Insite Law is developing – this is a typical front page daily… and there is a lot more….
The extract below is just the front page editorial section, done each weekday and usually up by 8.30 – 9.00. There is news, profession updates, law reports and news of what the UK and other bloggers are up to.
Have a look, if you haven’t before or don’t go there that often – it may be useful… it may not. The detailed sections of the mag are on the right hand side panel.
Lawyers’ baked-bean protest over government plans for ‘Tesco Law’
Times: The first signs of a fight-back against reforms that will enable supermarkets and other stores to offer customers legal services came yesterday with a “baked beans” protest by solicitors.
MPs’ expenses: Paying bills for Tory grandees Telegraph: Senior Conservatives have subsidised their country estates at the taxpayers’ expense, the Telegraph can reveal. MPs’ expenses: Cameron considers removing whip as Brown says sorry |
Speaker faces no-confidence threat after he turns on MPs
Guardian: Parties round on Martin for defending ‘vested interests’ as he accuses Commons critics of courting headlines on expenses
Comment…
The extraordinary revelations, drip fed each day by The Telegraph on MP expenses, have thrown up some extraordinary claims from politicians on both sides of the house and Gordon Brown, David Cameron and others have been rushing to newspapers and television and radio studios to apologise. The Speaker, Michael Martin, by contrast, revealing yet again his unsuitability for one of the great offices of Parliament, took a different approach and called the Police in not, I hasten to add, to investigate the troughing MPs but to find out who had the temerity to leak the information which MPs tried so hard to suppress. MPs, I suspect, would have preferred the expenses to be revealed quickly and after the June elections – preferably, perhaps, in late July when the summer holidays are under way. The Telegraph has ruined this plan.
Polly Toynbee writing in The Guardian seems to have unilaterally terminated her on-off support for Gordon Brown and says that he must go. It seems that Gordon Brown is no longer a credible leader of the Labour Party, let alone a credible prime minister. i suspect that a lot of people agree with Toynbee. The revelations on expenses, however, have not been perhaps as damaging to Labour as the Tories – the stark contrast in the lifestyles of Labour MPs and Tory made all the more clear by the nature of some of the claims.
It is amusing to hear that an MP has claimed expenses to dredge his moat – a fact apparently denied – but it does point to a need, perhaps, to provide expenses to those who need it to ensure parity of opportunity rather than for expenses to be seen as a bonus on top of salary. By this I mean – expenses to compensate for travel and the costs of accommodation when the house is sitting – a standard expense rate for MPs who live away from London. It is not realistic, as some have suggested, that as no-one forces MPs to go into politics, prospective candidates should check that they can afford to do so. We need men and women with experience, who are prepared to work in the interests of governing the country and we must attract across a wide political and social spectrum. I would go further – and this would possibly not be of interest to some MPs or prospective MPs, that they should devote their time, fully, to parliament while they are Members of Parliament and not engage in outside work or take on other jobs.
This latter idea, put forward by many, is unlikely to gain favour – but the time has come to look closely at salaries and expenses and ensure that adequate provision is made to ensure that MPs enjoy a reasonable rate for the job and that expenses incurred as a result of their being members are re-imbursed. For a rather more blunt and prosaic assessment – I commend Geeklawyer’s analysis which is not for the faint hearted: The beginning of the end? or Gordon’s Big End?
Editor pick of the day Guido Fawkes: +++ Hogg Claimed for Moat Dredging +++ PoliticalBetting: Are the Tories coming out worst from the expenses row?
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Editor |
On this day…
1999 – David Steel becomes the first Presiding Officer (speaker) of the modern Scottish Parliament 1926 – UK General Strike 1926 : in the United Kingdom , a nine-day general strike by trade unions ends. |
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12th May 2009 Charon QC: Peccable political palaver puts PM under pressure….
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Capitalists@Work: The Apology Bandwagon Bill Quango MP writes… In light of the recent outcry surrounding the Telegraph’s unwarranted publication of MP’s expense claims, I have been asked by my parliamentary colleagues to join the Prime Minister and the Shadow Prime Minister, and the other fellow in apologising for the recent scandal.. We are very sorry. Very sorry that the gravy train has temporarily hit the buffers. More… |
Family Lore: A sign of the times
Bearwatch: Chinese Yuan now challenging US dollar as trading currency.
Geeklawyer: The beginning of the end? or Gordon’s Big End?
You’ve got to sympathise with Gordon Brown’s predicament. No, really, you’ve got to: it’s in Section 213 of the Coroners Bill 2009. Five years in the slammer if you don’t. The joke is, in political circles – as Geeklawyer understands it, that Tony ‘Phony’ Blair was coated in Teflon: he could have been caught on HD video opening the Zyklon-B tins at Auschwitz and yet still emerge from the Nuremberg Trials with an apology from the Allies and £500,000 in damages. Poor Autistic Gordon, by poigniant contrast, could discover a cure for cancer, cause the Lord Jesus to return for the Second Tour and yet still be compared to Pol Pot’s evil half-brother. More…
Blawg Review #211 President Barack Obama has completed his first 100 days in office, and while we passed that marker a week or so ago, now it’s time for a Blawg Review roundup and analysis of all that has happened in, or grown out of, that time (as blogged about in the past week, of course). More… |
Lords of The Blog: The Annunciator
Baroness Murphy – Today my annunciator i.e. my office TV screen reporting events in parliament, suddenly went blank. I was in my office in Millbank trying to make sure I didn’t miss the Lord Speaker’s Procession before question time in order to give myself plenty of time to get in for Lord Cobbold’s question on drugs, tabled third. I frantically pushed all the buttons on the remote but had to abandon it until a few minutes ago when an attendant showed me how I had inadvertently switched it off. More…
Employment Law Blog: The Equalty Bill | Corporate Law and Governance: UK: Takeover Code – extending the disclosure regime consultation | EU Law Blog: Commission Report on Monitoring of Compliance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights | PSL Blog: Protecting privacy – why bother? | Nearly Legal – a housing law specialist blog: The Equality Bill
New Walk Chambers blog: Are horse owners strictly liable for personal injuries caused by their horses?
IPKat: Keywords to go even more global The Times Online reports today the announcement by internet search engine Google that it will extend to 194 countries the scheme which lets businesses use their rivals’ trade marks for online advertising. Accordingly, from Thursday 4 June Google will no longer consider requests from brand owners to take down “sponsored links” that use their trade marks to sell rival or even counterfeit goods. On this basis, the best they can hope to do is to buy back the right to use their own trade marks at a higher price than their competitors are prepared to pay. |
Bar of Bust: And the award for the most ridiculous OLPAS question goes to…..
“How do you hope to contribute to your future chambers?”
Cearta.ie: Why protect free speech?
Charon,
I think that the public want blood and that it will be difficult to come up with a new expenses regime until a few heads have rolled.
So, if that is agreed, all parties need to provide a few scapegoats. There must be a few fiddling MPS who are on their last legs and who could be persuaded to do the decent thing.