A ZOMBIE NATION STATE

Sometimes I ask myself what exactly is a legal system; is it a series of laws? are these laws built from the bottom up (of society)  or the top down (of government)?  Are they meant to lead us or to follow us? Many thinkers more able than I have written millions of words on similar topics.  However we are where we are.  It is in the apparent anomalies of the application or otherwise of our laws where lie more questions than answers. 

Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states: "All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law". Thus, everyone must be treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender, colour, ethnicity, religion, disability, or other characteristics, without privilege, discrimination or bias.  What a wonderful sentiment but anyone with the most slender connection to the workings of our legal system knows full well that in practice it ain`t necessarily so.  Power has privilege. Power is the ability to influence and make decisions that impact others. Privilege is advantages and benefits that individuals receive because of social groups they are perceived to be a part of. Privilege can be  a result of systematic targeting and/or marginalisation of another social group. Nowhere is power and privilege more demonstrable than in circumstances surrounding the royal family.  The furore surrounding the cretinous second son of the sovereign over the last couple of years in particular has shown the outside world what power and privilege can effect in the real world. The latest example of the House of Windsor`s claim for privilege was made public earlier this month when Harry of that ilk from his American home threw his rattles out of his pram when denied publicly funded police protection should he visit this country and in particular a service held today to commemorate the life of his grandfather.  Such benevolence was denied and he  remains in the Los Angeles sunshine but court details of proceedings in his action against the Home Office are withheld from public view. I assume that the letter of the law allowed the judge to make a correct decision but was power and/or privilege a mainstay of that legal decision?  Would Joe Blogs of Hackney have had a similar request approved in a court of law?   The judge`s castigation of his QC does little to remove a stench over the whole business.  

Meanwhile in Belfast a situation ignored by many in public life continues to poison the atmosphere and undermine the humanity illustrated in the film recently released of that name. Wrapped up in the blanket of jurisprudence the "will he stand trial or not" saga of an old age pensioner who was part of the British army in the period known as "the troubles"  continues. To any outside observer it is blindingly obvious that the law has little to do with the preceding decisions and the current reversal of the previous one.  The delicate balance between a government seeking to wash its hands of  its and our history at the same time as the fraught state of current relations with Ireland and the E.U. as a result of Brexit is more than just counting the angels on a pinhead but is within the no mans land of the legal tail wagging the political dog or perhaps the other way round depending on the observer`s viewpoint. 

Even with the input of supposedly wise men and women the law can seem to be not only an ass but an ass  having suffered a lobotomy. Illegal immigrants, usually working age males from north Africa or the middle east, have been having their phones confiscated upon arrival and those phones analysed for information.  Considering many of those landing on our shores deliberately or otherwise bring no documentation such investigation seems to be a sensible activity at a time of increased fears of terrorism.  But the law says otherwise.  There is an assumption that those who write our laws and those who sit in parliament to enact those laws do so having explored every detail from the opening word to the final full stop. We are fools to assume such.  The law is man made and man is not flawless. But surely there are better ways of applying resources than currently exist in such matters? 

It is a public conception and one with which I totally agree that police go after an easy collar.  It is one thing to be able to tell a cyclist that having no lights at night and perhaps wearing dark clothing without a high viz reflector is a highway to disaster and another to throw the hard fist of the law into a teenager`s face. And that is exactly what happened in Oldham recently to an 18 year old teenager. That he didn`t appear in court to plead is unsurprising; he is an 18 year old teenager.  Were those magistrates who sentenced him displaying wisdom?  I doubt it.  There was no compassion; they were following "the law".  I rest my case. 

