Category Archives: stuff that isn’t law at all

Yes, this is the bit where I shamelessly beg for your vote again.  Yes, I know you voted for me last year and I didn’t win.*

Yes, I know I promised I would cut tuition fees and ended up tripling them. Yes, I know I told you all I was opposed to privatisation and then sold off the Royal Mail to some very rich people in the City at a knock-down price. Yes, I know that I campaigned on the basis of protecting human rights and have trampled all over them, and that I introduced LASPO,  DRIP and the bedroom tax and loads of other things that, let me tell you, I am now as utterly opposed to as you are.  I know people say that I sold out all of my principles, and sold them out cheaply, that I made wild promises to be different and turned out just as bad as the rest of them.

So, you can rest assured that THIS year, it will all be different.

Here is the voting link thing.  In the interests of transparency, I should say that Lucy Reed over at Pink Tape has also been nominated (and frankly, I’d vote for her instead of me, if I didn’t have a vested interest and a space on my mantlepiece. I wouldn’t even know there was such a thing as law blogging if it hadn’t been for Lucy. She is an icon. And much like Daniel Day Lewis without a moustache in many ways).  I don’t know the other two nominees, but they sound very impressive too, and also like they might be nice people.

http://books.jordanpublishingsecure.co.uk/updates/vote.asp

But if you have ever enjoyed the blog – if I’ve made you smile, or made you annoyed, or made you think ‘something must be done’, or helped you find a case that you needed, I’d be really grateful if you would vote for me.

More importantly though – if you have ever had a fraction of the enjoyment out of any of my pieces that I had writing them (okay, not the Brussels II pieces, I’ve hated every second of those), then you could do me a huge favour, and pass on a link to someone you know.   (Ideally someone who might have an interest in family law). If you get the email version, forward it on to someone – don’t pick a Brussels II case, those really aren’t a good illustration of what the site is about.

(*I did get pretty close last time round, and looking back at my guarantee to save the life of everyone who voted for me, what I can tell you is that nobody who voted for me has subsequently died, or will ever die.

That might be pitching it a bit strong. I might get sued for that.   Let’s instead say that in the last year NO CORONERS INQUEST has named me as responsible in any way for the death of anyone who voted for me.  So, vote for me.  It is the key to immortality…   or at least, there is not yet any scientific proof that it isn’t . )

I’ll put the vote thing here, in case you just skipped to the bottom to see if I was offering any cash.

http://books.jordanpublishingsecure.co.uk/updates/vote.asp

As a child of the Seventies, I am obviously delighted that new Star Wars films are being made (after extensive primal scream sessions, I have managed to persuade myself that the three prequels don’t exist, much like there is only actually one Matrix film, and Superman can’t turn back time by flying backwards round the earth ffs).

As anyone who has seen the films will know (and if you’ve not seen Star Wars (a) this piece isn’t for you and (b) wow, seriously?), the first film ends with Luke Skywalker the hero of the piece, taking part in a tiny space ship attack on the Death Star a huge battle station – the rebel forces are massively outnumbered, but Luke finds a way.

But it has always nagged at me that the reality for Luke Skywalker, getting into that X-wing fighter and going into space battle – given the extraordinarily limited combat experience he has ever had, would be somewhat crazy.

So this is how Luke Skywalker’s interview might have gone, had he been applying to join the RAF, in the real world.

Luke : I want to fly an F16 – I want to join in the attack on Al Qaeda. Which way to my plane? Let’s go, right now!

Interviewer : Well, enthusiasm is marvellous, but let’s take things one step at a time, shall we. Tell me about your previous experience.
Luke : Well, up until this morning I was a farmer.

Interviewer : A farmer? Not a pilot?

Luke : No, I worked on a farm, for my aunt and uncle.

Interviewer : I see. Well very few people I interview are getting into a cockpit ten minutes later and flying a piece of military hardware with a value of two million pounds, still less putting the lives of everyone else on the mission in jeopardy. So, one step at a time. Let’s start again, shall we.

Clears throat

Interviewer : So, you’re interested in joining the RAF, Mr Skywalker

Luke : Oh, absolutely. I hate Al Qaeda. I have done since this morning.

Interviewer : This morning?

Luke : Oh yes, they killed my aunt and uncle this morning.

Interviewer writes down ‘Post-traumatic stress syndrome’

Interviewer : And where were you at the time?

Luke : Oh, I was hanging out with an old man. We were getting all mystical, you know? And I got knocked unconscious.

Interviewer : You were knocked unconscious, this morning.

Luke :That’s right. That was just before my first flight, actually.

Interviewer : You may still have concussion, to be honest. I’m not sure it was good for you to be flying a plane right after that.

