Once again the provincial press is the vehicle of choice for the MOJ to spread some largesse to the local press barons and others who are finding it more and more difficult to balance the books when an ever increasing number of on line sites are licking the financial cream offered by Gen Z and Millennials. As I opined last week with reference to the supposed benefits to the prospective employer of employing a magistrate a valid interpretation could be with apologies to President Kennedy at his inauguration: "It`s not how a magistrate can boost an employer; it`s how an employer can boost a magistrate". Now it is over 20 years since the minimum age for magistrates was reduced from 27 to 18; an early example where political expediency and fashionable expectations overcame common sense and experience for appointers and appointees. A time when school pupils became students and child centred learning was the modus operendi of educators. When the acquisition of knowledge was secondary to the attainment of understanding. When the hardships and ups and downs of everyday life were classified as syndromes or medicalised to be assisted by an expanding cadre of "specialists" and an enlarging pharmacopeia.
The published remarks of a recently appointed magistrate, a current example of an advertising agency`s answer to a MOJ demand for "local people for local justice" are quite revealing. My bench like most I suppose had a sprinkling of solicitors and barristers some of whom were practising criminal law. In common with many colleagues our opinions of those people were offered only in private and to whom we had faith in their confidentiality. At age 22 with two children, displaying her idiosyncrasy of body piercing and ambition to be a barrister readers might consider that she is a much needed token to youth or that I retain the essence of my dinosaur heritage.
Every day there are published unusual cases involving magistrates courts and sometimes magistrates themselves. There are a few recently that I personally never encountered nor any remotely similar.
An airline pilot failed to respond to air traffic control last week causing a major incident at Manchester airport. The limited report doesn`t offer an answer to the obvious question of what was the reason for the pilot`s silence. There is no mention of when this incident took place. Are authorities hoping this matter will just fade away?
A Christian teacher was found guilty of unacceptable professional conduct after telling her pupils "that being LGBT+ was a "sin" and that transgender people were "just confused". On its own that case is clear but if preachers in mosques can lecture their congregations on their being obedient to their religion by espousing the establishment of sharia in UK, the encouragement of antipathy to the other monotheist religions and the heresy of some legal relationships there is a wilful gap in the mindset of those charged with that discredited concept of all being equal before the law.
A fine example of how the tail of prison overcrowding is wagging the dog of justice is exemplified by the case of this drunk driver. How can law abiding people have any confidence in our legal system with such sentencing aberration?
Public space protection orders (PSPO) give the police wide discretionary powers to deal with a nuisance or problem that harms the local community's quality of life. They are aimed at ensuring public spaces can be enjoyed free from anti-social behaviour. It seems that in Cleethorpes walking a dog on the beach breaches such an order as this dog walker discovered. I am not a dog owner but I recollect walking on the beach at Weston Super Mare a couple of years ago and feeling the canine happiness as dozens of dog owners played with, walked and occasionally chased their pets almost to exhaustion.
To conclude this week a further example of why magistrates should, as many broadcasters do, operate a five second delay on anything they might say in the court, in the court building, and/or to any colleague or court employee, defendant, witness, legal representative or delivery van driver. Anything you say will be taken down and might be used in evidence of misconduct as was the case with Mr Michael Berry JP. Perhaps he would have been better off going no comment.
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