Recent legislation will allow action to be taken by those who block our roads in the name of their "great cause", global warming.  They have used the permissiveness of legislation as weakness just as surely as democratic nations refuse to use undemocratic means to stifle those who would rid us of our democracy and impose fascism upon us.  That is a paradox that is lost to many and unfamiliar to most. But to Sherrilyn Speid it has meant she now has a criminal record and is disqualified from driving. Having personally experienced being held up on the M25 by these fascistic clowns I have nothing but sympathy for Ms Speid.  My first thought is whether or not she had legal representation and the second is whether she was offered a plea on the lesser charge of careless driving.  I hope she has considered the appeal process before it is out of time.  This is just another asinine example of British justice to consider.    

I cannot recollect an occasion when I was faced with a drink driver whose lawyer successfully argued "special reasons" why a mandatory disqualification should not be imposed.  I doubt I am alone.  The bar is exceptionally high. For Jonathan Griffiths at Llanelli Magistrates Court last week it was celebration time; his legal representative  had persuaded the bench that his client had jumped that bar.  Such a decision makes a mockery of the law.  It so clearly demonstrates that all are far from equal in its eyes.  That bench also should be ashamed.

Those who visit this site with some regularity will be aware that there is an organisation, the JCIO, which regulates judicial office holders who are thought to have erred in some way either personally or professionally.  What we don`t have known publicly is what happens when judges sentence so outrageously out of step with Guidelines that an appeal court virtually doubles the existing sentence.   If a surgeon amputates a right leg instead of the left he is likely to have his scalpel locked away for some long time.  Of this judge we can only hope that behind the scenes he is advised to leave his wig in its box until he has satisfied his peers he is fit for duty. 

Whilst we in UK have our legal anomalies in Texas everything is bigger.  They kill each other with increasing ferocity, they divorce so often as only God fearing Christians in the bible belt can do and they execute their murderers with some style.  And now those about to be given the ultimate sanction can have a pastor pray out loud as the needle pierces the skin of the convicted`s arm and touch him in his final moments. Such is the American idea of compassion; so much more endearing now that it has legal oversight. 

And finally in this diatribe over the manner of how the law works to the subject of the mass recruitment drive for more magistrates; a subject broached here more than once.  One would expect that those sitting in judgement over their fellow citizens would be cognisant of the effects of their judgements would have on the individual before them.  That they would have accumulated the wisdom to understand motives, fears, desires, etc that make people behave as they do. One would expect that those judges would be fully rounded experienced people and particularly that their brains would be fully developed.  One might expect those considerations to be uppermost in the fertile minds of those who formulate policies at the Ministry of Justice. One would be disappointed.  Notwithstanding that those inept minds lowered the minimum age for magistrates in 2004 their diversity infected co conspirators at  The University of Manchester are targeting students to apply for the bench.  Why not?  Diversity with a capital D is our driving force.  A country where so many children are virtually illiterate at age 11 that the education budget is still at 2010 levels. Not to worry; Eton, Oxford and Cambridge can still offer some leadership. This is the state we are in: a state where the NHS in some areas are asking men if they are pregnant before the application of certain procedures; where a person with male genitalia can decide that s/he should be known as a woman in all circumstances, where politicians lie to their interviewers caring little that we all know they are lying and that they couldn`t care less, where the law in so many areas is shown to be deficient, where guns have been sacrificed for butter and now we are being offered margarine at just the time we need more guns. The British Empire began bleeding to death in 1947: it is now rotting in its grave prior to its resurrection as a zombie nation state.  

 

UKRAINE SHOWS BRITAIN HAS NO DIRECTION

There comes a time when a retrospective of every nation will show a fundamental change in society, government and other bellwethers.  Historians will offer their own analyses a generation or two subsequently but these observations are of use only as signposts for the future; unfortunately for many reasons they are just an exercise for the authors.  The true indicators of how we conduct ourselves as a nation and where that conduct is leading us are often shrouded in  an  etymological fog. Perhaps the most famous seer through that fog was a master of etymology; Winston Churchill who, for all his faults, realised the folly of British  foreign policy in the 1930s.  In our own time perhaps the most (in)famous speech on society was by Enoch Powell in 1968. He was Member of Parliament (1950–1974), then Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP (1974–1987), and was Minister of Health (1960–1963).  His speech was undoubtedly racist but his target was misplaced: god fearing black immigrants from British Caribbean colonies have been a blessing to us all.  What he was unable to predict was the mass inflow of Pakistanis whose societal origins were firmly fixed in the middle ages where what we now term Islamism was a way of  life. Their co-religionists expelled from East Africa who arrived here in 1972 and later and who have given so much benefit to Britain and the British are equally disturbed by what is now a 3 million minority rapidly expanding to such an extent that far Left political trouble makers are in thrall to their demands.   

