"“We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am definitely a little worried.” "


Chinese premier Wen Jiabao 12th March 2009


""We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we'd like to do our best to preserve that system."


Timothy Geithner US Secretary of the Treasury, previously President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.1/3/2009

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Freedom of the Streets, dearly bought and if Inspector Yates has anything to do with it , easily sold

Maybe it's Midsummer Madness but 2 news items epitomise the parallel universe that some folk live in ...witness - one policeman, one war criminal and Justice Minister , both well educated and experienced in rongdoing.

Commander Yates, that's the one who finally failed to nail the Cash for Coronets crowd and let that slimy turd Lord Lying Levy , the Karaoke King off the hook.

Commander Yates of the Yard is stamping his well shod little foot because Lord Rodger of Earls Ferry has put a spoke in the wheel, a spanner in the works of a dishonest legal scamm he worked out with "the agreement of the Crown Prosecution Service", (who should have known better) in which witnesses to violent crimes could present anonymised evidence , by their absence from court and the trickery of voice alteration technology. Something that not even the Diplock Courts (see beloe) had done ... but overidden by Commander Young and his cronies at the CPS.

The reason for this fit up, was the lack of success in nailing the increasing gun toting gangs and violent criminals on Inspector Knackers patch. As Knacker saw it, this was the failure of the law not Knacker and the reason was witnesses reluctance to face the accused in court.

(Lord Patel has to admit , that if he frequented the dens of iniquity in the early hours of the morning where these violent crimes take place and witnessed a murder he would suddenly be enveloped in an instant case of total amnesia - if only because of having to explain his presence in the Black Mamba Club in downtown Dalston in the early hours to 'er indoors, who is probably more frightening than any Uzi cruisin' schmoozing gangsta. )

The problem is that the witnesses natural concern of the unpleasant consequences of grassin' up gangstas in public is due to the equal and understandable breakdown in street policing over the last 2 decades.

It was therefore Lord Rodger of Earls Ferry and his pals duty, to remind Inspector Yates and his Ilk that the hard won freedoms dating back to Magna Carta mean that the accused must have the opportunity to identify and face their accusers in court. It is also a salutary reminder to the Knacker and the CPS that improving the success rate cannot be won simply by breaking the law.
Now Commander Yates (and the Justice Minister and War criminal Jack Straw) paint an alarming and alarmist picture - Yates says, "the community's confidence in our ability has never been higher".

So alarming that we must, says Yates, produce "emergency legislation" to overthrow centuries of law and also the judgements of Lord Rodger of Earls Ferry and his pals.

Well a word in you shell like Commander Yates. There is precious little "confidence in (your) ability" in this neck of the woods.

The Police have deserted the streets - a process that started with the Panda car - 50 drunken youths rampaged on the school playing fields behind Patel Towers (he's kindly putting me up for the duration - or putting up with me as he says - oh! he is a laugh) at 1am a few weeks ago leaving one with his ear torn off and now on a life support system.

Starting at 9 am on Monday morning outside the main Post Office as Giros are collected, he can watch the dealers swoop in direct site of both the courts and the Police Station and underneath CCTV cameras and all week long to Saturday night outside the main supermarkets, as they call in to collect their schnapps and vodka to start the night off and a few happy pills to help the night along ...to rip someone's ear off..... etc., etc.,

Most folks hereabouts have little concern about gun toting gangstas, they mainly shoot each other and their kin and steer well clear of their mating grounds...and they will applaud any legal legerdemain to put them inside for a long stretch.

Most folks hereabouts however do need the streets. Streets which have been abandoned by the Police.

Speech Number one by Gemma Garrett at Haltemprice and Howden. See the blog

If you want to be as up to speed on the law Lords judgment go here -
OPINIONS OF THE LORDS OF APPEAL FOR JUDGMENT IN THE CAUSE
SESSION 2007-08 [2008] UKHL 36
R v Davis (Appellant) (On appeal from the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division))
Lord Bingham of Cornhill , Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, Lord Carswell, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, Lord Mance

Gemma who hails from Ulster wants Lord Patel to point out that My learned Lords referred to the Diplock Courts in her home land ..."But there has until recently been no precedent for protective measures of the kind now under consideration (anonymity) , even when the problem of witness intimidation has been extreme. Such was the case in Northern Ireland in 1972 when a commission chaired by Lord Diplock reported on Legal Procedures to Deal with Terrorist Activities there. The commission concluded (Chapter 2, para 7(b)) that the problem of witness intimidation could not be overcome by any changes in the conduct of the trial, the rules of evidence or the onus of proof which it would regard as appropriate to trial by judicial process in a court of law. It considered (chapter 4, para 20) that the minimum requirements for criminal trial by a court of law called for the accused to be informed in detail of the nature of the accusation against him and to examine or have examined witnesses against him. The commission could see no way (ibid) of keeping the identity of witnesses secret without gravely handicapping the defence or exposing counsel to a conflict between his duty to his client and a duty to the state inconsistent with the role of the defendant's lawyer in a judicial process. A committee under the chairmanship of Lord Gardiner "to consider, in the context of civil liberties and human rights, measures to deal with terrorism in Northern Ireland", reporting in 1975 (Cmnd. 5847), considered the possibility of measures to conceal the identity of witnesses but concluded (chapter 2, para 55) that the very serious limitations they would place on effective cross-examination would imperil the whole concept of a fair trial, and the committee regarded this, as the Diplock Commission had done, as a conclusive argument against such measures.


