... visits Glastonbury 2011

Over the weekend I went to Glastonbury.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I've done a Spotify playlist of most of the artists I saw.

There's a few missing, due to them not being on there, apparently due to obscurity:

• Ellyn Maybe & Her Band (jazzy, folky, spoken-word poetry); and
• Twin Brother (dark, spiky indie)

I also saw Mark Thomas talk about his walk around the Israeli Wall.

Hope you enjoy the playlist. Tweet

... has mixed views Ken Clarke's proposed legal costs changes

As I said in my previous post, I'll now deal with Part 2 of the government's new "Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill"

Damages-Based Agreements

One thing the government plans to expand upon are what's known as "Damages-Based Agreements" (DBAs) (s. 42) which already occur in employment law cases.

The basic idea is that a solicitor will take a percentage of any damages received as his success fee (the bonus for winning a case on a "No-Win, No-Fee" basis), instead of the current system whereby a success fee is claimed from the losing party.

I'm not sure that this is a good thing as it could cause cases to drag on in the hope that a bit more damages will be obtained, while racking-up unnecessary legal costs.

I'm also a bit concerned about whether there will be any technical legal arguments over these things. The "No-Win, No-Fee" cases used to have to comply with the CFA Regulations 2000. These were scrapped a few years ago due them simply causing a lot of wasteful litigation over whether the solicitors argeements with thier clients complied with them. Talk to any solicitor about the CFA Regulations and you'll hear nothing but horror stories. I went a to a talk about DBAs a few weeks ago and the speaker mentioned that there had been suggestions that the only way DBAs could would would be by bringing back in equivalent to the CFA Regulations. I shudder at the thought.

ATE Premiums

The government also plans to stop ATE Insurance premiums - insurance taken out to cover legal costs which a party may face - from being claimed from the other side. (s. 43). I've no real views on this, one way or the other. It would make my work slightly easier as there are numerous disputes over whether they premium should be paid, and to what extent. Of course, I'm not sure whether simplifying my job is a reason to support this proposal.

Divorce proceedings


There are plans to alter the way divorce cases are dealt with (s. 45-50). To be honest, I've never had to deal with these sort of cases, so can't comment on whether the plans are a good or bad idea.

Claimant's settlement offers

Section 51 is interesting - they plan to bring in extra damages if a Claimant beats their own offer to settle the claim at trial, e.g. if the Claimant offers £5,000, which is rejected, and the Judge allows £6,000 then it will come into play.

However, it doesn't say how much extra would be awarded nor how it would be calculated, e.g. would it be based on the total awarded?; the percentage that is on top of the offer?; etc.

It also doesn't say that there will be any extra award for the Defendant who beats their own offer at trial, e.g. if the Defendant offers £6,000, which is rejected, and the Judge allows £5,000.

I agree with allowing extra damages as it would encourage the Defendants to make more realistic offers, as not only could they be liable for penalty costs ("Indemnity Basis" costs) as now, but they would have to pay out more.

Nothing else is of particular interest from a legal costs perspective. Tweet

... reads Ken Clarke's proposed legal aid changes; despairs

Earlier today the government published its long-awaited Bill on how it'll change sentencing procedures, rehabilitation and the changes it plans to makes to legal aid and civil legal costs.

In "real-life" I deal with legal costs, and so I'm only going to cover Parts 1 and 2 of the Bill because I'd like to think that I have some sort of idea what I'm talking about... not that that's stopped me before...

Part 1 (sections 1-40) covers Legal Aid. Part 2 (sections 40-52) covers legal costs generally. These two Parts are also supplemented by 7 separate Schedules which go into further detail.

I gave my views on the legal aid proposals when they were initially announced back in November 2010. Briefly, - and ignoring any possible "access to justice" arguments against it - it'll cost the taxpayer more in the long-run as the amount solicitor & barristers can claim under legal aid is a lot less than what they can charge privately. So, for example, in a clinical negligence case (from which legal aid will be removed), the NHS would face a higher legal costs Bill should it lose a case than it would otherwise face. This would be the situation even if the injured person's solicitors acted on a "No-Win, No-Fee" basis.

I've not seen anything in Part 1 Bill to significantly alter them.

I'd also recommend this Guardian article on how badly different parts of England and Wales will be affected by the changes.

I'll do a separate post on Part 2 once I've had a proper chance to look through it.

UPDATE: Nearly Legal has a good post and goes into a lot more detail on the "access to justice" issues it raises, including the following:

Oh and the [Legal Services Commission - the people who administer legal aid] is to be abolished. The [Ministry of Justice] will take legal aid funding decisions in house, with no prospect of possible conflicts of interest at all. Honest.

Hmm... what could possibly go wrong? Tweet

Brian Haw RIP

Brian Haw, the guy whose camp-site on Parliament Square lead to David Blunkett's SOCPA Parliament Protest ban, has died. (via Bloggerheads on Twitter).

I met him a few times on Mark Thomas's Mass Lone Protests back in 2006-7.

He will be missed. Tweet

Twitterbook

I've finally got round to installing Twitter and Facebook buttons on this thing.

Hopefully, they're not too distracting. Tweet

Bite Me, Bahrain

From the Bahrain News Agency (via @HariKunzru and on Twitter):

Bahrain has today decided to sue the British Independent newspaper for repeatedly publishing wrong and defamatory information to tarnish its image.