There is no doubt that capitalism is the best method yet devised to promote the greatest wealth for the greatest number and underlies the democracy we enjoy today. In 2008 the world`s economic system came close to collapse  but not a single banker, and the banks were entirely culpable, has been tried in a court of justice and convicted for mass fraud.  The capitalist system in this country has been allowed to rampage across all aspects of our lives because as the scorpion said to the frog when the latter asked why he had stung him as he was being carried on its back across the river, that is my nature.  Failure to control this behemoth is a current blot on the economic landscape.  P & O is but the latest example. Russian oligarchs and their Chancery Lane enablers have flourished with the assistance of a decade of Tory connivance.  We thankfully escaped having a Marxist antisemite as prime  minister who had the support of so many Labour MPs now demonstrating their enlightenment. Where was their ability to see the folly of their conduct?  

And now perhaps belatedly to what is most concerning; the rise of the Woke. The single essential pillar without which the temple of a democratic society cannot stand is the pillar of Justice. Since 2010 that pillar has been eroded by demands of so called identity politics.  Diversity, transphobia with many manifestations and a failure to appreciate history have infected not just our rulers but those who are supposedly paid to teach and inform those born in this millennium.   Having presided over the halving of the numbers of magistrates courts and the magistrates who serve within them the government is embarked in what can only be described as a crash programme to recruit 4,000 J.P.s  ASAP.  The process of appointment is secret but a second hand way of discovering the bases of what the advisory committees are seeking in this new cohort is best uncovered by  magistrates themselves.  I have chosen some quotes from an article in the Eastern Daily Press.

"Samantha Tisshaw, 46, a company director who became a magistrate in 2017, developed her interest in the law in childhood as her father was a police officer, while her mother was also a Norfolk magistrate. “It would be really nice to see a more diverse bench, particularly younger people,” she said. “What we want is lots of people from lots of walks of life with loads of experiences they can bring.” [my bold]
This lady doesn`t realise the contradiction in what she says. She wants younger people (minimum age of magistrate is 18) with loads of experience. 
She continues "“Most of us sadly will have either experienced crime or have known someone who has been a victim" .  Really?  On what authority is she making that statement? Does this opinion not affect her attitude on the bench?
 "We do see the worst of society but we do see the best too because we get people who come back and say thank you because they’ve been offered the help to turn their life around". [my bold]  Magistrates are not social workers or probation officers. Magistrates are there to apply the law, to determine guilt and if so determined to administer retribution according to law and guidelines. 

A disabled JP:- “Because I’m disabled I bring to it certain experiences of my own. It’s all about having a good mixture." I sat with many disabled colleagues. Not one at any time ever remarked that his/her disability had any effect on doing the job.  It was as indicative of performance as was the colour of a tie or skirt. But it seems that contradictory opinions on "diversity" in any form is the thinking of a dinosaur.  What is forgotten is that the dinosaurs roamed the Earth for hundreds of millions of years. 

Finally from this article a J.P. with many years experience also fails to understand that the bench is not a helper or guide or good Samaritan; " Some people don’t need to be punished, they need to be helped".  It is the form in which justice is administered in this country to over 90% of all offenders. 

These are some quotes from that article in the Eastern Daily Press. 

