Meta-Rant: The Lizard Woman Speaks

Here’s a little post that has been sitting in draft for a little while. I shelved it, took a few deep breaths and instead published The Caucus Race. I thought it’s moment had passed, but on the other hand perhaps it has some relevance in light of the ongoing campaigning activity of F4J (summary: Matt [...]

Down but not out

I’ve been silenced this week on two levels. First by a particularly evil throat bug which has rendered me speechless and unable to eat for several days. And secondly by a hosting switcheroony which took a little longer than planned to pull off (owing to the website guru being redeployed as looker afterer for sick [...]

An Intractable Conflict?

I’m despondent. Not because of my recent first hand experience of cyber nastiness, but because the prospects of having any real debate, and of finding new ways to improve the lot of children and parents caught up in the family justice system are receding ever further into the distance. Or so it seems. There are [...]

Book Review: Bubble Wrapped Children – How social networking is transforming the face of 21st century adoption

This review is a guest post written by  Sarah Phillimore, barrister at St John’s Chambers (@svphillimore), Bristol. Sarah joined St Johns Chambers in January 2011 from Coram Chambers in London. She has experience of all areas of family law and is training to become an accredited family mediator. Bubble Wrapped Children: How social networking is transforming the face [...]

The Caucus Race

It’s been a bit “Alice in Wonderland” around here lately. I last posted on 22 February and it was like the moment when Alice ate the cake. Quite apart from my sudden and unexpected monstering for succombing to temptation, I feel as if I have been caught in an interminable caucus race ever since. I could indulge [...]

Know your limits

I was irritated on behalf of my client the other day to have spend the better part of a morning negotiating a consent order at a first hearing on a contact application in the FPC only to find we were before a legal adviser with no access to a bench who refused to make our [...]

Off Piste

I’ve been trying to get to that insightful post about the Government’s response to the Family Justice Review. I’ve been slowly reading through the doc – ooh look, a bunny! A new TV drama! A blog post featuring entertaining troll rantiness threads. You know how it goes. There is a lot of stuff out there [...]

Multi-Disciplinary Conference to Debate Family Justice Review

St John’s Chambers (my chambers) is hosting a multi-disciplinary conference on 23 March to debate the Family Justice Review and the Government’s response. The conference will take place at Taunton Rugby Club and is to be chaired by the Honourable Mr Justice Ryder. The event is open to professionals of all disciplines working within the [...]

Smacks of hypocrisy

Not so long ago David Lammy was criticised for suggesting a relaxation of smacking laws, it was said he had sought to blame the summer riots upon the disempowerment of parents embodied in laws preventing the exercise of parental discipline. I’ve long since lost the original article I had read, but what had struck me [...]

My Cheesy Valentine

I had a heart shaped cheese in my lunchbox today. Bless my cheesy husband. He’s my babybel.