The Information Affairs Authority has commissioned a UK-based legal firm to file a case against the British daily. "The Independent has deliberately published a series of unrealistic and provocative articles targeting Bahrain and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia", Publications director-general and acting press and external media director-general Nawaf Mohammed Al-Maawda said.

He accused the British daily of orchestrating a defamatory and premeditated media campaign against both countries, failing to abide by professional impartiality and credibility in its one-sided news-coverage and reports. In this regard, he cited particularly leading Independent Middle-East based reporter Robert Fisk. Mr. Al-Maawda called upon all media to observe accuracy and objectivity and project the true image, adding that all doors remain open to visit Bahrain and gauge the real situation on the ground as the Kingdom is steadily regaining normality and stability.

To be fair to Bahrain, they only sent in the army to wipe out anti-government protesters and tortured doctors for treating them, amongst other things.

Legally-speaking, UK local governments can't sue in the English Courts (Derbyshire CC v Times Newspapers Ltd. [1993] UKHL 6). Foreign governments shouldn't be able to.

Bunch of murdering, corrupt wankers.

UPDATE: According to Ministry of Truth, they're annoyed with an article by Robert Fisk which I've YFrog'd for future reference (unfortunately it's too large to Freezepage). Tweet

2012

I saw this in the Independent today:

The overseers of the London 2012 Olympics are hinting at legal action against an events company after objecting to their use of next year's date, "2012", in the name of a forthcoming series of events celebrating British culture.

LOCOG is citing the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006 which prevents people from creating an unauthorised association between a person or organisation and the London 2012 Games.

*sigh* I guess this means I'll ahve to re-name myself "D-Notice 2012" in response... Tweet

... goes mobile

Last week Blogger gave people the option to enable a "mobile-friendly" version of their blogs.

I chose the option so if you're looking at this on a phone it'll come up as as cut-down version, showing nothing more than the headline and first few lines f each post, with a link to the rest of the post. Tweet

The People's Pledge

On Liberal Conspiracy a few weeks ago was an article saying why we should have a referendum on the UK's involvement in the EU, in what's know as "The People's Pledge".

Nosemonkey did two separate responses.

The people behind The People's Pledge didn't agree with what he said and did a response to him.

I'm not going to do into too much detail as to the response to Nosemonkey other than to say that I agree with him. My view is that the EU is a very boring thing - nothing much more than a trade bloc - and that it's better to be inside it and influencing it - after all, we're the joint-second biggest country with France - than outside and having to comply with pretty much everything it does, like Norway.

However, I thought I'd briefly comment on one paragraph that The People's Pledge's second article:

We have not explicitly consented in referenda to have EU officials pass measures that are of huge significance; laws that have broken up our railway system (directive 91/440), privatised the most profitable parts of our postal service (directive 2008/06/EC), imposed the European Arrest Warrant that results in citizens being extradited without any evidence having to be submitted in court, introduced greater state electronic surveillance (directive 2006/24/EC), restricted access to 300 alternative health medicines, among numerous other measures.

They quote 3 EU Directives and the European Arrest Warrant - while not bothering to link to anything so that people can actually check their claims, which at the best is bad blogging etiquette - showing how the Eurocrats have destroyed our way of life.

I thought it'd be a good idea to go through each of these in turn. Note: EU Directives are very boring to read!

Directive 91/440/EEC

Article 6(1) says

Member States shall take the measures necessary to ensure that the accounts for business relating to the provision of transport services and those for business relating to the management of railway infrastructure are kept separate. Aid paid to one of these two areas of activity may not be transferred to the other.

It's an accounting measure.

As the Wikipedia article points out:

there are no requirements in the legislation requiring any level of privatisation; the main aim of the process was the "de-monopolisation" of European railways

It simply means that a train company from one EU country can operate services in another EU country without too much difficulty.

Wikipedai also states

By 2004 some such as the United Kingdom had gone far beyond the original remit privatising the entire railway system

In other words, the government used the Directive as an excuse to privatise British Rail.

Directive 2008/06/EC

As this article by Consumer Focus shows, there's no mention whatsoever of "privatisation", it simply means - like the train Directive - that a company in one EU country can provide services in another.

European Arrest Warrant (EAW)

This stems from Directive 2002/584/JHA.

I accept that there are issues with the EAW. However, it only applies to crimes which have a penalty of at least 1 years in prison (Art. 2(1)) and has to be authorised by a judge. There are also a variety of safeguards to ensure that a person is not simply "whisked away", e.g. Arts. 11, 14, 15, 17, 27.

Directive 2006/24/EC

While on the face of it, they appear to be accurate, the Directive makes numerous references to the Data Protection Directive (Directive 95/46/EC, as enforced in the UK by the Data Protection Act 1998) and the Data Retention Directive has to be compatible and cannot override the Data Protection Directive.

"Restricted access to 300 alternative health medicines"

I'm assuming that they're referring to the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (Directive 2004/24/EC).

I could say the fact that they're complaining about the EU legislating against quacks says more that I ever could about their claims, but that's too easy. Although, as Tim Minchin says: what do you call alternative medicine that works? Medicine!

The whole point of this Directive is to ensure that there are some standards on the stuff that you can buy in Holland & Barrett!

As I said above, while I disagree with their views, but I really wish that they would ensure that their claims are accurate. Tweet