As a former magistrate I have taken an obvious interest in that aspect of the judicial system but the blatant disinformation in "justice"  is much more widespread.  Gloucester Constabulary and its PR dept. makes much of its intention to recruit more police but failure by the government to readily admit that it was they who chopped over 20K active police officers  nationally since 2010 is as clear a sign that misinformation is not exclusive to points east.  The same can be said of the NHS and failures at every angle of the compass in recruitment. As a point of information it was the aforesaid Enoch Powell as Minister of Health who actively encouraged the immigration of nurses from the British Caribbean colonies to work in NHS hospitals. His name is a beacon to the hypocrisy which is endemic in British political life. 

A statement was published on February 24th  from the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office:-
"The Lord Chief Justice has, with the Lord Chancellor’s agreement, issued His Honour Judge Keith Raynor with formal advice for misconduct. In September 2020, Judge Raynor emailed several people, including a journalist, to allege that he had been subjected to improper pressure by his senior judge over his handling of applications to extend Custody Time Limits. A thorough investigation found no evidence to support this allegation. In deciding on an appropriate sanction, the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice took into account Judge Raynor’s long and previously unblemished conduct record."   
Although a JP would not be in such a position if that member of the judiciary were a magistrate he would have been sacked for anything approaching a similar action. 

A statement from the JCIO on March 16th is another example of how the legal disciplinary system is literally a law unto itself. 
"The Lord Chief Justice, with the Lord Chancellor’s agreement, has issued Deputy District Judge Christopher McMurtrie with a formal warning for misconduct. Judge McMurtrie conducted a hearing in his car, partly while driving and using his phone in hands-free mode. The judge failed to meet the expectation to avoid conduct which might reduce respect for judicial office. In reaching their decision, they took into consideration that Judge McMurtrie accepted that his decision to proceed with the hearing, after he had to travel unexpectedly for personal reasons, was misguided and he gave assurances as to his future conduct."

Secret disciplinary processes are still the norm in so many aspects of our civil society.  Think of police misconduct, the current  Post Office scandal, Grenville Tower, retirement homes and Covid scandal, hospital baby deaths, children`s protection and many more instances where secrecy in covering up supervisory failure was and is paramount. 

The sheer futility of some matters in the legal system is no better observed than in so called criminal behaviour orders although since the advent over a decade ago of ASBOs such orders on various matters have seriously proliferated as if they had a life of their own. Displacement of offenders is a complete waste of time but it`s an example of simple incompetence of the lawmakers in SW1.  

When a nation has lost confidence in the organisations in which we have placed our belief that wrongs will be righted and errors admitted: when a nation has lost its reason, when up is down and right is left and there is no fixed sight upon which a direction can be travelled that suits the people, these people will disintegrate. And thus underlying so much of our country is identity politics: a creed which is now threatening the very foundations on which we live our lives.  When the opposite is the case; a people who have had democracy and good judgement thrust upon them a national will and cohesion prevail.  Look east at Ukraine and its heroic population as an example where those benefits have arisen from the detachment from the tyranny of the Soviet Union.  

THE INDEPENDENT MAGISTRACY IS A HISTORIC JOKE

"A day in the life: Magistrates reveal what it's like to work in North East courts".  That is the headline in the current edition of "Chronicle Live"; an on line news medium in the North East of England.  The  Ministry of Justice is spending one million pounds over the next few months to seek out and appoint 4,000 new members to the magistracy.  Of course those wise folk in Petty France are loath to concede that they are the very same folk who have been sitting around since 2010 at the very same desks whilst they looked on benignly as their political Tory bosses emasculated the magistracy by failing to appoint a thousand new JPs annually to back fill the age related rapid decline in numbers taking place in front of them.  It seems that there are few news outlets not unhappy about an unexpected source of additional income. 

It is old news that many (most?) criminal lawyers are not supportive of the lay magistracy.  Whether they personally resent being directed in court by a non lawyer or genuinely believe the quality of justice is harmed is an exercise that hasn`t been undertaken. In all the statistics published on the functioning of magistrates courts no analysis has ever been made or attempted to separate the workings of the courts under professional district judges vis a vis JPs.  I doubt that any government would dare to go down that road; whatever the result it would be dynamite for our judicial system.  

