Bonfire of rights

The right to a trial by a group of your peers goes back to Magna Carta.

And in order to defend yourself against a crime, there is legal aid.

Legal aid is not a gift, it is a necessity, and even those who are clearly guilty have the right to defend themselves.

So, when someone charged will killing a police officer, even when it is clear they were guilty, the £450,000 has to be spent, or is our brave free press suggesting that those charged with the most serious of crimes should not get legal aid? Or they should decide who is is deserving of legal aid?

Meanwhile the Home Office, forced to withdraw it's offensive video yesterday regarding activist lawyers, instead leaked a story in which the leaker (Cummings) said "There's a bunch of loudmouthed lawyers and barristers who seem to spend more time on social media than representing their clients, who seem to think that even the mildest criticism of their profession will bring about the destruction of democracy..."

Imagine being triggered by social media, Cummings is really that insecure.

Secondly, such loudmouthed lawyers and barristers like DAG, Jo Maugham and The Secret Barrister, have done more to shine a light on how the Government is trying to break laws to drive their policies through, and to show, in SB's case, how the Conservative Party has broken the legal system, closing multiple crown and local courts, and no money to repair or staff those that remain open. There was a two year delay on those cases that do reach court before COVID, which only added a couple of months to the delays.

So, here we have the Home Office launching unprecedented attacks on the Law and legal profession, it is something you would expect under a dictator of a banana republic.

Instead we have Johnson.

Johnson was filmed speaking at a school, in the library, where the librarian had placed some rather hilarious books behind the podium, including Fahrenheit 451 (the temperature books burn at), while Johnson rambled.

He appeared drunk.

At least incoherent. Repeating, twice, that Harry Potter isn't sexist.

He is, of course, a huge Churchill fan, the WWII leader not the insurance company, who apparently spent most of the war drinking large amounts of booze. Johnson is no Churchill, hides in fridges too much for that. But he looks and sounds a mess.

He is being pressed by backbenchers and Party financial backers to get more people back to working in offices. Although many of those who make the call, I'm talking about you Richard Littlejohn, are making such calls when having always worked from home. The Government cannot force employers or employees to return to the office, they will do so when it is safe, or feels safe to do so. A working track and trace would help in that, but Dido Harding is in charge of that, and has been for five months, spent over £12 million and its still a failure.

Public Health has been localised for decades, but in England, the public health response to the pandemic has been centralised. And has been a total failure.