As Christmas draws ever closer so too does the end of my Christmas Advent calendar. Today I have a few interesting law snippets of general interest – and, an Assange free day.
I shall start with an irritant… the ‘Class’ system which I despise – a plague in our country which still appears to wreak havoc in terms of benefit being given to the undeserving from the middle classes at the expense of a young man or woman from a less privileged background. It still goes on and today an interesting article in The Law Society Gazette warns that we should not ‘judge a book by its cover’…
Firms reject candidates on the basis of their accents, research suggests
James Dean, in The Law Society Gazette, writes:
Top London law firms are hiring graduates with ‘smart’ accents and public school backgrounds because they think they are better for their image than working-class candidates, new research has suggested.
Suitable white working-class applicants are being passed over for jobs in favour of middle-class graduates of all ethnicities from elite universities, according to a study of 130 staff at five prominent London firms by City University’s Centre for Professional Service Firms at Cass Business School.
The five firms all had diversity policies, and had successfully recruited ethnic minority candidates, but rejected able working-class students because their appearance or accent was not thought ‘smart’ enough, the research found.
Dr Louise Ashley, leading the study, said that the firms want to preserve their ‘upmarket brand’.
She said: ‘Focusing on ethnicity enables law firms to boast excellence, or at the very least improve diversity outcomes, despite the fact that they have continued to recruit using precisely the same types of class privilege that have always been in operation.’
Ashley said that one partner told her: ‘There was one guy who came to interviews who was a real Essex barrow boy, and he had a very good CV, he was a clever chap, but we just felt that there’s no way we could employ him. I just thought: putting him in front of a client – you just couldn’t do it. I do know though that if you’re really pursuing a diversity policy you shouldn’t see him as rough round the edges, I should just see him as different.’
The rest of the article is worth a read
Was the Telegraph sting illegal?
The Telegraph journalists who posed as constituents to entrap MPs may have committed a criminal offence
While I think Vince Cable (and other MPs recorded) may have some difficulty with civil breach of confidence actions and using copyright law, David Howarth, a former shadow solicitor general and Lib Dem MP for Cambridge between 2005 and 2010, has made a useful point under criminal law…
Section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006 makes it a criminal offence, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, to dishonestly make a false representation with the intention of putting someone at risk of pecuniary loss or with the intention of making a pecuniary gain for another.Unlike in the civil law, what counts is the defendants’ intention to cause harm, rather than the actual result. Did the journalists and their editors intend through dishonest false statements to put ministers at risk of losing their jobs? Did they intend to make money for their paper? If either is true, a criminal offence has taken place. There is no free-standing public interest defence. Perhaps the journalists involved should now be preparing their answers to those questions.
Journalists often misreport on legal matters. As a reminder of this, you may like to read this post from the UK Human Rights blog:
Failure to deport Philip Lawrence killer was not about human rights
And, since I am interested in human rights, here is a useful round up of recent judgments as the courts wind up the calendar year….
Bite-size human rights case law
And, as I am on a roll with misreporting, this analysis of the Cable / BSB Sky issue by Carl Gardner is worth a read to get it right: Taking Vince Cable off the BSkyB case
Bye… until tomorrow….
Vince Cable: The arbiter of competition applications in the UK but completely ruled by personal hatred.
Self anointed Nemesis-of-all-UK-Banks (although done sweet FA so far).. is duped by two blondes purporting to be from his constituency and starts gushing out personal views on Coalition policy to complete strangers.
Naive? Stupid? Or simply found believing his own headlines – just like the rest…
David Laws:
Charging rent (and expensing it) to his male partner-lover-pillow biter…. against the rules.
Nick Clegg:
Heard on the 2010 hustings live on tv; “There are too many MPs getting away with selling their second homes and taking the profit. This money should be returned to the Treasury.” This after making €280,000 on the sale of his Brussels (other) flat when he was a Eurocrat pen-pusher.
Now bringing a whole new meaning to the word pledge.
Mr Cable? Well, there’s no fool like ….!