And so to the mad race to appoint new magistrates.  Below are some quotes from the article referred to at the beginning of this post.

"She applied with very little understanding of the judiciary system but with training and experience she soon started to pick things up"

"But what you're doing is deciding on the facts of a case and making the decisions. It's a lot like being a member of the jury and anyone can be called up to do that."

"Anyone can do it and they give you full training. Once I did the training I understood why you don't need any qualifications because what you're doing as a magistrate is making a decision and anyone can make a decision, you don't need a qualification for that."

"We do have legal advisors who sit with us. So if there is anything about the law that we don't understand or is particularly complicated, they can break it down for us in a way that is easy to understand."

"The whole judiciary system - the courts, the police and the prison service - aim to have no crime. You have to try and figure out how every individual would be stopped from committing another crime" "You have to look at what the reason is that they commit crime. A lot of crimes are caused because of addiction and you can't condemn addiction, it's a medical thing. If you have people who think they are hopelessly addicted, you can help them."

"After receiving documents about the case she soon realised that she had appeared in court four years earlier for the same offence. Anita said: "I had asked the solicitor back then if I could speak to her and I said to her 'have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately, you're a good looking woman, you've got children, what are you doing with the drugs? I said: 'It is very difficult, but you can get off them and lead a normal life like everyone else.'"When I said that she started to cry. She had her bag with her and she was ready to go to prison again, it was like a revolving door. "When she appeared four years later, it was the same story, she had stolen from a shop to feed a habit. When I asked the solicitor if I could speak to her again I asked her what had happened and if she remembered me. "She said she did and when I asked her what had happened she said she'd done what I said and it wasn't easy. She said 'it was the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life, but I did it'."  "But what had happened is she'd had a baby and she'd suffered postnatal depression and went back to the only thing she knew that made her feel good. We didn't send her to prison, we gave her another chance because she's proved that she could do it. "She promised me then that she would try again and she wouldn't be back, and she hasn't been back. That's just one example of why you've got to think through the individual and see what helps them and therefore helps the community."

Throughout my 17 years on the bench many a time at training sessions or in private discussion I and my colleagues were told that we were not social workers.  We did liaise with the probation service (although that facility declined in my last few years) so that all involved were aware of the level of success or otherwise of the non custodial community sentences imposed on offenders.  It would be interesting to know whether or not that direction, formal or informal, is imparted to new appointees. 

By government fiat in practice if not in terminology magistrates are no longer independent junior members of the judiciary as they once were.  They are now corralled to do the bidding of their government overlords just as the salaried judiciary of district and crown court judges.  In my very humble opinion that is a loss for the democratic functioning of this the very bedrock of justice for the vast majority of offenders.  The imposition of the Single Justice Procedure in 2015 was a stark example: a system of behind closed doors secret justice dispensed to almost half a million offenders annually where even the simplest request under Freedom of Information Act is refused;  "Since its inception what is the annual number of convictions by SJP and what do those convictions represent as percentage of cases presented annually?"

It is not overnight that the justice system in a democratic country suddenly resembles that of Putin`s Russia.  It is a slow salami slicing process with almost imperceptible impediments to what has gone before.  To have compliant individuals on the bench whether in Hong Kong Court of Appeal or in the 160 remaining magistrates courts in awe of those in authority over them is just a short step on the road to government by decree.  The so called independent magistracy is now but a historic joke.....on us the people of England and Wales.  

767 LAYABOUT LORDS

The House of Commons is arguably overloaded with MPs.  Such a statement will have many antagonists who might just have a case to answer.  However there is no doubt that the House of Lords is an anachronism where in the main almost 900 self satisfied has beens are paid £323 to turn up, sign the register and f*** off to their favourite drinking haunts. From time to time they might waste £410 of our tax money to ask pointless questions in their chamber.  It doesn`t occurr to many that perhaps five minutes or less with Mr Google or reference to the appropriate Lords library will elicit their  required information which is generally already in the public domain.  

