Well it’s Oscar season so I thought I would try something a little different with the newsletter and pick out a couple of films (with a legal angle to them) to review. This week I watched The Mauritanian, a film that was actually a surprising
Even after the clocks have changed and the evenings are getting longer, night eventually comes. It’s not all at once but slowly and surely the light fades and, all of a sudden, you’re in darkness. According to the most recent annual report from Amnesty International,
Nobody likes to be told that they are wrong but we all make mistakes that sometimes need correcting. That is the essence of judicial review whereby mistakes made by the government can be challenged and rectified. However this government has got so used to being
As a bit of a peak behind the curtain, sometimes I record episodes of the podcast in advance and schedule them to go out. That is what I ended up doing this week for Uber v Aslam [2021] UKSC 5 because (excitingly!) I was busy moving into my new
In last week’s special newsletter for subscribers I wrote about how the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill would severely curtail the right to protest in the UK. Unfortunately the proposed legislation would only represent the formalisation of what has been government policy for a long
On Sunday evening in the U.S., an Oprah Winfrey interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex was aired for the first time. For us in the UK the full interview will be broadcast on ITV at 9pm on Monday but many of the highlights
The 2003 invasion of Iraq led to a complete re-work of that country’s massive oil industry. A new, pro-Western government began handing out lucrative contracts but many of these were stained with corruption. Just this week the legal process surrounding some of those contracts came
Fortunately my grandparents have had both the first and second dose of the vaccine for COVID-19 but many of you, like me, will still be awaiting the first jab. Certainly I will be first in line when the opportunity to be vaccinated comes up but
For the first time since it was sponsored by Granada Bingo in 1988, my football team’s shirt sponsor this season was a gambling company. Amongst supporters there was some dismay about the association but that has now turned into a resigned acceptance that this is
When we are thinking about the people who hand down legal judgments our wishful thinking lets us hope that they are entirely neutral and applying the law in an even and fair-handed way. In reality we know they aren’t some sort of semi-divine beings who