Luke : Oh, I wasn’t flying it. I was just a passenger.

Interviewer: But you said it was your first flight.

Luke : That’s right – it was. The first time I’d ever flown in a plane was earlier today. And now I want to fly one, in combat.

Interviewer : Okay… we’d prefer our combat pilots to have a little more flying experience.

Luke : Well, I have driven a landspeeder.

Interviewer : And that’s not really the same thing in any way at all, I’m afraid. Driving a car is rather different to flying a plane in combat. Okay, tell me about your combat experience

Luke: I killed someone for the first time today. Probably about twenty people, I guess. Prior to that, as a farmer, I’d never really had any combat experience.

Interviewer : …. And how are you coping with that?

Luke : Fine. I’m trying not to get cocky.

Interviewer writes ‘Definite issues with post-traumatic stress’

Interviewer : Do you know anyone in the RAF?

Luke : Oh yeah, my friend Biggs. I wrote loads about him on my application form, but I had to cut it all from the final version. He has a moustache.

Interviewer : I see. Do you have much experience of targeting ? This would be a precision raid.

Luke : I used to bullseye womp-rats with my T-16 back home

Interviewer : I….see. That sounds an awful lot like you are saying to me that you shot and killed wild animals with an air-rifle for amusement… and that you’re proud of that.

Luke : They’re not much bigger than 2 metres.

Interviewer writes ‘psychopathic tendencies’

Interviewer : Let me just take some details for our security checks. Full name is Luke Skywalker… let me just check that. Oh.

Luke : Is that a good oh?

Interviewer : Have you ever known there to be a good oh, in this sort of situation? Well, what my computer is saying to me is that your father is the second in command of Al Qaeda, and that I would have to be clinically insane to let you participate in an attack on Al Qaeda or be involved in the planning of it in any way.

Luke : Well, I knew absolutely nothing about that. Really? That is a surprise, I have to tell you. My dad is a big shot in Al Qaeda. That is news to me. I bet I can redeem him though.

Interviewer : I have to tell you Mr Skywalker, that even though we are badly in need of pilots and one of the pilots we have on this mission is a man called Porkiss who can barely fit in the cockpit, you would be on paper, a worse choice than him.

Luke : But… I discovered a new religion today. I’d never heard of it until this morning, but now I’m a complete convert. Total dedication. I’m utterly sure the force of my new religion can get me through any situation. I was already pretty much thinking that if I got up in the F16 I’d turn off all my instruments and just fly on instinct a piece of hardware that I’d sat in for the first time that very day.

Interviewer : Could you please show in Mr Maverick and Mr Iceman on your way out?

[Just absolute nonsense – no law in it at all]

Ladies and gentlemen, this is my report on crime, and crime solving methodology within the last forty years. There will be surprising results for you within my research – it will challenge the way in which we fund and fight crime, and some of it may be unpalatable for you to hear.  I have been brought to this hotbed of crime to see if what can only be described as a tidal wave of slayings can be reversed. With my help, ladies and gentlemen of Midsomer, it can.

In the 1970s – there were two major types of crime. Murder, which was dealt with by what we think of as traditional police work – interviewing suspects, gathering evidence, following leads and eventual arrest. The second type of crime, equally prevalent, was committed by perpetrators disguising themselves as ghosts – usually in order to scare people away from visiting a funfair so that they could buy the land cheaply or to frighten people away from an abandoned mine so that the proceeds of a robbery could be recovered. Ghost-related crime proved extremely resistant to traditional policing methods.

In fact, during the entireity of the 1970s, not a single arrest was made by a uniformed police officer – either here, in the United States, or in England.

A different approach was required, and so investment was made into the assembly of unorthodox units – staffed not by trained investigators but by teenagers – one of whom would be very attractive but contribute little , and with the smartest person being rather plain. This group dyamic worked far better in practice than groups where all of the teenagers were bright and useful. The other key element in successful ghost-related crime-solving was that the group be accompanied  by some sort of animal.

Those results were startling. Arrest levels for ghost-related crime went through the roof. These teenagers and an animal sort of thing made in-roads into ghost crime that ordinary police forces simply weren’t able to deal with.

Their names will be known to many of you involved in criminology or law enforcement, usually by way of the animal-thing who tended to grab most of the media attention – Scooby Doo, Goober and the Ghost Grabbers, the New Smoo, Fangface – there are many more.  They were so successful that by the mid-80s, funding was withdrawn, it being believed that the ghost-crime menace had been defeated.

