Category Archives: Uncategorized

Forensic incontinence

Posted on May 5, 2017 by suesspiciousminds

 

At the present time, there are few smaller pockets of intense joy than visiting Bailii and seeing the name Benmusa appear in the new cases list.

If you’ve not been keeping up, Ms Benmusa believes (without the tiresome business of evidence or justification) that she is the secret illegitimate daughter of Princess Margaret and that opening up Princess Margaret’s will is the final (or indeed first) piece of the puzzle. The only way she can do that is to make an application to the increasingly exasperated and creatively irritated President of the Family Division. The last time, she produced a death certificate from someone she claimed to be her maternal aunt (who would thus be Princess Margaret’s older sister… do you see the inherent problem with that? And added to that, said maternal aunt was born at a time when Princess Margaret’s father would have been ten and more interested in whatever the turn of the twentieth century equivalent of Transformers were than procreation)

 

This time round, Ms Benmusa’s killer argument is that the sole piece of evidence that she herself produced was ‘a flake’  (which we assume to mean ‘fake’), which is an impressive trump card to pull out. It is the legal equivalent of tripping over your feet and falling flat on your face and trying to recover the situation by shouting loudly “I meant to do that”

This brilliant argument did not, needless to say, impress the President, who was somewhat mournful (yet comedically so) about the fact that the remainder of his, and indeed all succeeding Presidents, was going to be taken up with Benmusa applications and that there wasn’t even a Court fee to be paid. The Court staff HAD to issue the applications even if they had no merit and the President would have to consider them. There was no value in declaring Ms Benmusa a vexatious litigant as that would just lead to a string of leave applications.

How was the President to stop this ‘forensic incontinence’?    (and with that line, the President has set a high bar in my new Pithiest Judicial Remark of the Year contest.  You’ll all be stealing that.)

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2017/966.html

Ms Benmusa’s wasting of the court’s time – a phrase I use advisedly and deliberately – has been facilitated by the surprising fact that an application of the kind made by Ms Benmusa is, rara avis, one that can be made without payment of any court fee: see Tristram and Coote’s Probate Practice, ed 31, paras 25.234 and 25.265. I cannot help thinking that even someone like Ms Benmusa might be deterred from such forensic incontinence if she had to pay a fee.

What is to be done? As a matter of high constitutional principle (1) court staff cannot refuse to issue process – such a decision can be taken only by a judge – and (2) a judge cannot make an order absolutely barring access to the court; even a vexatious litigant so declared, or a litigant subject to a civil restraint order or a Grepe v Loam order (see Grepe v Loam (1887) 37 ChD 168) retains the right to apply to a judge for permission to bring proceedings. So, there is no kind of order I can properly make to prevent Ms Benmusa continuing to bombard the court with further nonsensical applications which will have to be put before a judge. What I can do, and this is what I propose to do, is to direct that if any further application is received from Ms Benmusa it is, before being issued, to be put before the President of the Family Division who can then either direct, if appropriate, that the application is, by order of the President of the Family Division, to be returned, unissued, to Ms Benmua, or direct, if appropriate, that the application is to be issued, whereupon it can then be considered by the President of the Family Division in the usual way.

 

Awesome – one individual has effectively just got their own Presidential Practice direction.

 

I shall be sad to see an end to the Benmusa litigation – the President clearly has greater control over his curiousity than I would have – I’d have opened up the will and had a peek and told the world that there was no secret confession about ANY secret illegitimate children in there. But I guess those who believe would have just written that off as part of the cover-up.

 

 

(*Also kudos to the President for using rara avis, one of the few Latin phrases that I know – it means ‘that rare bird’ or in this context ‘very unusually’ )

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The gift that keeps on giving – Princess Margaret’s will

Posted on April 12, 2017 by suesspiciousminds

 

Ms Benmusa, not content with the hint dropped from the last judgment, which was as heavy as an anvil catapulted into the air by Wiley Coyote only to come crashing back down on his bonce, revived her application to see Princess Margaret’s will, which would prove that she, Ms Benmusa, was the illegitimate daughter of Princess Margaret.

She filed a statement, making reference to her aunt, who was born in 1904.

As the President carefully pointed out, this aunt is thus purportedly the elder sibling of Queen Elizabeth II. That is difficult to countenance, because (a) being the elder sibling of Queen Elizabeth II would have made this Aunt the Queen, and perhaps more importantly (b) the alleged father of this aunt was King George VI who was born in 1895. I know times were different then, but I do honestly believe that if King George had fathered a child when he was just nine years old, that would have been something of a sensation.

