Legal Aid

[Simon]

This thread is about the cuts in legal aid - not your hobby horse about the level of black and other ethnic minority prisoners.

Really?

From the OP:

"The focus on protest here is only part of a larger picture, which includes the doubling of the prison population since 1993, and the disproportionate imprisonment of black and minority ethnic people and foreign nationals in a country in which human rights (including habeas corpus) are routinely suspended..."

If you want to quote Government papers I suggest you start with the work of fiction that is Transforming legal aid...

I think I'm happier with the document I originally quoted, thanks, which is not policy but statistics.

[ <yawn> It's too easy, sometimes.]

[amateur51]

http://www.kingston.gov.uk/informati.../bme_forum.htm

http://www.scie.org.uk/publications/briefings/briefing35/

http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/mental-health-a-z/B/BME-communities/

http://sites.brunel.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/254432/Sharon-Wray-ESRC-seminar-Brunel-University-2012.pdf

I can't see why the fact that I choose to term the group ethnic minority and black people instead of the more usual black and minority ethnic people should be so surprising. It was deliberate, as I didn't want the focus to be primarily on colour.

But as you, as usual, have absolutely no ability to make a sensible, coherent and rational response to any point, I don't suppose anyone will be surprised to see such an irrelvant and inconsequential sidetrack from you.

I have never doubted your ability to undertake an internet search but I doubt that anything that you've found there actually informs your worldview from the lofty heights that you tell us that you occupy

[amateur51]

This may help with a few figures, if anyopne's interested.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/172542/stats-race-cjs-2010.pdf.pdf

Incidentally, I was reading some papers a while ago that analysed the "rap" musical culture, mainly in the USA. It suggested a link between the type of crimes that black people (specifically in the USA but perhaps also arguably elsewhere) are convicted of and the lyrics of the rap music.

I'm afraid I know little about rap, but I gather that it focuses heavily on things like guns, gangs, drugs and "raping Caucasian bitches".

If this is so, then helping young black kids out of that sort of culture might be a very good way forwards for us all...

Why not cut your teeth on something closer to home, What do you think about white people and their problem with sexual abuse?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/06/sexual-abuse-in-white-community

[french frank]

Please don't make this a wrangle about race.

As the original article said:

"While a good lawyer and the right advice is no guarantee of acquittal, it can make – and frequently has made – all the difference: the right to a lawyer of your choice, regardless of your income, race, gender or nationality, is, along with the jury system, the bedrock of justice in an unjust world."

This is a thread about legal aid.

[jean]

But guess what? I'm personally not at all worried about being "kettled", falsely accused of assault or creating a public nuisance or about any other offence. Guess why? You got it - I don't commit them!

The whole point about being falsely accused of something is that you didn't commit it.

Not having committed an offence is an insufficient guarantee that you won't be falsely accused of it.

[amateur51]

Please don't make this a wrangle about race.

As the original article said:

"While a good lawyer and the right advice is no guarantee of acquittal, it can make – and frequently has made – all the difference: the right to a lawyer of your choice, regardless of your income, race, gender or nationality, is, along with the jury system, the bedrock of justice in an unjust world."

This is a thread about legal aid.

I agree french frank but our learned colleague is doing his best to take us down that road so I sought to offer him alternative fodder on which to chew.

When I was being made homeless a few years ago I was very grateful for the expert and free legal advice given to me by Brent Private Tenants Rights Group.

http://www.bptrg.org/

This service was made possible through funding by Legal Aid. The thought of this attack on the principles of Legal Aid meaning that in future people in my position may be unable to access sound legal advice purely through lack of funding seems to me to be an affront to democracy.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I do agree with the assertion that music and lyrics can influence behaviour. But this is rarely discussed nowadays.

[amateur51]

I do agree with the assertion that music and lyrics can influence behaviour. But this is rarely discussed nowadays.

Discussion about the words of God Save The Queen and Land of Hope and Glory seem to crop up in early September most years in this household

[Flosshilde]

I agree french frank but our learned colleague is doing his best to take us down that road so I sought to offer him alternative fodder on which to chew.

The best thing to do is ignore him.

an affront to democracy.

So much of what this appalling government does is an affront to democracy, and decency. They are trying their best, and succeeding, to create as many divisions as possible. At the moment Tory/LibDem MPs & ministers preface replies to questions with 'Hard working families ...'; it'll be something else soon. & the 'opposition' are letting them get away with it.

As for the changes to legal aid, apparently the new providers (the favoured one at the moment is apparently Eddie Stobart) will be monitored. But there's no indication that they will be deprived of the contract if they fall below even 'acceptable' standards. Given this (& the last) governments on monitoring contracts & penalising the companies if they fail I doubt that there would be any action - they will just carry on providing less than acceptable standards & laugh all the way to the bank.


(Does anyone else fell that the Tax-Payers Alliance - who have been strangely quiet recently - have taken over the government?)

[eighthobstruction]

No, the quasi-government have been quite capable of doing what they are doing on their own....in fact it is what they spent rtheir period in opposition planning (or pseudo-planning)....their assault on the NHS as soon as they arrive in govt is testiment to that....unfortunately their focus groups failed to include ordinary people caught up in this ever more so complicated unforgiving world, where not reading a sub-clause can put you out on the street or deprive you of money and rights etc etc etc........

[eighthobstruction]

Will they find a way of closing down 'You and Yours'....'Money Box Live'.....?? they are continually finding the govt, ministers institutions, commerce, the elite OUT.....

[Simon]

I have never doubted your ability to undertake an internet search ...

Why should you? I expect even you can manage that.

It was a simple exercise and proved your earlier point completely false.

[amateur51]

The best thing to do is ignore him.

Cheers, Flossie!

I'm doing just that with msg #27

[eighthobstruction]

Very good LAW in ACTION ....on R4.....http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...ers_In_Revolt/

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

The whole point about being falsely accused of something is that you didn't commit it.

Not having committed an offence is an insufficient guarantee that you won't be falsely accused of it.

er quite, especially by the NSA or GCHQ lot


one of the major factors driving prison populations and lousy legal process is mental illness .... the personally incompetent, inadequate and insane end in prison because there is no other provision to meet their 'nuisance' than the violence of the state's judicial process ... our Victorian forefathers were astute in building large asylums outside major cities .... but these days we would think it was a welfare scroungers paradise ....

i am an atheist, not a Christian at all, but i see the loss of caritas in our society as an awful tragedy ..... Victorian reformers and Chapel Socialists were not short of it .... they would tell us, would they not, that the reason we are now so multiply constituted by descent is that we did occupy a huge swathe of the globe by dint of force and trade, that in consequence we are truly belssed by the most diverse of populations which should be an everlasting joy to us, and shame on us for not extending our selves more to care for the difficulties of others of whatever descent with the peelers and the workhoue &c ...

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.