Your Cheatin' Heart
It’s a cheat I know, but look I’m busy moving house so I need a couple of easy posts…Bear with me. Normal service will be restored after the New Year. It may seem unlikely in these times of doom and stagnation, but we have (finally) managed to sell our house and cobble together the funds [...]
Violence Begets Violence
I’m saddened by the number of comments on posts relating to Baby P I have moderated which advocate doing serious physical violence or killing the perpetrators of abuse. Some are quite graphic. I’m not going to publish them because I don’t think it helps anybody, it disrespects the victims of violent crime and it makes [...]
Standard Stuff
On the way back through Paddington at the end of a day in the High Court yesterday I was not astonished to see a rather distasteful piece fronting up the Evening Standard. From reading the information emblazoned across the front page one might reasonably have formed the view that Ms Shoesmith, formerly of Haringey had personally and forcibly snatched a [...]
The Barristers – Episode 4
Hmm – this post seems to have been waylaid in my ‘drafts’ folder for reasons of PEBCAK. . In Short – see my comments on episode 1, episode 2 and episode 3: more of the same. The final episode can be summarised thus: more shots of people being called to the bar in oak panelled [...]
Children & Adoption Act – postscript
Further to my post yesterday, there is a piece in The Times today about the new provisions and John Bolch at Family Lore has posted the new court forms which are in use as of today. Resolution are quoted in the article by Frances Gibb, their full press release is here. . The quote in [...]
New Powers In Contact Cases
The remaining provisions of the Children & Adoption Act 2006 (Part I) finally come into force tomorrow (8 December 2008). They amend the Children Act 1989 to enable the court to make contact activity directions and conditions and to enforce breach of a contact order by way of and enforcement order which imposes an unpaid [...]
Guidance For Knocked-Up Lady Barristers
According to the much esteemed ‘Counsel’ magazine, The Bar Council is soon to publish a ‘Guidance and best practice document for women planning to take maternity leave’. It goes like this: ’1. Don’t. 2. In the alternative, don’t come back.’. Fnar. . But seriously, this is good news, always assuming that the description above is a slip [...]
Baby P – Why The System Fails Children At Risk
A really interesting article in yesterday’s Times by barrister Martha Cover at Coram. It sets out why the introduction of procedures designed to protect at risk children may have had the opposite effect to that desired – by discouraging the issue of proceedings in favour of focus on the provision of low level support services. [...]
