Law

Demanding solicitors’ exams are “discriminatory” and risk leading to a “lack of diversity” across the industry, lawyers have warned.

A petition signed by hundreds of trainee lawyers has called for the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) to be made easier over concerns the tests are “disproportionately challenging” and favour “certain backgrounds and learning styles”.

In an appeal to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), the lawyers said that low pass rates among ethnic minority candidates “will undoubtedly lead to a lack of diversity within the profession”.

Stupid poeple must become lawyers too.

Anyway, not to worry. Not that it’s a female entry dominated profession it’s on the skids anyaway…..

River Island faces collapse within weeks unless landlords and creditors approve a radical rescue plan, The Telegraph can reveal.

The retailer has put forward a proposal to hand the keys back on 33 stores, slash the rents on a further 71 shops and write off a series of debts to stave off a severe liquidity crisis.

That’s what you’ve got to do in order to be able to gain lower rents.

The rescue plan would allow River Island to walk away from a slew of debts, including tens of millions of pounds in outstanding rents to landlords.

Of the stores that aren’t being closed, the company is proposing three-year rent cuts of between 75pc and 25pc. The owners of 24 stores are being asked to accept zero rental payments.

Landlords affected by the restructuring include British Land, the Crown Estate and Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group. All declined to comment.

As I’ve said, ad infinitum, most commercial leases are upwards only at rent review time. Without that clause the landlords would be taking more of the pain sooner.

Wikipedia could be forced to limit access in the UK unless crucial elements of Britain’s online safety rules are changed, the High Court has been told.

Lawyers for the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organisation which helps run the online encyclopaedia, warned it could be required to introduce a “quota-based” system for UK visitors if it is classified as a “category one” service under the Online Safety Act.

Services falling under this designation are subject to the strictest duties under the digital laws, which are intended to stop children accessing harmful online material and prevent the spread of illegal posts.

To stay outside the scope of the regulation, Wikipedia could cap visitor numbers from the UK so it does not qualify as a “category one” site, which are defined as those with seven million users. This would make it harder for British users to access the site when they wanted.

We’re to be made safer by not being allowed to visit popular sites. Isn’t that well done of our rulers?

The UN has opened the door to Britain being sued over its historic contribution to climate change.

In a significant legal opinion, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said failure by countries to meet their climate obligations could, in specific cases, allow other states affected by climate change to sue them.

It also cleared the way for lawsuits over historic emissions, which could leave the UK, the birthplace of the industrial revolution, at risk of legal action from other nations.

Every grifter and their Granny will now be lining up to sue us. So, leave the system.

Fuck off.

Five gang members, including an illegal immigrant who should have been deported nine years ago, have been convicted of murdering two people during the filming of a drill rap video.

Leonardo Reid, 15, and Klevi Shekaj, 23, died after they were mistaken for rival gang members at a gathering of 40 people in Elthorne Road, Islington, north London, on June 29 2023.

Lorik Lupqi, 21, Jason Furtado, 28, Abel Chunda, 29, Xavier Poponne, 22, and Eden Clark, 31, were convicted of double murder on Wednesday following a 15-week trial at the Old Bailey.

Lupqi, a Kosovan, and Furtado, a Portuguese national, were both on tags at the time of the killings.

Furtado, born to Angolan parents, had a lengthy criminal record and the Home Office had first tried to deport him nine years ago.

He launched at least two appeals against his deportation despite committing serious offences in the lead up to the murders.

Who paid his legal bills? More importantly, who received his legal bills, who got paid? And can we, should we, go after them?

Yes, yes, I know everyone deserves a defence and so on. But stipping a bit of this anonymity away from the guzzlers at the feed trough would still be fun and useful, no?

Nearly half of all convictions in England and Wales are being decided in secret by a single magistrate without the defendant appearing in court or having any legal representation, a new report has revealed.

Out of a total of 1.5 million convictions handed down last year, some 772,580 were issued by magistrates behind closed doors under a system designed to speed up justice and clear the backlog of cases left by the pandemic.

In the name of efficiency, obviously.

What, then, does Unite, and by extension other major union backers, want from Ms Rayner?

On the most basic level, Unite wants the Government to force Labour-run Birmingham city council to reverse cuts to the pay of refuse workers, who have been on strike since March.

But the higher pay is illegal.

Because of the idiot law that says that the teaching assistants do “work of equal value” to the binmen. Therefore they must be paid an equal amount.

That is, Brum finds itself forced to pay dinner ladies and teaching assistants the same as binmen – pay differences necessary to get the jobs done are illegal.

Kill that mistake and there would be no dispute. So, why do I seem to be the only person in the country shouting that we must kill that mistake?

Emmanuel Macron is pressuring Sir Keir Starmer to recognise Palestine as a state.

1) What are the borders?

2) Who is to be recognised as the de jure government?

I suppose if we recognise Hamas then we get to try them at the International Court of whatever for going to war and so we can hang them. But would that actually happen?

Sir Keir Starmer has been warned by Lord Hermer that UK involvement in a US attack on Iran could be illegal.

Advice ascribed to the Attorney General is understood to have said that Britain must limit its involvement to protecting its allies from attack.

A one way ticket to Tehran even?

OK, so they’re going to have a national inquiry now. But the important thing is the terms of the inquiry. And, obviously, the vigour with which it is pursued. You could, if you actually went at it, have something done by Christmas. They won’t, of course.

But what is the initial question being asked? What powers of evidence? And, of course, how formidable the person running it?

Sir Brian is also expected to recommend that the public should be spared jury service if a case is going to last more than 12 months because of the “unfairness” of it taking a year out of their lives and livelihoods. Instead, such cases would be heard by a judge without a jury.

