Category Archives: Politics

Grayling Day Demo -Speakers for Justice

The following speakers spoke up for Justice at The Grayling Day demo in Westminster on 07/03/14

1 Paul Harris
A former president of LCCSA, Paul opened the proceedings with a rousing address. He said the cuts would result in a two-tier system – one for those with money and one for those without.
2 Alistair Webster QC

A Lib Dem peer but speaking as a lawyer he reminded us of their Party Policy of supporting Legal aid, but commented adversely on their failure in government to speak out against Grayling’s cuts, concluding “The politicians may have failed Justice. We will not.”

3 Laura Janes
Laura, representing The Howard League for Penal Reform dealt with how Chris Grayling has removed most prison law work from criminal legal aid.
4 Sir Ivan Lawrence QC
Sir Ivan (criminal barrister for over 50 years, and was a Tory MP for over 20 years) said he was ashamed of this Government. “We will bring the Criminal justice system to a halt to save it- that’s why we are here”
5 Ian Lawrence (NAPO)
Representing the Probation Service, also under attack by Grayling,

6 Paddy Hill

Paddy reminded us what is at stake. “There will be many more miscarriages of Justice like the Birmingham 6 if legal aid is cut to this level.” An article about Paddy’s speech, with a clip in which he brands the MOJ the “Ministry of Injustice” is here.

7 Sir Anthony Hooper
Retired Court of Appeal Judge, Sir Anthony reminded us eloquently:-“For some 60 years everyone has had the right to equal access to Justice. This Government is destroying that right”
8 Francis Neckles
Francis was rightly acquitted at trial, preserving his good character, thanks to good representation by his Legal Aid lawyer. “Chris Grayling says he can’t afford to fund legal aid- Francis Neckles says we can’t afford NOT to”
9 Shami Chakrabarti

Representing Liberty, Chakrabarti made a powerful speech linking Legal Aid with freedom.

10 Dave Rowntree
Dave is drummer with Blur and was also a solicitor with Kingsley Napley.
He spoke about the Magna Carta, which was signed 800 years ago next year, and clause 40 – “To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.”
11 Nigel Lithman QC
Representing the CBA, he had been invited to speak to demonstrate the unity between bar and solicitors in fighting the cuts. Three weeks later, the CBA struck a “deal ” with the MoJ, favourable to the bar but not solicitors, having met the MoJ secretly and without solicitors representatives being consulted. Relations between the criminal bar and criminal solicitors reached an all-time low point following these actions, but have improved enormously under subsequent and present CBA leadership.
12 Janis Sharp
Janis is Mum to Gary McKinnon, and led a courageous (and ultimately successful) fight against his extradition. She knows the value of legal aid, and can be seen in the YouTube film below (incorrectly subtitled as Janis McKinnon- apologies Janis)
13 Bill Waddington
Bill was a former and the current chair of the CLSA.
14 Noela Claye
Speaking with the support of the charity Women against Rape WAR, Noela brought a victims perspective, and showed that ultimately this demo was not just about fees or careers, it was also about victims, clients, and justice.
Noela spoke on camera in the short film of the start of the demo (link below)

Hanna Evans
Hanna was a new tenant and rising star at 23 Essex St. Chambers. Read more (and hear her speech) at #Just4Justice demo here.
15 Sadiq Khan
A former lawyer in a legal aid practice, Labour MP and shadow Lord Chancellor (as he then was) Khan said he opposed Grayling’s cuts. When asked to give an unequivocal commitment to reverse them if in office however he declined. In the run-up to the election campaign, he combined his portfolio responsibility with the role of Labour lead for attacking the Green Party (who had made a commitment to restore legal aid funding) and left the justice portfolio in favour of visits to Brighton rallying the Labour troops in an unsuccessful attempt to unseat Green MP Caroline Lucas. After the election, he successfully campaigned for London Mayor.
16 Matt Foot
Matt, one of the founder members of the Justice alliance summed up the rally, before leading a march to the Ministry of Justice.

NOTES

Short summary of the event by film-maker Ed Stradling with speaker clips here on Youtube

Another short film of the start of the demo here (Thanks to Matt Tiller)

Excellent commentary and photos of “Grayling Day” here (courtesy of Legal Aid Watch)

Photos of demo, all speakers, thanks to Luca Nieve, here

Late Night Levy Madness

The streets of Islington are, according to Islington Labour, rife with violent drunks after the midnight hour, and thus they have rushed to be the first London Borough to raise a tax on licenced premises- well summarised in the Tribune here as the Islington “late night levy”
The move will have little effect on high-profit clubs with promotional drinks offers, disgorging their drunken clientele in the early hours, but will hasten the closure of small community pubs according to CAMRA
In classic Islington style, the money raised will be spent on more saturation CCTV coverage, and recruiting a private security force, who will patrol the streets with no powers of arrest, a rag-tag motley-crew of para-military red-coats.
This hare-brained scheme was introduced by Islington Labour’s Councillor Paul Convery.