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2017/785.html

 

The judgment is short enough, and cool enough, to print in full, so I’m going to…

 

  1. I have before me, as President of the Family Division, another application by Malika Benmusa. I struck out a previous application on 14 March 2017: Re Benmusa [2017] EWHC 494 (Fam). This application is dated 20 March 2017 and was received by the court on 23 March 2017.
  3. This application, like the previous one, seeks “To apply to unseal the will of the late Princess Margaret.” The only difference is that, on this occasion, the application which, like the previous one, I am invited to deal with “without a hearing” is accompanied by a closely-spaced one page statement by the applicant dated 20 March 2017 and a copy of a death certificate of a woman, who was born in 1904 and died in 1997 and who, according to the applicant, was “my late Aunt.”
  5. I do not propose to set out the entire contents of the applicant’s statement. Its flavour can be judged by the opening part (again I set it out as written):
    1. “I MISS MALIKA BENMUSA, am the last child of the late princess Margret … I was born in Scotland. My mother married my father a year before I was born, then separated, but never divorced. I do not wish to give out my father id as he is a very well know. […] My mother was very frightened of her so called family, and felt I needed protection. I am the heir to the throne of England. This is why so much trouble has been taken to cover up my identity. I believe between the age of three years old I was raised by my mother older sister, not known to the public, due to my grandparents’ not been married, and because of the war at the time. When I was three years old I believe my mother was frightened by her own family member to give me up for adoption, my mother did not consent to this. They frightened her saying that she was a drunk and my father was a drug addict. And my mother was told to remove me from the care of her older sister who real name was [name as on death certificate] […] Last address was before she passed [address as on death certificate]. The Kings Georges oldest daughter.”

In charity to the applicant I quote no more.

  1. The application is self-evidently complete nonsense It is a matter of public record, of which I can take judicial notice, that the father of her late Royal Highness Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, was his late Majesty King George VI, who was born on 14 December 1895, and that her mother was her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who was born on 4 August 1900. They married on 26 April 1923. Quite obviously a woman born in 1904 could not have been, as the applicant asserts, her mother’s elder sister if, as she also asserts, her mother was HRH Princess Margaret. I have no hesitation in concluding that I should strike out the applicant’s claim, as I do. It is a farrago of delusional nonsense.

 

I am ordering in popcorn and waiting for round 3.

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In which MacDonald J asks the question and answers it in paragraph 1 of the judgment

Posted on April 8, 2017 by suesspiciousminds

 

Which is something that I’d like to see more often.

 

The question before me is whether the High Court has power, under its inherent jurisdiction, to make a costs funding order against a local authority requiring it to fund legal advice and representation for a parent in wardship proceedings brought by the local authority where that parent has lawfully been refused legal aid. I am satisfied that the answer to that question is ‘no’.

 

In essence, that question arose because the Local Authority had read some of the previous authorities on radicalisation or alleged radicalisation of children to suggest that they ought to be issued as wardship proceedings (which doesn’t get non-means, non-merits legal aid) rather than care proceedings (which do).  That doesn’t feel right, because parents in such cases really do need legal representation.

A scheme so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel was devised (either nobody invited the LA to simply issue an application for care proceedings so that there would be legal aid for the parents or they did and the LA refused, I don’t know), but anyway an intricate scheme was attempted instead.

As you can see, MacDonald J said no to that.

HB v A Local Authority & Another  (Wardship Costs funding order) 2017

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2017/524.html

 

However, MacDonald J clarified that in his mind, there was no obligation for an LA on a radicalisation case to issue solely in wardship and not in care proceedings.

In the circumstances, I am satisfied that, contrary to the view taken by the local authority, neither Hayden J nor the President have sought to lay down a general rule, or purport to give general guidance to the effect that the inherent jurisdiction should be used in preference to care proceedings in all cases of alleged radicalisation.

 

MacDonald J shoots up in the league table of my estimation by also dissecting the much discussed homily that the ‘powers of the inherent jurisdiction/magical sparkle powers are theoretically limitless’

 

I am satisfied that the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court does not give the court the power to require a local authority to incur expenditure to fund the legal representation of a litigant in wardship proceedings who has been lawfully refused legal aid in accordance with the statutory legal aid scheme put in place by Parliament.

 

  • Whilst the inherent jurisdiction is theoretically unlimited, it is, in reality, constrained by proper limits. In London Borough of Redbridge v SA [2015] 3 WLR 1617 Hayden J observed as follows at [36]:

 

“The High Court’s inherent powers are limited both by the constitutional role of the court and by its institutional capacity. The principle of separation of powers confers the remit of economic and social policy on the legislature and on the executive, not on the judiciary. It follows that the inherent jurisdiction cannot be regarded as a lawless void permitting judges to do whatever we consider to be right for children or the vulnerable, be that in a particular case or more generally (as contended for here) towards unspecified categories of children or vulnerable adults.”