Which is something war criminal Jack Straw should carefully consider before rushing through any hastily drafted emergency legislation.

He will however be encouraged and will no doubt seize on the final Paragraph (99) of the judgement ..."In this situation, I have been persuaded that any further relaxation of the basic common law rule, requiring witnesses on issues in dispute to be identified and cross-examined with knowledge of their identity and permitting the defence to know and put to witnesses otherwise admissible and relevant questions about their identity, is one for Parliament to endorse and delimit and not for the courts to create.... there is reason to think (a)growing - threat to the administration of justice posed by witness intimidation. It may well be appropriate that there should be a careful statutory modification of basic common law principles."

The Primrose path of dalliance down which the Dutch and New Zealand parliaments have already taken.

It will be interesting to see if Mr David Davis is willing to support yet another attack on our common law for the sake of providing Inspector Knacker with "the community's confidence ".

6 comments:

paul said...

It's a 'double bubble' as they say in the deep south of england.
As well as reducing scrutiny of witnesses, anonymity will do the work of protecting genuine witnesses in their normal lives.
Higher productivity + less police time wasted afterwards!
The only flaw I can see is the colander like security of police files. But that's just down to a few bad apples.

ziz said...

Oh! Those Bad Apple Blues again... problem is they are also suceptible to ear;y retirment on medical grounds which creates another problem ...

Scotsman 1st July 2008

http://tinyurl.com/6xwl3e

Willie Rae, chief constable of Scotland's biggest force, Strathclyde, alluded to the pensions problem in his recent annual report - which will be the last before he retires.

Commenting on how the force's £550m annual budget is spent, he said: "This included £120m (21.9%) for police pensions, a figure that is expected to grow annually, reaching £150m by 2010/11.

"There are now more Strathclyde Police pensioners than serving officers and I think it anomalous that this continues to be included as part of the force's operating costs."

Which was known about 5 years ago

Scotsman 8th October 2003

http://tinyurl.com/5ugh8x

Ms Jamieson (MSP Scottish Justice Minister) said new retirals in Scotland were set to rise from 250 this year to more than 500 in 2005-06, followed by a small dip before the figure is projected to peak at more than 800 in 2009-10.

"The costs of police pensions are also rising as more officers retire, and also, frankly, as officers are living longer ... as a result the costs of police pensions increase from around £128 million in 2002-3 to a projected figure of £170 million in 2005-"

A problem no one wants to grasp ( or even talk about)Willie will, because he is going to collect a very handsome (and no doubt well deserved) pension.

So as the finances get constrained ther is an even greater incentive to bost success and fifures to prove it by such Spanish practices.

In theory the CPS should have been jumped on by the Home Office, but everyoe though they could et away with it.

To his eternal credit, Mr Swift, defending Davis cited right from the off....

Mr Swift objected to these restrictions at trial, and argued on appeal that they were contrary to the common law of England, inconsistent with article 6(3)(d) of the European Convention on Human Rights and rendered the appellant's trial unfair. For reasons given by the President of the Queen's Bench Division, the Court of Appeal (Sir Igor Judge P, Mitting and Fulford JJ) rejected these submissions. The court certified the following point of law of general public importance as involved in its decision:

"Is it permissible for a defendant to be convicted where a conviction is based solely or to a decisive extent upon the testimony of one or more anonymous witnesses?"

... and for his pains was ignored.

There is ringing in anyone's mind considering this ... and there will be few who have got this far..."Hard cases make bad laws"

Anonymous said...

For further confidence building in the ability of the police and CPS to pervert the course of justice, see the recent case of Lofti Raissi.

Anonymous said...

For Gemma's next speech on the matter, perhaps she could include the following, from LORD MANCE at paragraph 93:

"... during the trial in Tadic the identity of one of the anonymous witnesses was eventually discovered by the defence. The witness had asserted that he had seen Mr Tadic execute 30 males including the witness's own father. After managing to identify the witness, the defence were able to produce his father, still alive, and only then did the witness admit that he had been trained by Bosnian Government authorities to give his evidence against Mr Tadic."

Anonymous said...

OBTW ziz. Much as we enjoy the occasional misprint in these columns I see you've provided a link to "Scotsman 1st July 2008".
Could you perchance provide a link to the racing results page for the same day??

ziz said...

The proofraiders take grave excepton to the use of the word "occasional", when "frequent" would be a better term.

Regrettably however, the link provided did not take you to the winners on July 1st 2008 but to the correct link.

Many apologies to the bookmaking fraternity in what we must now learn to call the country of Scotland - which having just listened to Wendy Alexander being interrupted by David Dimblebore on Any Questions on Friday nicht the noo, we now fully understand the change in descriptive terms of the region, with a Minister at Westminster who manages to squeeze in the defence interests of the whole of the UK in his spare moments.

Mind you she Wendy a pretty shaky understanding of geography being under the mistaken impression that Jersey is one of the outlying islands of the land of deep fried lard sandwiches.

(C) Very Seriously Disorganised Criminals 2002/3/4/5/6/7/8/9 - copy anything you wish