There was always something of the Puritan about Cllr Convery.

Unfortunately, Captain Convery’s New model Army is more of a “Dad’s Army”, with Paul as a cross between Private Frazer and the pompous Captain Mainwaring character, supported by his loyal sidekick Cllr Poole, and some loyal backbenchers resembling Cpl. Jones, running around wringing their hands and shouting “Don’t Panic! Don’t Panic!”

The proposal to introduce a privatised security squad was buried in the policy paper (at para 5.3 ) and was not a “recommendation” , perhaps because the idea had nothing to recommend it, but more likely as under the Constitution it is possible only to amend recommendations, so therefore impossible to table an amendment to the goon squad proposal.

Predictably, Councillors supporting the levy ignored the failure of current licensing policy and policing, and naively assumed that the levy would somehow magic away the problems associated with late night drinking. Thus, they argued anyone against the lobby was somehow in favour of vomit, urine and yobbery. Each speaker was keen to outdo each other with apolacyptic visions of Hogarthian imagery, Cllr Poole offering to conduct guided tours of the hellish scenes in his ward. It’s only a matter of time before someone takes up that idea, and we see “drunk and disorderly” tours advertised in TimeOut or Rough Guide. It was this hellish imagery that gave rise to the headline “Islington rivers of vomit and urine” in the Islington Gazette.

In 1979 Elvis Costello recorded Oliver’s Army.
Now we have Convery’s Army:-
Convery’s Army are on their way
Convery’s Army are here to stay
And we would rather see anything else than Islington run this way…

Full music playlist for “Cap’n Convery’s Late Night Levy Army” here

Letter in Islington Tribune here

Protecting Children Services in Islington

UPDATE:-My amendments to the Budget were unsuccessful, and the cuts to Children Services have gone through, with Labour Councillors voting instead to keep their press officers, support officers, and allowances (with the Lib Dems abstaining)
Coverage in islington Tribune here

November 2015-shock rise in crime in Islington reported.

Original Post from 27 February:-
At Islington Council’s Budget Meeting tonight, the Council is potentially going to make a grave error with its proposed drastic cuts in children’s services.
The Council has of course been unfairly hit by disproportionate and draconian funding cuts from central Government, and there are inevitably difficult decisions to make.
However, targeting posts in Children’s Services is making the axe fall in the wrong place, and potentially putting vulnerable children at risk.
In my amendment, I will argue that the cuts should fall instead on the bloated Communications budget (currently running at about £1million per year), and on Councillors own allowances.
When Labour took control in Islington in 2010, they had pledged to “slash” expenditure on both communications spending and allowances. Now they can fulfil that pledge, and protect a front-line service.

My budget amendment also provides additional funding for road safety, especially around schools, and preventing bike theft (which is prolific in Islington)
Detail
I’m trying to stop the Councils proposed slashing of jobs in children’s services. (See appendix B esp items 3,4 and 7) In nearly £4million of proposed cuts, there are six senior posts and a management post being deleted amongst staffing reduction.
I will protect these posts by instead:–
-abolishing party political spin doctors
-abolishing the Councils propaganda magazine “Islington Life”
-reducing the Councils million pound Communications budget by about a third
-reducing Councillor allowances by 10% (to follow the example of Council Leader Richard Watts)
(I will follow Cllr Watts Leadership, and take a 10% reduction in allowances, whatever the outcome of the budget amendment)
-abolishing “special allowances” for chairing planning meetings.

My amendment also provides funding for an air quality strategy to tackle killer pollution levels.

Finally, my amendment also provides some additional funding for the Advice Alliance- there help for vulnerable people needed more than ever with Coalition attacks on welfare and the needy.
(Also topical, with today’s announcement by Grayling killing off Criminal Legal Aid)

Islington Employment Commission

Islington Council set up an employment commission, to solve the unemployment crisis in the Borough by having a series of meetings.
It sadly never reached the high profile those who dreamt it up felt it deserved, so I’ve made this playlist to help promote it.
The terms of reference, appointees and timetable were carefully controlled by the Council Leadership. Nonetheless, the aim of reducing unemployment was a laudable one.
The process has finished, and the report is here
Good luck with that!

Legal Aid Protest- lawyers on strike!

I was not representing anyone on January 6th this year.
Together with fellow legal aid lawyers, we were withdrawing our services, in protest at the underfunding of the justice system and cuts to legal aid.

What happened on 6th January?