In R v Central Independent Television Plc [1994] Fam 192 at 207-208 Waite LJ noted:

“The prerogative jurisdiction has shown a striking versatility, throughout its long history, in adapting its powers to the protective needs of children in all kinds of different situations. Although the jurisdiction is theoretically boundless, the courts have nevertheless found it necessary to set self-imposed limits upon its exercise for the sake of clarity and consistency, and of avoiding conflict between child welfare and other public advantages.”

 

  • Within this context, I am satisfied that the limits that are properly imposed on the exercise of the inherent jurisdiction for the sake of clarity and consistency, and of avoiding conflict between child welfare and other public advantages in this case are those that must be applied when considering the nature and extent of the court’s jurisdiction to order a public authority to incur expenditure. As Lord Sumption pointed out in Prest v Petrodel Resources Ltd [2013] 2 AC 415 at [37], courts exercising family jurisdiction do not occupy a desert island in which general legal concepts are suspended or mean something different. Imposing the limits that I am satisfied must apply, I regret that I cannot accept the submission of Mr Hale and Mr Barnes that the inherent jurisdiction of this court is wide enough to encompass a power to order a public authority to incur expenditure in order to fund legal representation in wardship proceedings for a parent who does not qualify for legal aid because that parent does not satisfy the criteria for a grant of legal aid laid down by Parliament, notwithstanding the considerable benefits that would accrue to the parent, and to the child, from such funding.

 

 

 

 

 

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That’s when I start promising the world to a brand new girl I don’t even know yet

Posted on April 8, 2017 by suesspiciousminds

 

Next thing, she’s wearing my Rolex.

 

I wrote about Part 1 of the Pauffley J hearing about alleged radicalisation where all of the evidence that might prove whether threshold criteria existed or not was in the hands of the security services and they (having originally tipped off the LA that they should do something) decided they didn’t want to cough up the material.

Cloak and dagger threshold

I feel very very uncomfortable about this sort of thing.  I fully understand that in order to protect the citizens of this country, the security services will watch individuals and don’t want those under suspicion to know exactly what the security services knows and how they know it. I get that. But by the same token, if a parent is being accused of being a risk to their child and faces the possibility of losing their child, they are entitled to see what the evidence against them is and to test it.

The alternative is that we end up with a set of care proceedings run along the lines that Christopher Booker imagines happens all the time, where the parents aren’t told what they are supposed to have done and don’t get to fight the allegations.

I’m not sure how you square that circle. My gut feeling is that the children probably stay with the family unless and until the security services either have enough to charge the parents with a criminal offence, decide there is no risk, or that the information known can be safely shared without putting others at risk.

Anyway, you may remember from Part 1, that it ended with the Security services telling the Court that they were going to get a Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificate signed by the Secretary of State about the documents.

This is what happened next.

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2017/692.html

C (A Child), Re (No 2) (Application for Public Interest Immunity) [2017] EWHC 692 (Fam) (31 March 2017)

 

Those representing the Secretary of State asked for a CLOSED hearing. In basic terms (and I’m massively oversimplifying to make it possible for normal people to follow) that means that the lawyers for the Secretary of State would address the Judge about the documents and why they could not be shared, and nobody else would be in the room.

 

 

Discussion of procedural steps

 