Now what we have, instead of teenagers and a goofy sidekick are crack teams of scientists or forensic psychologists, or criminal profilers – working in groups of six or seven, with no animal sidekicks. And what they end up dealing with are multiple murders with sick twisted elements, killers who have unfathomable motives and a methodology that always seems far more trouble than it is worth.  Invariably, these murders are solved by establishing that the killer is a short-order chef, who collects Lego, and whose mother was killed by a bee-sting, and then this data is put into a computer and a list of one suspect arrived at.

My research shows that these crimes are WORSE than scaring away people from a funfair by dressing as an old civil-war infantryman with luminous paint on your clothes. By re-establishing zero tolerance on ghost-crimes, which are a gateway to these more heinous crimes, we could substantially improve people’s quality of life and reduce the chance of them being butchered and then turned into a Lego Bee or something.

We know, it is tried and tested that maverick pairs of police officers – who have nothing in common, are almost opposites and who fight like cat and dog are many many times more effective than trained, thoughtful methodical officers working in harmony. This approach reaped huge dividends throughout the United States, but came to a halt following a little known, but deeply unsuccessful attempt to pair Robin Williams on coke, with Dustin Hoffman on Quaaludes as  “The Extrovert and the Introvert”  – although arrests were made, multiple lawsuits arose from suspects who claimed that they had been ‘deeply freaked out’ by the process.

We also know that whilst the average police investigation is slow and time-consuming, any maverick detective given twenty-four hours to solve the case will achieve that desired result. This “Twenty-four hours or you’re off the case” efficiency drive ended up being overused, with one Chicago police department issuing the demand for every case, including minor office stationery thefts and the entire police department was then left with nothing to do until crime built up again.

But as with so many of these bold initiatives – the baby is thrown out with the bathwater when the scheme is abandoned.

Why, I have learned that police in Baltimore recently spent FIVE years investigating some drug lords, making less than six arrests in that whole time. The entire case could have been wrapped up in twenty four hours, if only the simple “I’m taking you off the case” management technique had been deployed.

Case study 1

In the 1980s, in Hawaii, a bold experiment was attempted. All police officers were laid off and the entire island’s crime prevention unit was placed in the hands – or rather, moustache of one man, Thomas Magnum. During the 1980s, every crime in Hawaii was solved by Mr Magnum – this covering murders, robberies and the fairly common kidnapping of foreign princesses or movie stars. The initial outlay of capital was heavy, yes. Multiple redundancy packages to existing police officers, huge increase in unemployment benefit, investment in a mansion, a Ferrari and a helicopter.

The start up costs are what made most other parts of America fail to take up the Magnum model  (although Los Angeles attempted a similar venture outsourcing all of their kidnapping of foreign princesses or movie star cases to a washed-up stuntman. His travel expenses eventually led to the suspension of the experiment) .  If they had carried on, however, that capital expenditure would have easily been recouped in the annual savings of not employing lots and lots of police man to do the work of one moustached detective.

Fact, ladies and gentlemen – since Thomas Magnum was laid off, there was a twenty year period where NO criminals were caught in Hawaii at all.  (This desperate pattern has been ended by the employment of Steve McGarratt’s grandson or something to form a crack Hawaii 5-0 investigation team – it is anticipated that this programme will be cancelled fairly soon. The lack of moustache makes it an inevitable failure)

Moustaches solve murders. FACT.

Case study 2

Again in the 1980s, five hundred and nine murders were solved by one single woman. Not a cop, not a private investigator. Just an old woman, a writer of mystery novels, who solved murders that happened at social events that she was invited too. The State did not have to pay her a dime for solving any of these crimes, making Jessica Fletcher by far and away the most cost-effective law enforcement operative in history. Some might say that although those 509 murders were solved, no convictions resulted – the jury returning not guilty pleas on the basis that they couldn’t understand how the accused was supposed to have done it.

Others might point to the book that Ms Fletcher published, entitled “If I did it” which explained that she was a psychopathic killer who had murdered all 509 people and set up other people for the crime without ever once having been suspected, but as Ms Fletcher said with a twinkle in her eye, this was merely a hypothetical and fictional account of how she could have done it rather than a confession.

Codgers crack cases. Demonstrable FACT.

Case study 3

The county of Midsomer in England currently accounts for 98% of homicides in the UK, yet their police force consists of just two officers and occasional input from a dog, Sykes.  Midsomer now has a higher murder per capita rate than Detroit, Washington DC – in fact the only place that has a higher murder per capita rate is a prison for Russian mobsters where there was a short-lived experiment to set the prisoners to work making knives. Property prices are dwindling – once a week, three houses become available because the owners have been killed, and nobody wants to move in because of the high probability that they will be murdered.

This cannot go on.

