I am supporting this campaign to help the Markaz in Golders Green, a Muslim community centre, to change it terms of use from a Christian community building to a general religious one
You may think this should be uncontroversial. I met with the leadership of the Markaz in my chambers a while back (they were lovely) and was shocked to hear about the often racist, sometimes far right, opposition to the centre. I told them I would do whatever I could to help.
The opponents have enlisted someone called Gavin Boby to lead their campaign - he self-describes as "the Mosque Buster" and has this racist logo. He prides himself at blocking planning applications for mosques. gavinboby.com
Boby also describes himself (and is described in the news reports) as an "attorney" but I have never been able to find a record of him practising as a solicitor or barrister gavinboby.com/law-freedom-af…
Anyway, I am proud to say that many mainstream Jewish community organisations and individuals are supporting the Markaz - and I am happy to lend my name to that list and offer whatever professional help I can pro bono if needed jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/alyth-shul-lea…
You can support the Markaz here - any help appreciated, let's help love triumph over hate loveoverhatebarnet.com
First important change - to the face covering regulations.
Basically trying to prevent face covering rules being “exercised so as to prevent a voter who is otherwise entitled to vote… from doing so”. What does that mean, exactly?
Also worth mentioning Lady Justice Rose is the fifth Jewish Justice of the Supreme Court in its 11-year history following Justices Phillips, Neuberger, Dyson, Collins (2 of its 4 Presidents have been Jewish). An amazing achievement for a community of 300,000 people
Lady Justice Rose lit the Chanukah candles in the Temple in 2017 at the little annual event I organise which oddly hasn’t made into her official bio!
🕎
Anyway, this has led me to finding this interesting speech given by Lord Neuberger - this para can now proudly be updated supremecourt.uk/docs/speech-17…
I think the only way this could be justifiable is if it is a clever advert for @Baddiel's book. I mean, literally has "Should Jews count" in the title...
There is an interesting debate whether Jews are a religion/ethnicity/ethnicities. In law, being Jewish is both a race and a religion for discrimination, harassment etc. But the framing here - as "will we let Jews be an ethnic minority" is insensitive and historically ignorant
Rather than go into more detail I recommend watching @benjamincohen's interview as he put it really well
This is hardly the first time that the courts have said the Secretary of State should be given the benefit of the doubt on judgments national security.
But...
The courts (and the Human Rights Act) are supposed to be a safety net to temper executive power.
And that is particularly important when political decisions are taken at the expense of an individual's rights because the person is unpopular and the decision is therefore popular.
You may say Sajid Javid had only security motives when stripping Begum of her citizenship.
But consider, for a moment, if he did not.
What check and balance is in place to ensure she has a fair chance of revealing that?