But there is on any view serious cause for concern about the untransparent spending of huge sums of public money on entities with links to ministers and advisers. The BBC should be reporting this: and I simply don’t understand why it isn’t. @bbclaurak@bbcnickrobinson.
At the very least, one of the BBC’s excellent legal correspondents could be allowed to report near the top of a flagship BBC programme on the current legal actions, explaining what they are about and where they have got to (permission having been granted in at least one case).
Covering politics in an impartial way at the moment is hard, and the leap is too often made from disagreement with its judgments to accusations of bias or bad faith. But on this occasion I simply cannot see on what basis this story is not being picked up, given its importance.
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Preliminary and important observation: I cannot speak for the accuracy of Matthew’s story - and like any journalistic account, it doubtless leaves out much of relevance. In particular, the case for a lockdown probably didn’t really depend wholly on the 4,000 deaths/day estimate.
So let’s make this a bit abstract (but as the story shows, a realistic abstraction).
Not sure that @timothy_stanley knows what he is talking about. Neither reducing the no. of judges nor “bringing in specialists” amounts to “rolling back” “Blair era” reforms. The HoL judicial committee had the same number of judges as now, and were no less (or more) “specialist”.
Entirely unclear what “specialist” means here, anyway. Though some have argued that there are too many commercial lawyers and not enough crime/family specialists.
The article is a mess anyway: perhaps because whatever is being discussed is also a mess.
Well, quite. Though note that the job was originally (in 1998) given to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords in different clothes).
Since the judiciary don’t want to be settling political arguments raising no real legal issues (and they don’t, and dispose of them fast), what’s the problem?
Note: this deal visible from space is still a really bad deal for the UK. It fails to obtain vast amounts that UK businesses and citizens will want. See eg this from @Howard_Goodall (and remember that our 🎵 industry is far more important in size and numbers involved than 🐟).
1. What is the quality of the evidence? Is it hearsay or double hearsay (“I was told by someone that someone told her that ...”)? Courts rightly either exclude or give little weight to such evidence (which can’t be tested).
2. Does the evidence directly show fraud or are we being invited to draw conclusions from facts that could easily have an innocent explanation. (Courts rightly are reluctant to find fraud to be established save on the basis of strong evidence.)