Step forward Lord Jones; aka Baron Jones whose greatest political achievement was as a parliamentary under-secretary of state for Wales from 1974 to 1979.  He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for East Flintshire from 1970 to 1983. In 1994, Jones was appointed by the Prime Minister as a member of the then new Intelligence and Security Committee, on which he served until 2001 when the Committee was dissolved at that year's general election. Jones retired from the House of Commons and was made a life peer with the title Baron Jones, of Deeside in the County of Clwyd. Such an outstanding career to be appointed to the sinecure he now occupies.  Having become used to spending our tax money yesterday March 10th he asked a written question in the House at a cost of £149 the answer to which any political aware person would have known immediately; 

" To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support the recruitment of more magistrates to the bench?" to which the answer was:-

"Lord Wolfson of Tredegar The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice
The recruitment of more magistrates is the Government’s top priority for the magistracy. The MoJ is investing £1 million this financial year into a programme of work to improve magistrates’ recruitment. A digitised and more inclusive recruitment process which will improve data collation was launched in January, alongside an inclusive marketing strategy which aims to targets a wider, more diverse audience, attract more applicants and recruit more from under-represented groups. Additionally, we are legislating to increasing the judicial mandatory retirement age to 75. This will retain around 400 judges and 2,000 magistrates more annually, when compared to retaining the current age of 70."

Abolish this talking shop NOW! These has been layabouts have had their day. 

BLAME IS ON OUR OWN DOORSTEPS

There are some very rare occasions when any thinking person, and I include of course all those who give a few minutes of their valuable time to read my jottings, must refuse to sit on the philosophical fence and  declare an opinion on a subject of the utmost gravity.  We are living through such times. I am  not referring solely to the tragedy in Ukraine but to legal circumstances surrounding its ancillary personalities and principles who and which are arguably at the top of the legal tree and the application of justice in what still remains of a society where everyone is equal before the law.  Two examples of the muddled thinking of the senior judiciary and at the top of the Bar have presented themselves in the last six months that prove to me at least that the letter of the law has been positioned as the arbiter of justice as opposed to its spirit. These are the situations recently at the Hong Court of Final Appeal and the Royal Courts of Justice over the last few years where routinely Russian oligarchs and their bottomless treasure chests have been stifling criticism by throwing some of their ill gotten gains at those who represent them.. 

It became apparent to any observer with an ounce of common sense and/or an insight into Chinese  political obfuscation that the agreement on the transfer of Hong Kong to China would last only as long as it suited the Chinese. The changes in China since the 1997 transfer have been apparent to all. The regime under the current dictator has shown that nothing will stand in his way of his securing what he believes to be China`s future as the world`s unassailable military power and that includes the futures of Hong Kong and Taiwan.  The United Kingdom has provided him with the legal fig leaf of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal where the most senior British judiciary have presided.  Serving judiciary who function on the Court have their fees paid to the UK Treasury.  Retired senior judiciary presumably negotiate their own fee for services rendered because it seems such information is unknown to Mr Google.  The mealy mouthed kowtowing of the UK to the supine head of government in Hong Kong was published on 27th August last year by the Supreme Court.  This head in sand position so beloved by senior legal minds has been endorsed by a retired member of the Supreme Court on the basis to quote Lyndon Johnson, late US President, "better to have your enemies in the tent pissing out than outside pissing in".  The underlying thinking processes behind such actions, in my humble opinion, seem to be that that they are above government intervention in their opinion of the application of the law.  But if the existing law is untenable, undemocratic, or perhaps badly drafted do those who sit in judgement not consider that they are enablers of anything from injustice to dictatorship?  It would appear not. Supreme rulers of all shades throughout history have always found that the law can be tailored to their requirements and compliant judges can be persuaded to do their bidding brushing aside all valid objections but the converse equally applies: by counting the numbers of angels on a pinhead lawyers can invoke law to suit their sometimes nefarious purposes even when justice is the victim. 

