Law Centres Roundup

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Iain Nisbet

Camden Community Law CentreJust three more examples of the wonderful work that law centres do across the United Kingdom.

First, as reported in the wonderfully named Epoch Times, the story of Patience, a Nigerian woman trapped in domestic slavery in London.  She escaped after her “employer” (a high profile lawyer) beat her and – with the help of North Kensington Law Centre successfully sued her employer at an Employment Tribunal.

The Wembley & Kingsbury Times reports that Brent Community Law Centre is working with Trade Unions and other community organisations to fight cuts to public services.

And, finally, Sir Geoffrey Bindman is joining forces with Camden Community Law Centre (which he helped to establish in 1973) in the face of a 25% cut in its funding from the Legal Services Commission.  The Centre specialises in housing, immigration, employment, discrimination and welfare rights law.  Sir Bindman opines: “It is a disaster for the law centre and for people living in Camden. … If the LSC does not reverse this decision on appeal, it is likely to be overturned by the courts.”

Posted in Employment Law, Law Centres, News | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Defamation in Douglas Valley

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Iain Nisbet

CoalI’m treading carefully here, because Scotland’s fifth largest local authority has already shown itself to be quite touchy over this matter.

However, the question posed (and emphatically answered) by Indymedia Scotland is whether South Lanarkshire Council‘s actions in threatening to take Douglas Community Council to court over allegedly defamatory statements re-posted by them online amount to bullying and/or a stifling of the right to free speech?  The two bodies have fallen out over open-cast coal mining in the area, and things are now approaching the writ-serving stage.

But, come on now, if accusing local authority officers of lying is really actionable then who among us does not also belong on the receiving end of a defamation action?

Posted in Defamation, Environmental Law, News | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Eviction and Equalities in Edinburgh

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Iain Nisbet

Capacity Building ProjectI note from the pages of Regeneration + Renewal, that the City of Edinburgh Council are embroiled in a complex legal fight to evict a community organisation from premises in the Craigmillar area of the city.

The Capacity Building Project, whose website tells us that they offer “.. local people the skills, resources and support they need to participate as fully as possible in developments and activities that affect Craigmillar.” is currently housed in the buildings under the terms of a long lease.  However, the Council served an eviction notice back in November 2008, claiming that it needed the office space back to accommodate its own staff instead.

Legal action which initially began in the Sheriff Court, has now progressed to the Court of Session and a 4 day hearing has been set for 30 November 2010.

The group who are being represented by counsel on a pro-bono basis, will argue that argue that the Council have breached their equality duties.  In particular, they claim that the Council have breached their race equality duty because it had failed to consult with minority ethnic groups, including Turks and Kurds, which use the centre as a meeting place and Mosque.

This argument may have the support of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who appear to have intervened in the action “to advise the court on what exactly public sector bodies must do in order to fulfil these duties.”

Adding further to the complexity of the case are claims made by the group about the title conditions.  It is said that when the Council acquired the building from the University of Edinburgh over 70 years ago, conditions were imposed which stated that it should be used to further “social, educational or recreational purposes”.

We await the hearing with interest.

Posted in Court of Session, Edinburgh, News | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Come, one and all, undaunted men in blue …

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Iain Nisbet

PoliceExciting news.  My latest Yell.com blog entry is all about the common law crime of breach of the peace.  This prospect is made all the more appealing, I am certain, when one considers that (despite once winning a prize for criminal procedure during the diploma) I have never practised criminal law in my life.

I have, however, played the part of a policeman in the Gilbert & Sullivan classic “The Pirates of Penzance“.  The picture to the right is drawn by W.S. Gilbert (under his childhood name of “Bab”) and goes with the Policeman’s song – “A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.”

When the foeman bares his steel,
Tarantara! tarantara!

Posted in Criminal Law, Yell.com Solicitors Blog | Tagged | Leave a comment

Law Centre wins £1 Millon funding bid

Posted on August 28, 2010 by Iain Nisbet

The Swindon Advertiser reports good news for Wiltshire Law Centre, which has secured Legal Services Commission funding worth over £1 million.

Wiltshire Law Centre, provides free legal advice on debt, welfare benefits and housing in the Swindon area.

The Legal Services Commission awarded the Centre a contract worth £380,000 a year for three years to continue this service.  The contract begins in October and mean that the Centre is recruiting two new caseworkers.

Neil Baker, business and finance manager at the Wiltshire Law Centre, underlined the importance of the award, and was quoted as saying: “If we had not been successful in this bid the Law Centre would have been looking at closure at the end of the year.”

By October the Centre will have nine caseworkers, including one solicitor and one barrister, covering all areas of social welfare law.

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Lord Lovecraft of Arkham

Posted on August 28, 2010 by Iain Nisbet
HP Lovecraft

HP Lovecraft

I was playing around with the I Write Like … gizmo, and was wondering who the members of our judiciary write like.

So, I started entering segments of judgements from Court of Session and Supreme Court judges and was surprised to find that one name kept cropping up, across the different judgements – HP Lovecraft.

