MAGISTRATES AND GETTYSBURG

Very few people, I`m sure, of those interested in the application of law to our society will have been unaware that the MOJ has been using widespread advertising in order to appoint in the near future 4,000 new magistrates.  This requirement is similar in some aspects to the widely propagated view of highly placed Conservative ministers and MPs that 20,000 new police constables are being recruited or 40 new hospitals are being built. That since 2010 20,000 police officers have retired from the force, been made redundant or not been replaced by various Conservative governments is now as well known as the chimera of the current recruitment drive. Similar argument can now be seen as applicable to the nonsensical claim of 40 new hospitals. When urgent numbers of new personnel are needed for any profession there is clear risk that standards will be lowered, stretched or in other ways made as flexible as possible to fill the quota required especially when a government is ultimate employer and seeks to maximise the hoped for beneficial optics. 

And so to those eager, aspiring new magistrates required now in bulk owing to the MOJ refusing to recruit over the last decade when retirements were predicted as easily as future Christmas days were diarised.   It is unlikely that any information, gossip or assistance they receive either prior to or subsequent to a successful application will adequately prepare them for what they are about to receive. The intangibles of entering a hybrid state of being volunteers but also considered  unpaid employees of a government quango; the most junior members of the judiciary, so called representatives of their local communities, examples of "diversity" in action and yet having the power to sit in judgement upon their fellow citizens who are at risk of 12 months jail time.  In addition they will be entering an environment where the term woke in word and deed is considered as normal.  Perhaps if they were instructed to read the statements published with unfailing regularity on the website of the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office they would be warned of what is expected of them. Indeed the initial training might be considered in commercial and/or website small print as terms and conditions.  

On the JCIO website today Helen Mackay JP was placed into the last chance saloon.  Also today it was announced that Miss Kaira McCallum JP has been kicked off the bench. Last month  Ms Shirley Young JP was given a formal warning as has  Mr Declan Curran JP.  Mr Mark Philpotts JP  has been handed "formal advice" for his misdemeanour. In September for " a lack of the circumspection and sound judgement expected of a judicial office-holder" Mr Gary Cracknell JP has also been subject to "formal advice".  

To paraphrase one of the wisest orations of all time:- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of justice—and that justice of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.  But only if those sitting in judgement satisfy those in authority of being of the people and by the people and subject to the strictures higher than those applied to those at the top of the judicial tree. 

And finally this year a big thank you to those who I hope take some pleasure from giving me precious minutes of their valuable time.  A healthy and happy Christmas and New Year to you one and all.