There was this protest against legal aid cuts in the morning outside Westminster Court organised by the Justice Alliance.
This was a public demo, well attended despite the weather, to show support for legal aid and against Grayling’s proposed cuts.
I was stewarding a “training session” for lawyers, at Islington Town Hall (from 1115) organised by the LCCSA
It all started to feel a bit like a strike!
The protest was billed as a strike in the Daily Mirror
This had never happened before, and shows the MOJ is in a “right old mess” as reported here in the Telegraph
The guardian also reported on the action
but was this just the usual stuff from ‘fat- cat” lawyers?
The reality of life for the majority of legal aid lawyers is far, far removed from the distortions regularly reported in the popular media. What is dispiriting is that selective and misleading quotes and stats are routinely deployed by the MOJ to re-in force the stereotype.
Check out the Legal Aid MythBuster here
The point of the demo was to help make people aware that if this Government continues with these cuts, It will lead to the collapse of proper publicly funded defence, and innocent people will be either unrepresented or poorly represented, with bitter consequences for Justice and Society.
A report on the Days events in Islington is here

Catch up on twitter comments #fight4legalaid and/or #walkout4justice

Cycle deaths in London

I attended a demo outside TFL HQ on Blackfriars Road, to highlight the sad cases of recent cycling fatalities in London, and the failure of Boris/TFL to take proper budgetary action to improve cycling safety.
Thousands of cyclists laid down their bikes and lay in the road in a symbolic gesture described as a “die-in” by the organisers, an informal group who set up the Stop the Killing protest
The concerns will not go away- and pressure is building on Boris to act.
There is a lot of anti-cycling sentiment out there, for which some cyclist behaviour does not help, but ultimately cyclists are vulnerable and it is time to stop blaming cyclists for the fatal accidents or incidents where they are seriously injured, and work to make London a safer, more cyclist-friendly environment.
A similar argument (but much better written) is made here by Caroline Russell of Living Streets
cycling playlist here

Cycle theft in Islington.

playlist: “bike theft in Islington”-click here to listen

Bike Theft in Islington
About 1500 cycles were reported stolen in the London Borough of Islington in 2013 and about the same the year before. (One of them was mine.) The true figure is almost certainly higher, as many people in Islington no longer bother to report the loss of a push-bike.
I was able to get confirmation of how many of the 3000 bikes stolen were recovered- the answer being about 5%.
It is hard to imagine many crimes where the clear-up rate would be so low, or considered acceptable.

The figures for the following years were equally dire.

1,021 bicycles were reported stolen between 1/11/14 and 31/10/15. Of these, 36 were recovered and returned to their owner. The recovery rate has actually fallen -to about 3%

A year later, and some Islington Cyclists had their bikes stolen and had to compete in charity race on hire Bikes (as reported in Standard 08/16)

What is needed:-
1 Recognising bike theft as a crime and allocating police resources to preventing, deterring and solving bike-theft
( on 27/02/14 – I proposed an amendment to Islington budget to provide additional funding for that instead of propaganda and Councillor allowances, but the amendment was defeated by Labour)
2 Council provision and encouragement of more secure bike storage
3 Better and co-ordinated bike identification, so that every bike sold in LBI should be properly marked, identifiable and traceable at point of sale

Notes

Islington:- a Borough where it is not safe to leave a bike locked up in public
However, cycle racks are pointless if cyclists have no confidence that their bike properly locked and secured will still be there on their return. Bike thieves in Islington now act with impunity, pushing cycle theft to epidemic proportions. Many stolen bikes are then used to commit ride-by robberies, making Islington the phone-snatch capital of London.
The Labour Council point to their heavy investment in CCTV. It was interesting to watch a film of someone stealing my bike, but it didn’t prevent the theft, or get it returned.
I’ve had three bikes and one set of wheels stolen in Islington in ten years, and no longer cycle in the Borough if there is not secure indoor storage at the other end of the journey. It’s simply not safe to do so.

Compulsory recycling in Islington

You can enjoy a playlist about recycling whilst reading this piece-why not give it a listen?!