Having spent a reasonable proportion of my teenage years reading the Cthulhu Mythos fiction he created and playing the “Call of Cthulhu” role-playing game those stories inspired, I was pleased and somewhat surprised to see that his style of writing was reflected in the official decisions of the country’s highest courts.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American horror fiction writer and creator of the Cthulhu mythos – a strange world filled with cults, cultists, ancient texts, alien gods, hideous monsters, regular trips to the lunatic asylum and dark, unspoken (and unspeakable) scary things.  But what does that have to do with the law in 21st century Britain?

I suppose that the reason for this is not so much that all judges are fanatic HP Lovecraft fans, but that his style of writing is somewhat formal and, therefore, judicial?  That may not sound like much of an endorsement for Lovecraft’s books, but I can assure you that they are a gripping read and genuinely creepy horror.

To give you a flavour of the writing, here’s the opening paragraph of the great man’s 1928 short story “The Call of Cthulhu”:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

The full list of judges considered and their respective results in my deeply unscientific survey follows:

  1. Lord Kinclaven – HP Lovecraft
  2. Lord Walker – Jonathan Swift; HP Lovecraft
  3. Lord Hope – David Foster Wallace; HP Lovecraft; Isaac Asimov
  4. Lord Phillips – HP Lovecraft; HP Lovecraft
  5. Lord Rodger – Edgar Allen Poe
  6. Sir John Dyson SCJ – HP Lovecraft

Weird, huh?

Posted in Court of Session, Just for Fun, Supreme Court | Tagged | Leave a comment

For your consideration …

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Iain Nisbet

Gold StarWell, I hardly know what to say.  My little blawg, nominated in the category for “best design” in the UK Blawg Awards 2010.  You may be interested in voting and, if so, please vote for Absolvitor.  Thank you kindly.

Vote here.

While you’re there you may also wish to consider Govan Law Centre for best newcomer and Jonathan Mitchell QC for best legal commentary.

Posted in Blawgs, Law Centres | Leave a comment

A trip to Belfast

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Iain Nisbet

For any readers in Northern Ireland, I will be speaking at a conference in Belfast on Thursday 26 August 2010.  The conference is run by the Special Educational Needs Advice Centre (SENAC), in conjunction with the Queen’s University Centre for Human Rights and goes by the title: “SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS: AN OVERVIEW OF RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EDUCATION POLICY, LAW AND PRACTICE IN SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND”.

I will be sharing my insights (!) on five years of the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 in a presentation called “Additional Support Needs, the Scottish Experience”.

Also speaking are Brian Lamb OBE, Philippa Stobbs and Frances Ross-Watt. If you are at all interested and happen to be based in or near Belfast, you can find a booking form for the conference right here:

Booking form for SENAC education conference 26 August 2010

Posted in Education Law, Events, Law Centres, Law Schools | Tagged | Leave a comment

Dundee Law School cream of the crop

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Iain Nisbet

Student readingThe latest Journal is out, together with my monthly web review, which this month covers the “big 5” law schools in Scotland.

But which one was the best?  For content, Edinburgh was “easily the best” with high-profile blogs Scots Law News and TechnoLlama being notable highlights.

And for good design, Dundee Law School’s website draws praise because it: “obeys the cardinal rule of telling people who you are and what you’re about before they get bored.”

See also:

Posted in Edinburgh, Journal Website Reviews, Law Schools | Tagged | 6 Comments

I think you’ll find pal, that’s legal tender!

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Iain Nisbet

CBnoteGot a Google alert re: the hoary old topic of Scottish Banknotes.  As you will no doubt be aware, there is an oft asserted assumption that they are “legal tender”.

No, they are not.  Only Bank of England notes are legal tender, i.e. they cannot be refused in settlement of a debt.  Scottish banknotes are issued by the Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Clydesdale Bank, but hold the status of promissory notes only.  So, far from being legal tender, they are nothing more than a glorified IOU!

To complicate matters, while Bank of England notes are legal tender in England and Wales, they are not so in Scotland or Northern Ireland (more IOUs!).

When it comes to coins, Section 2(1A) of the Coinage Act 1971 provides that the following are legal tender:

  • 20p and 50p coins, for payment of any amount not exceeding £10;
  • 5p and 10p coins, for payment of any amount not exceeding £5; and
  • 2p and 1p coins, for payment of any amount not exceeding 20 pence.

Gold sovereigns, £5 coins, £2 coins and £1 coins are good for payment of any amount.

What really caught my eye though was Section 8 of the Act, which concerns “The trial of the pyx”.

For the purpose of ascertaining that coins issued from the Mint have been coined in accordance with this Act a trial of the pyx shall be held at least once in every year in which coins have been issued from the Mint.

The trial of the pyx involves:

the summoning of a jury of not less than six out of competent freemen of the mystery of goldsmiths of the City of London or other competent persons;

I wonder if they sell tickets?  It sounds amazing!

Image: scotbanks.org.uk

Posted in Commercial Law | Tagged , , | 1 Comment