-former studying twentieth-century history. I hope it had a trigger warning, indeed several.
Mia and I found a quiet corner in a rather rowdy pub in the town centre afterwards and rocked with laughter over the carnage of the evening. I hadn’t even been able to look at the titles by the end and I imagine the whole of the next morning was spent getting the right prizes to the right winners. I told Mia about my grouses concerning the court estate and its appalling condition. ‘It’s the same with everything,’ she said, ‘defence procurement, the NHS, schools, prisons – you name it, it’s falling apart.’ I told her I couldn’t understand why our Honourable Members couldn’t see it.
‘Oh William,’ she said, ‘they do. That’s the thing. Take their own estate, the Houses of Parliament. Wonderful building. Pride of the nation. But like those courts you were telling me about, the whole place is simply falling down. Indeed, it is worse than your tales of woe. It really is falling down.’ ‘Why don’t they do something?’ I asked. Mia looked at me as though I was not going to get any prizes for comprehension. ‘They can’t,’ she said. ‘First, no money. Second, to repair the place, they would really have to vacate it and they can’t bear to be the generation of politicians to miss out on the theatre of the Palace of Westminster.’ ‘Not even for a year or two?’ I asked. ‘It would be a decade or two,’ said Mia, ‘at the least.’
I took the milk-train back to London with a good deal to think about. The idea of most courts being maintained properly with decent facilities was just another pipedream. Perhaps we should be reimagining the whole trial system altogether and the buildings that we really need and perhaps a comte rendu could be provided to all of us citizens telling us exactly how much money the state does have, and the truth about what we are truly spending and on what. If the political class is too paralysed to face the full facts even about its own accommodation, then the question of who walks through the door of Number Ten on 5 July may be academic.
William Byfield is the pseudonym of a senior member of the Bar. Gutteridge Chambers, and the events that happen there, are entirely fictitious.
Perhaps it is just age, but every General Election seems to me more inconsequential and boring than the one before. I do not particularly blame the individuals concerned. We vote for them after all. The trouble is that there are no longer any solutions that we are capable of implementing, because we ourselves have been overcome by the problems themselves. Looking back over my e-diaries, I now realise that everything I have moaned, despaired and laughed about in the legal system could be replicated in every other area of life.
This was brought home to me by an incredibly bright woman whose jobs straddle the executive, the legislature, the judiciary and the church, but whose name few would know, at least for now, and who has an extraordinary capacity to analyse problems and predict the likely effects they will cause. We met by pure chance. We had both been invited to a secondary school in the Midlands as speakers and prize-givers one evening. We bonded in that way that those facing a common foe, in our case a large number of schoolchildren, do. We knew they were the foe because we were once sitting in two other halls belonging to two other schools listening to people handing out our prizes and waiting for them to make the slightest slip. Mia gave a much better speech than I did and I suspect from the pain in my arm the next morning that she also had a much better technique for shaking hands.
The prize-giving started rather bumpily. I had decided to look at each book I handed out and make a witty comment about its title but abandoned this after the first pupil, a very junior one, marched smiling up the steps to the stage to receive his prize for best starter in the school. He was quite a small lad wearing what looked like a very new white turban. I picked up the first book from the pile only to see it was Mein Kampf! – a book about which humorous quips are in short supply. I handed it to the boy, and he left the stage with a puzzled look. It turned out later that the books had all become mixed up and the classic horror book was for a sixth-former studying twentieth-century history. I hope it had a trigger warning, indeed several.
Mia and I found a quiet corner in a rather rowdy pub in the town centre afterwards and rocked with laughter over the carnage of the evening. I hadn’t even been able to look at the titles by the end and I imagine the whole of the next morning was spent getting the right prizes to the right winners. I told Mia about my grouses concerning the court estate and its appalling condition. ‘It’s the same with everything,’ she said, ‘defence procurement, the NHS, schools, prisons – you name it, it’s falling apart.’ I told her I couldn’t understand why our Honourable Members couldn’t see it.
‘Oh William,’ she said, ‘they do. That’s the thing. Take their own estate, the Houses of Parliament. Wonderful building. Pride of the nation. But like those courts you were telling me about, the whole place is simply falling down. Indeed, it is worse than your tales of woe. It really is falling down.’ ‘Why don’t they do something?’ I asked. Mia looked at me as though I was not going to get any prizes for comprehension. ‘They can’t,’ she said. ‘First, no money. Second, to repair the place, they would really have to vacate it and they can’t bear to be the generation of politicians to miss out on the theatre of the Palace of Westminster.’ ‘Not even for a year or two?’ I asked. ‘It would be a decade or two,’ said Mia, ‘at the least.’
I took the milk-train back to London with a good deal to think about. The idea of most courts being maintained properly with decent facilities was just another pipedream. Perhaps we should be reimagining the whole trial system altogether and the buildings that we really need and perhaps a comte rendu could be provided to all of us citizens telling us exactly how much money the state does have, and the truth about what we are truly spending and on what. If the political class is too paralysed to face the full facts even about its own accommodation, then the question of who walks through the door of Number Ten on 5 July may be academic.
Update from the Chair of the Bar
By Clement Cowley, Partner at The Penny Group
Modernising communication and collaboration at a leading Chancery set. A Zexi case study
How to build profile without compromising professional duties. By Naumaan Farooq, Co-Founder of Inked PR
Marie Law, Director of Toxicology at AlphaBiolabs, examines the role of cut-off levels, and the wider range of factors that must be considered when interpreting results for family court proceedings
Endometriosis Awareness North, a charity raising awareness of endometriosis and supporting those affected across the North of England, has received a £500 boost from AlphaBiolabs via the company’s Giving Back initiative
A decade of reviews and research has disrupted accepted thinking in the search for causality. Suicides following abuse have overtaken domestic homicides. Is the law keeping up? Professor Susan Edwards KC (Hon) examines recent cases and the obstacles to successful prosecution
The case against judge-only justice – and why efficiency is not enough. By Professor Leslie Thomas KC
Heritage as an anchor and a compass, finding our common humanity and embracing the power of the outsider – Melina Antoniadis’s lessons learnt
Seeing the full picture – Baljit Ubhey OBE outlines the CPS action plan to tackle violence against women and girls, offering insights directly relevant to courtroom practice
Lauren Fullerton examines the how, what and why of setting up a second chambers base