Solution

Part of the solution for Midsomer’s problems is already in place. I of course refer to Sykes the dog.  He will be the cornerstone of Midsomer’s new approach. A pretty teenage girl will be appointed to the investigation team. She will have a plain friend who will be a computer whizzkid, who will do internet searches for “Hang-gliding enthusiasts who are allergic to lamb bhuna and just bought some patio furniture” quicker than any ordinary human could actually type that sentence. The junior detective will grow a moustache or be replaced by someone else who will. The senior detective will rigorously enforce the “Twenty four hours or you’re off the case” technique.

There will be a zero-tolerance approach to ghost-related crime. The sale of luminous paint within Midsomer will be prohibited and the full force of the law will come down on any miscreant who dresses up as a haunted deep sea diver in order to get the biscuit factory for themselves.

The final piece of the puzzle will be to recruit a local pensioner, ideally one who talks too much and seems to ramble on and on about nothing and then look perplexed once an hour saying something like “Oh dear, an egg-whisk – how could I have been so foolish as to miss that?”

[In the event that the old woman HAS a moustache, the junior detective at Midsomer can be laid off. Therefore, sales of Immac or other hair-removal products is banned to anyone over sixty-five in Midsomer ]

If these methods do not work, we know that getting all of the suspects into a room* and having a long rambling conversation where each person is almost accused in turn has a high success rate. That should be what happens in the 24th hour, if the case is not solved by then.  [*none of these suspects will bring a lawyer, or give a no comment interview, or even decline to attend the gathering]

My apologies for  (a) nonsense (b) lack of the powerpoint style pie charts and bar graphs that were in my mind when I thought of this nonsense and  (c) that the lecturer can’t quite decide whether he is English or American with some of his turns of phrase.  In fact, I’m just sorry overall for the whole thing.

I may be reading too much of the Telegraph this week (I blame John Bolch at Family Lore, who I am sure is buying two bottles of Buxton water and getting a free copy of the telegraph from a well-known newsagent).

This one is about a Supreme Court judge, Lord Wilson, giving a speech in Belfast, which included his comments that gay marriage and divorce and mixing of nuclear families post separation might not be a bad thing.  In the world of the Telegraph, this sort of thing is ‘controversial’

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10649774/Decline-of-nuclear-family-may-have-benefits-says-judge.html 

Anyway, that’s not the bit that struck me, it was this bit

Lord Wilson also pointed out that Australia allows a woman to wed her uncle, and France permits about 20 posthumous marriages to take place a year, if the surviving member of the couple can prove they were genuinely engaged.

That was actually news to me, and on doing a bit of digging (sorry, probably poor choice of word) I find that it is true.

You really can apply in France, if you have good evidence that a person who has died did intend to marry you, for a posthumous marriage. It doesn’t change any financial matters or inheritance (so you can’t wait until Rupert Murdoch dies, and then agree to marry him for the loot)

At the ceremony, the deceased is represented by a photograph, and rather than the bride/groom saying  “I do” they say “I did”   – the wording also misses out, for obvious reasons the “till death us do part” bit.

 It happened after a dam broke and killed a woman’s fiance and she wrote to the President to ask him to allow the marriage to happen anyway. He allowed it and the law was later changed to permit it. Lord Wilson does seem right that about 20 happen per year. [In my researches, I haven’t come across any MEN who have asked to marry their dead fiancee, only the other way around]

[Perhaps it is because I am in my own first month of marriage that I think this is rather sweet rather than freakish and morbid.  ]

Anyway, that tied in to something I read about a long time ago, and have been waiting for an opportunity to crowbar in, which is the trial of Pope Formosus.

Pope Formosus was Pope for just five years, 891 to 896. His reign as Pope was quite troubled and controversial. That would explain why he was put on trial.  One of his crimes was trying to escape the Vatican and escape being Pope  (which is described as “Conspiring to destroy the papal See”  – or if you are our last Pope, “resigning”)

What is slightly harder to explain is why his trial was two years after he died, in what is called the Cadaver Synod.

His successor, Pope Steven VI, had Formosus dug up, dressed in robes, sat on a chair and made him undergo a posthumous trial as the defendant. Steven served as prosecutor and Judge.  During the trial, a Deacon (appointed by Steven) answered all of the questions on behalf of Formosus.

I suspect that these answers were more on the lines of cringing admissions rather than spirited rebuttals.  Unsurprisingly, Formosus didn’t beat the rap, and as punishment, all of his papal orders were set aside, three of his fingers cut off and he was then thrown in a river. He was later fished out and buried.

There is a story, although this is disputed, that a later Pope, Sergius III was so taken with this that he also dug up poor Formosus again, put him on trial again and this time beheaded him.

