Celebrity Sexists

Mr Loophole might be a good lawyer, but I can’t say I fancy sharing a courtroom with him, having read this charming piece in the Manchester Evening News in which he suggests that wayward youth can and should be tamed by a simple spot of traditional shotgun marriage, before moving on to argue that “women are [...]

Legal Aid Update

In fact it’s been a while since I’ve done more than whine tangentially about the Government’s attempt to wreck the legal aid system. It’s time for an update. Media coverage of the Bill remains pretty thin on the ground, but it has picked up a little (See for example this example from a local TV [...]

Litigants in Person – the horror!

Nicola Williams & Co published a thoughtful article on Flawbord earlier this week about the difficulties caused by and to litigants in person through their inability to secure legal advice and representation: Horrendous. Amongst other things the article looks at publicly available stats on the numbers of cases, noting along the way that those published [...]

Hedge your bets

Further to last weeks post about the rejection of the NYAS legal aid tender by the LSC, along with another 70 or so applications: the LSC, no doubt wary of further searingly insightful and devastatingly critical pieces on this blog (or possibly of yet more potential litigation), appear to have backed down and given organisations a [...]

Damn your eyes you contemptible scoundrel!

You know those times when checking the to-do list doesn’t calm you down? That. So in lieu of a calm considered post (or even in lieu of a lengthy and time consuming but ill considered ranty post) please accept the following offerings: Contempt: Don’t be in it to win it. You’d think that journalists that [...]

Approaching Mediaton

Once again I’ve spent a solid 3 day stint undertaking mediation training and I’m relieved to say it’s now over, apart from one assignment. You only realise how much you rely on a weekend of pootling in order to recharge for a Monday when it’s taken away. My recharging time has been eaten up by [...]

Child Support Support from Gingerbread

Gingerbread has launched an email advice pack for single parents who are looking for information about child maintenance payments. Child maintenance is an essential form of support for many single parent families, but making arrangements to ensure it gets paid can be complicated and confusing. With the government talking of overhauling the way child maintenance [...]

Bailii

A long time ago I promised I would do my bit to help BAILII raise funds. And then I forgot about it. I have now made good on my promise and gift aided 5% of the funds I have raised through advertising on Pink Tape to BAILII. Not a fortune, but it’s better than a [...]

Statistically Speaking

Last week a range of quarterly court statistics were published by the MoJ. The condensed version of the summary is that care is up massively and everything else is down (not so as you’d know it to hear the government bang on about all those unnecessary and ever-escalating interminable private law disputes). But what I [...]

Mediation Marathon

I’ve just spent the first of six days training to be a family mediator. It’s been daunting but exciting, interesting but exhausting. Tomorrow the role play begins. It must be done. Eyes on the prize an’ all that. However, whilst not overbrimming with enthusiasm for role play, nor for losing my precious weekend to such [...]