So anything complicated doesn’t get a jury then. Railroad time!

Of course, this is lawyers so they’re being lying, sneaky, duplicitous little bastards.

He suggested one type of case judge-only trials could be where there was significant “public opprobrium” over the case such as sexual or sadistic violence and could sway the jury

It’s all about having the rape trials heard by judges suitably prepared by feminist indoctriniation. None of that basic societal “But that’s not rape!” is to be allowed.

A church sacked an accountant after she was discriminated against for not being Catholic, a tribunal has found.

University of Cambridge-educated Janet Parker argued with her female boss after she asked for leave to care for her newly adopted daughter.

When the 55-year-old’s request for flexible working was refused, she complained, observing that “the Catholic Church does not have a blemish-free history when it comes to adopted children or children in care”.

Ms Parker was then subjected to a “witch hunt” investigation for alleged professional negligence, which led to her dismissal from her £60,000-a-year role.

She has now won claims against Clifton Diocese after a tribunal ruled it discriminated against her, harassed her and then unfairly sacked her because she was not religious.

Ms Parker, who later told a reporter that she was an atheist, claimed the diocese’s approach to her flexible working request was “tainted by negative views of adoption, emanating from the religious beliefs of its staff”.

And she’s won and getting compo. I assume because the court is packed with idiots.

The Catholic Church has a negative view of adoption, does it?

Sheesh.

The US supreme court made it easier on Thursday for people from majority backgrounds such as white or straight individuals to pursue claims alleging workplace “reverse discrimination”, reviving the case of an Ohio woman who claimed that she did not get a promotion at a state agency because she is heterosexual.

The justices, in a 9-0 ruling, threw out a lower court‘s decision rejecting a civil rights lawsuit by the plaintiff, Marlean Ames, against her employer, Ohio’s department of youth services.

Racial discrimination is racial discrimination, sexual is sexual etc. There is no get out about only punching down, punching up is just fine etc.

Discrimination is discrimination. With a .

Threats by politicians to “abandon” international law such as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) have been compared to 1930s Nazi Germany by the Attorney General.

That is interesting. So, the ISDS courts- you know, those secretive offshore things where companies can sue governments – should also be supported as being anti-Nazi. Cool. Anyone told Monbiot yet?

All the Trump tariffs are, apparently, illegal and rescinded.

The question in the two cases before the court is whether the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (“IEEPA”) delegates these powers to the
President in the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country
in the world. The court does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside
the challenged tariffs imposed thereunder.

How long that’s going to stand is another thing….

Plans to force barristers to promote diversity initiatives have been scrapped after the proposed overhaul sparked a backlash from top legal figures.

The Bar Standards Board (BSB) said it will not be moving forward with plans to overhaul rules requiring barristers to actively advance diversity in their jobs.

“M’Lud, my client’s white, probably decended from a slaver. Send ‘im dahn”

??

Probably, yes.

Counter-terror police are leading an investigation into a suspected “firebomb” attack at Sir Keir Starmer’s north London home.

A suspicious blaze broke out at the property in Tufnell Park at just after 1.30am on Monday, with neighbours saying police had searched gardens for a “projectile”.

Bit four lions isn’t it? He lives a number of miles away as anyone sentient would know.

And now for something fun. So, it’s rented out. As and when Sir K stops being PM he’ll lose that home. So he’ll want his house back. But they’re just outlawing evictions without cause, right? So he’ll not be able to get it back?

New details allege that Mr Khan pressured the alleged victim, a Malaysian woman in her 30s, into what the Wall Street Journal described as “non-consensual sexual intercourse” on several occasions.

Oh.

The British prosecutor seeking the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu tried to silence a woman accusing him of sexual assault by citing the plight of the Palestinians, it has been claimed.

Karim Khan KC, who as the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is leading the war crimes case against Israel, allegedly told the complainant that a scandal would harm the success of the prosecutions.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a record of a telephone call, which forms part of a United Nations investigation into the claims, shows that Mr Khan told the woman: “The casualties [of her allegations] will unfortunately be three: You and your family, me and my family and the justice of the victims.”

On another occasion, he reportedly said: “Think about the Palestinian arrest warrants,” according to other testimony made to the UN.

My word so unlike the normal righteous lefty. No one at all ever says lie back and think of Palestine, do they? Leaders of groupuscules are all moral saints etc.

A former civil servant who played a key role in drafting the Equality Act has said the supreme court’s ruling about the legal definition of a woman contradicted the act’s original intentions.

Melanie Field, who oversaw its drafting and passage through Westminster in 2010, said the legislation was meant to give transgender people with gender recognition certificates (GRCs) the same legal status as biological men or women.

She said that treating trans women with GRCs as women in relation to sex discrimination protections was “the clear premise” of the policy and legal instructions to the officials who drafted the bill.

The aim, purpose and detail of an Act is what Parliament says it is, not what the civil service say.

Well, that’s assuming that we don’t make that rather Deep State assumption that the civil service really are the people who should say….

Ethnic minority criminal suspects are being given priority by judges considering bail under new two-tier justice guidelines drawn up by the Ministry of Justice.

Judges and magistrates have been told they should “prioritise” the cases of ethnic minorities, women and transgender suspects because they may be at “disproportionately higher risk” of being remanded into custody.

Strangers in our strange land, eh….

The guidance also advises judges to take account of trauma suffered by suspects whose relatives experienced racism or discrimination, and cites “important historical events which may have had a greater impact on those from specific groups and cultures”.

Campaigners have claimed that black British people can suffer from trauma originally inflicted on their ancestors by the slave trade.

Sigh.