Clearly in the “Big Book of Rainy Day Vatican City Games”,  there was a purple bookmark on the page “digging up previous Popes and putting them on trial for a laugh”

Under Stephen VI, the successor of Boniface, Emperor Lambert and Agiltrude recovered their authority in Rome at the beginning of 897, having renounced their claims to the greater part of Upper and Central Italy. Agiltrude being determined to wreak vengeance on her opponent even after his death, Stephen VI lent himself to the revolting scene of sitting in judgment on his predecessor, Formosus. At the synod convened for that purpose, he occupied the chair; the corpse, clad in papal vestments, was withdrawn from the sarcophagus and seated on a throne; close by stood a deacon to answer in its name, all the old charges formulated against Formosus under John VIII being revived. The decision was that the deceased had been unworthy of the pontificate, which he could not have validly received since he was bishop of another see. All his measures and acts were annulled, and all the orders conferred by him were declared invalid. The papal vestments were torn from his body; the three fingers which the dead pope had used in consecrations were severed from his right hand; the corpse was cast into a grave in the cemetery for strangers, to be removed after a few days and consigned to the Tiber

Catholic Encyclopaedia Chapter 13

This also reminds me that in my recent research into trial by ordeal (don’t ask) – whilst most of the ordeals were pretty grim (carry a red hot bar of iron for twenty paces, plunge your hand into scalding water for a minute  – if you don’t scar on either of those you are innocent) there’s one that was “Trial by Ingestion” just put the communion wafer [or dry bread and cheese] in your mouth and then eat it without choking. That seems to me to be the one I would have been advising clients to take. 

We do get to see some unusual names within our line of work, and sometimes we do wonder why the Registrar didnt counsel the parents ought of it. (I understand that in France, their equivalent of a Registrar has a right of veto on names)

This piece came my way care of Freakonomics, which was reporting a child who had been named Colt .45 after the handgun.  The parents actually posted a comment on the subsequent discussion and they seemed to me like very reasonable and nice people.

Freakonomics is very good on the consequences of names in later life, and what it is that parents are signifying, sometimes subconsciously, when they select a name. They have also done extensive research about the social migration of names (how names that are used by very rich people tend to find their way into poorer families by way of aspiration over time and then get dropped by the rich people) .

  They also reported on the life experiences of two brothers, one named “Lucky” and one named “Unlucky”   [And they report a similar case of two brothers with the surname Fail, one named “Will” and one “Never”

Anyway, in this report, a US Judge forcibly changes a baby’s name from  “Messiah” to “Martin”

 http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/12/211348996/judge-orders-babys-name-changed-from-messiah 

Peculiarly, it turns out that “Messiah” as a name for a child in America has hit the top 400 and is one of the fastest growing names.  {Of course, it occurs to me that Jesus is not that uncommon a name in Spain or Latin America, though I think it would raise some eyebrows in the UK}   Time will tell then, whether being named Messiah causes you problems in life, or whether it is empowering, or makes no difference at all.

Looking at this also threw up a report on a baby named “Storm” in America in 2011, whose parents decided that they were going to try to raise Storm as a genderless child and not tell anyone whether Storm was a boy or a girl. The idea presumably being that the child would form their own personality and tastes, free from gender stereotyping. Wonder if they are still doing it?

 The detail I like from this is passers-by slowing down their cars if they saw the family on the sidewalk so that they could shout “Boy!” at this baby.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2011/12/26/the_genderless_baby_who_caused_a_storm_of_controversy_in_2011.html

{I found a British couple that had done the same thing, which lasted until their child was five, and primary school made being genderless pretty tricky}

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9028479/Couple-raise-child-as-gender-neutral-to-avoid-stereotyping.html

This is curious though, it turns out that people do act different towards even babies depending on what they believe their gender to be

One 1975 study, published in the journal Sex Roles, put 42 non-parents in a room with a 3-month-old baby and three toys: a football, a doll and a gender-neutral teething ring. A third of the volunteers were told the baby was a girl, a third thought the baby was a boy, and a third were told that the experimenter couldn’t recall if the baby was a boy or a girl.

Unsurprisingly, when the volunteers thought the baby was a girl rather than a boy, they were much more likely to offer “her” a doll to play with. If they didn’t know the baby’s gender, the male volunteers tended to go for the teething ring, while women offered the baby the doll. That could mean that women see dolls as less gendered, or it could mean that the men in the study hewed more strictly to gender roles.

Overall, people held and touched the baby less if they thought “she” was a girl. When they didn’t know the sex, a gender difference emerged again: Men held the unknown baby less, while women held the baby more.