Pink Tape

a blog from the family bar

CAFCASS Chief Exec Subjected to Very Cross Examination

In a slightly maverick move District Judge Carron has enlisted the support of the media in trying to right the injustices caused by the failure of CAFCASS to keep up with demand for their services. The resulting article in today’s Times can be read here. Oh, you can raise an eyebrow at the notion of [...]

Scary Stuff – BNP White Paper on Family Law

No doubt the BNP are hoping to capitalise on the general disillusionment with mainstream political parties in order to gain seats in the forthcoming european elections and further down the line. (I have received a rather unpleasant leaflet through the door myself, plastered with respectable white people and unpleasant slogans.) For anyone contemplating casting a [...]

House of Lords Judgment: Be More Accomodating

I was thinking it was about time I posted on a recent legal judgment. And so I was just sitting down to type a post about the case of R (on the application of G) (FC) (Appellant) v London Borough of Southwark (Respondents) [2009] UKHL 26 when I saw that Nearly Legal has beaten me to it. In [...]

Questions In The House

One of the first things they teach you in bar school is to make damn sure that if the judge asks you a question you ANSWER it. Below, extracted from Hansard, is a FINE example of not answering a pretty straighforward question. Legal Aid Question Asked By Lord Pannick on 18th May 2009 To ask Her Majesty’s [...]

Seen and Heard

I’ve just read an interesting article by District Judge Paul Carr who sits at Watford County Court on ‘The Voice of the Child’ published in [2009] Fam Law 290 (1 Apr 09) in which he sets out his views about Judges seeing children involved in proceedings and how that should be handled. I’ve posted on the [...]

Divorce in Haste Repent at Leisure

Divorce Online offer the ‘UK’s best selling managed divorce service’ for the slender sum of £182. And, their website tells me, this is not the only ‘UK’s best’ they offer: ‘We use the UK’s fastest divorce court* – We visit the court every working day.’ Scroll to the very small print at the bottom to [...]

Lordy Lordy!

Just on my way back from an interesting day at the House of Lords, where I gave my two penn’orth to a meeting hosted by Lord Thomas of Greshford (Shadow Attorney General & Justice Spokesperson) and co-chaired by Baronesses Butler Sloss and Walmsley (VC All Party Parliamentary Group for Children) to discuss the somewhat rhetorically [...]

Fear or Favour

Camilla Cavendish writes an excellent article about (amongst other things) the tendency towards back-covering in child protection and the consequent fear of professionals that many good parents now have. She is right – I am anxious each time I take my son to the GP for a routine appointment that whatever minor knock or scrape he may [...]

The Fattened Calves

I am really pleased to see that from this week health visitors will be switching over to the World Health Organisation growth charts for measurement of infant growth. I have had one stuck in my boy’s red book for months, diligently plotting his growth on both the bottle fed based chart that officialdom requires and the WHO chart [...]

Legal Aid Rich List

Apologies for the delayed reaction but the MOJ published it’s top ten biggest legal aid earners last week (here). I have been distracted by imagining what I might do with hundreds of thousands of pounds in income and write this post as I bump back down to earth, noticing as I pass that my aged debt is [...]

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    A blog in which I ricochet from too serious to too flippant, and alternate between a bit clever, a bit interesting and a bit ranty: Pink Tape neatly functions as both a blog about family law and a therapeutic escape valve for me. >>more




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