LABOURS COMPULSORY RECYCLING-TIME FOR A CHANGE
Introduction
Under Labour Control, Islington Council have introduced a compulsory recycling policy, snooped through residents bins, and issued fines-as set out in the Islington Gazette here
Now the Councils stats in their report and have set an unambitious target of less than 1% in two years.
Most people understand why it is important to recycle more (as well as re-using items where possible and reducing waste in general.) Polling shows that most people actually want to recycle more, and what is needed to achieve a higher rate of recycling is encouragement and the provision of adequate facilities. What residents don’t want is a coercive policy, with a bullying Council issuing threats, followed by fines, and which makes recycling mandatory rather than desirable. Pensioners have said they would rather go to prison than pay fines unfair recycling fines (example here)
Evidence shows that such an approach is counter-productive, perhaps unsurprisingly as to make such a policy effective, it requires the Council to snoop through its citizen’s bins, spying on those it should be serving.
Islington’s Labour Council have proved this with their compulsory recycling policy, a policy introduced without warning ( it was not in their manifesto) or debate.(This was the subject of criticism at the time, which was of course ignored by the Labour Executive)
The policy means in practical terms the imposition of fines for those deemed to be not recycling enough, which necessitates council resources being deployed not to collect or recycle your rubbish, but checking through it to see what residents have put in one bin or another. This practice has been condemned locally as “the return of the bin snoopers” (see Gazette article above or Tribune article here)
It is a straightforward issue. You either support compulsory Recycling (Islington Labour Councillors) or you do not (most of the rest of us). But it is important to the debate to know whether the policy works, or at least (if causation unclear) whether recycling is rising or falling since the policy change.
Policy not working
Fact is, recycling under Labour has fallen in Islington since the introduction of compulsory recycling.
Islington Labour deny the fall, even in the face of the Councils own figures which prove the case.
Take for example the Tribune article link above.
In this, we see “Environment chief Cllr Rakhia Ismail said : “Recycling rates are up since we introduced compulsory recycling.”
Yet the report on which the news item is based, an official Council document, shows a fall in the figures. The author of that report? The same Cllr Ismail. The report is published and publicly available here
By 21 September there was an acknowledgement of a a drop, blamed on “government cuts” in this tweet
That’s not the first time that excuse has been deployed-it was a favourite of Cllr Ismail’s bungling predecessor as Exec member for environment-the hapless Cllr Paul Smith (later reshuffled or sacked) – see e.g. here
Then, in a further tweet there is a denial that the Council engages in bin snooping. Once again, to establish the truth we may merely look at the report signed off by Cllr Ismail , which states that 11 people so far have been fined (and many more-number unspecified-warned) under the compulsory policy. Short of using a psychic, or randomly selecting people to fine (a bit like jury selection) , then there must have been some kind of intrusive investigation. And that is what you and I call snooping.
Finally, let’s put the recycling figures into context.
Recycling rates in Islington
When Labour previously ran Islington (up to 1998) the Borough had the lowest recycling rate of any Borough in London.(3.5%)
After losing control, recycling shot up, (quadrupling in four years and increased year on year.
(Let me declare an interest – from 2008-2010 I was the Councillor with responsibility for recycling.* I know well how hard Council Officers work on trying to reduce the amount of rubbish sent to landfill. It was heartbreaking to see good officers lose their jobs when in their first budget the 2010 incoming Labour administration axed the sustainability team.)
Conclusion
Islington’s recycling policy is unwanted and not working, but rather than trying to fudge or deny the figures, they have an opportunity to stop compulsion and concentrate on supporting and encouraging residents to recycle more.
In the meantime, beware Council Officers rifling through your rubbish , sifting for evidence .
TOP TIPS TO AVOID BIN SNOOPERS

-always shred any correspondence or documents
-If you are uncomfortable with Council snoopers looking through your bottles and tins, consider recycling direct to bottle bank or other facilities.
-Watch out for people dropping rubbish in your recycling box, or recyclables in your bin- you may face questioning, or be placed under suspicion
-If you face a fine or investigation, and want to take advice, feel free to contact me or your local Councillor
-lobby Labour Councillors to drop the mandatory policy

*During 2008-2010 recycling rates improved, and LBI was the recipient of numerous awards for recycling, including:- Best Local Authority Recycling Initiative ( 2009); Consistent Commitment to Developing Environmental Awareness & Sustainability (VALPAK Awards 2009) ;Most Innovative Local Authority (VALPAK Awards 2008);Best Regional Project – Watch your Waste week – 2009; Joined Up Award – Giant Green Environment Awards 2008 and see here

Supporting Reprieve-London to Brighton Cycle ride

Why I resigned from Lib Dems and why I cycled to Brighton for Reprieve

As a believer in open justice, I fundamentally opposed the Crime and Security Bill which earlier this year introduced secret courts
I resigned my membership of the Liberal Democrat Party over their Parliamentary support for the bill, having campaigned against it within the Party and at their Conference.(speech here)
During the campaign, I was struck by the excellent campaigning work on this issue by Reprieve, a charity I have long admired for excellent campaigns on justice and death-row cases.
I have therefore decided to attempt the London to Brighton Cycle race on September 8th to raise money for Reprieve. Please support the excellent work of Reprieve
Link to sponsorship page here
Islington gazette article here

UPDATE I finished the race (75 miles including my return cycle to start in Clapham) and would like to thank everyone for their support and sponsorship

Civil Rights

Greg Foxsmith