The current situation in Ukraine has opened a nest of previously hidden vipers around Russian oligarchs and their fortunes beckoned here by the curled forefinger of unscrupulous simple minded governments from Tony Blair via David Cameron  to Boris Johnson.  It appears that the last named is striving to avoid for as long as possible the imposition of legislation that would open to public scrutiny the truly obnoxious lengths he has gone to utilise benefit from the laxity with which Russian money was able to ingratiate itself and thus its owners within the innards of the Conservative Party.  And now enter the lawyers.  Following perhaps the example of Lord Pannick QC legal arguments have been loudly voiced at any suggestion that the current legal rights of defence by Russian enablers of Putin be, in their opinion, curtailed insofar as their previous attempts, some successful, in curbing free speech have demonstrated, are anathema to the rule of law.  So conversely to the situation in Hong Kong it is the legal profession (in part) which is opposing government. However to this outsider the enormous financial milch cow of representing these thieves of Russian state assets during and after the time of Boris Yeltsin seems to be the driving force of their supposed shoring up of the legal system against arbitrary government decree.    

It seems that for many lawyers, to quote Dickens, "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness."  I would sum up by saying that in some of the upper reaches of the legal fraternity  the rule of the law entrenched becomes secondary to the tool of the claw outstretched.   The law can give and the law can take away. The law is in the end what we make it and the lawmakers sit in London SW1.  If our legal system is becoming but a shadow of its former regal self the blame is on our own doorsteps. 

EXCEPTIONAL HARDSHIP//A LEGAL LOOPHOLE

The term "exceptional hardship" might be thought to have a simple meaning:-

a legal argument that can be submitted to the court to avoid a disqualification from driving when a driver accumulates 12 or more penalty points

is what can be submitted by the defendant as part of a plea in court to retain driving licence after totting up 12 penalty points or more .

the hardship that must be demonstrated must be beyond that endured by a normal person losing their driving licence

exceptional hardship refers to what can be submitted by the driver or defendant as an appeal in court

I remember that when my bench disallowed such a plea it caused more raised eyebrows from legal advisors than almost any other decision.  I often wondered why this was so.  And even now at seven years distant from my last sitting I have no answer.  Is it that unlike when I started driving nearly sixty years ago using a vehicle has now become almost as common as having hot and cold running water or indoor lavatories both of which facilities were not available to many families of that era?  It is such a common offence to come before magistrates courts that I have posted here upon it and the anomalies of such outcomes more than a few times. Some 142,275 drivers between 2017-2021 were banned for exceeding 12 points but 35,569 successfully argued exceptional hardship. Indeed dozens of law firms make their living by advertising their successes in arguing such cases.  It has become a national disgrace with so  much anti motor and anti motoring legislation in being and proposed that this hurdle has been reduced to nothing more than inconvenience for those with eloquence or the means to hire such eloquence that pulls at the presumed heartstrings of a bench which has lost sight of its purpose. Perhaps like central heating and low cost groceries holding a driving license to so many benches is akin to a human right; a right not to be removed under all but the most dire circumstances. From another point of view the actions of benches in accepting so many pleas of exceptional circumstances many of which are undeserved  have brought the whole idea of lay benches into disrepute when seized upon by some of the popular mainstream media. 

Read the short report of a typical case here and ask yourself if this driver truly fell into the category of those with exceptional circumstances when so many senior judges have pronounced that loss of employment does not constitute a valid defence against a banning order as a totter. In reality someone who drives for a living surely has an obligation to drive in the most careful manner to retain that license.  I have no doubt that this scandal has had the eyes of government inspection upon it.  When time and circumstances permit there will certainly be legislation to tighten up what has become an obvious legal loophole.