  • I quite accept that the courts and the SSHD are even now in the relatively early stages of grappling with the problems consequent upon proceedings of this kind. I would be the first to accept that I have been engaged in a learning exercise. I suspect the same may be true for those advocates who have not hitherto had much experience of dealing with cases where PII might be asserted in circumstances such as these.
  • There have been several complicating factors leading to delay identified by Ms Wheeler in CLOSED session which are inappropriate for inclusion within this OPEN judgment.
  • At all events, there are some obvious conclusions to be drawn from events in this case. The first is that where the SSHD is faced with disclosure orders relating to material which is or may be sensitive and where the likelihood is that PII will be asserted, it is incumbent upon the GLD to set up a process for early and definitive decision making.
  • The spectre of a potential PII claim was manifest in this case from as far back as 3 November 2016. On that day, I received an urgent letter from the GLD, indicating there was material which for reasons of national security the SSHD was not at liberty to disclose. A further period of 28 days was requested to further consider the information with a view to either effecting disclosure, advancing a claim for PII or seeking a declaration under s.6 of the JSA 2013.
  • By the time of the 2 December hearing, the indications were that if the SSHD was unsuccessful in her bid to revoke the 4 October 2016 disclosure order, she would claim PII. As I observed towards the end of the December judgment, until there was a PII Certificate containing the SSHD’s judgment as to the harm to the public interest that would be caused by disclosure and the weight to be given to competing public interests, there was no appropriate mechanism for action.
  • It is disappointing to say the least that the PII Certificate was not issued until 7 March 2017, some three months later, and at a time when no fewer than four distinguished legal teams had spent a great deal of time and effort considering a landscape which did not comprise a claim for PII. Had the claim been made sooner, those endeavours would have been largely unnecessary.
  • Doubtless the GLD is an over-stretched organisation with many competing calls upon the time of those who work within. However, with an eye to the future and other similar cases, it seems to me that there must be mechanisms for significantly swifter specialist advice and consequent action. Had there been an application for PII in the autumn of last year, it would have been resolved before Christmas; the hearing of 2 December would have been superfluous to requirements; and the care proceedings would not have been mired in procedural argument for more than three additional months pending resolution of these issues.
  • As Mr Twomey suggests, delays, lack of clarity and inconsistency in the approach of the SSHD are unhelpful and tend to give rise naturally enough to scepticism and suspicion. The earlier there is (can be) precision the better. The stop / start approach of the last four to five months has been distinctly unhelpful. By some mechanism or another, strategies for avoiding anything similar should be devised as a matter of urgency.

 

Potential for conflict

 

  • Arising out of events on 25 January 2017, there was the potential for unfairness which Mr Twomey was right to identify in his written submissions. As he correctly identifies, on 25 January I met briefly with two members of the GLD to take possession of a bundle of CLOSED material; and I concluded that a hearing in CLOSED would be required. Mr Twomey maintained that the parties were unaware of what was said on behalf of the SSHD on that occasion and what I was shown. In fact, as Ms Wheeler related in her submissions of 6 February 2017, the documents I had read were CLOSED submissions and a Sensitive Schedule (also known as a damage assessment) explaining why the SSHD contends material should be withheld, the nature of the damage were disclosure to be ordered and the reasons for delay in progressing a formal claim for PII. But I was not provided with the material over which a claim for PII is being considered.
  • As for anything discussed between the GLD lawyers and me on 25 January, I can confirm that nothing of any substance was said. The sole purpose of the meeting was so as to comply with the necessary procedures for dealing with CLOSED material. My clerk, for example, is not able to handle CLOSED material. Thus it was necessary for me to meet with Mr Fitzgibbons and Mr da Silva to take possession of and later relinquish the CLOSED file.
  • Mr Twomey asked me to confirm whether or not those documents form part of the PII application. If they did not, then it would be necessary to consider whether I could fairly determine the PII application and / or how those documents could be treated so as to ensure a fair hearing.
  • In response to those submissions, I indicated that Ms Wheeler’s CLOSED submissions from late January had not been made available to me in readiness for the hearing on 15 March. Ms Wheeler’s initial view had been that there was no need for me to consider her earlier submissions afresh given that more pertinent material was now available in the form of the OPEN Certificate. Given the potential for a sense of unfairness if the January submissions were not once more made available, a copy was provided in advance of the CLOSED hearing.
  • No party sought to suggest there was any reason associated with events on 25 January, materials read or discussions with the GLD, which could have prevented me from dealing with the claim for PII. Accordingly, satisfied as I was that there was no reason to recuse myself, I convened a CLOSED hearing at which I heard Ms Wheeler’s oral submissions and probed a number of issues.
  • There was no judgment at the end of the CLOSED hearing. I indicated I would be preparing an OPEN judgment.

 

 

 

The Court considered the principles in deciding whether documents should be withheld from distribution under the Public Interest Immunity process

 

 

 

The three steps involved in making a PII claim – R v. Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police, ex parte Wiley [1995] 1 AC 274

 

  • There are three required steps when the SSHD considers whether to make a claim for PII. First, whether the material is relevant and passes the threshold test for disclosure in the applicable proceedings – (Certificate §11). Second, if the threshold test is passed, whether the material identified as relevant and subject to disclosure attracts PII. The test is whether there is a real risk that disclosure would cause ‘real damage’ or ‘serious harm’ to the public interest – (Certificate §13 and 19). Third, if applying the ‘real damage’ test, the material attracts PII, the question arises as to whether the public interest in non-disclosure is outweighed by the public interest in disclosure for the purpose of doing justice in the proceedings. The factors in favour are set out in the Certificate at §18; those against between §§19 and 26.

 

 

Slightly disappointed that Pauffley J did not indicate that R v Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police, ex parte Wiley is a party guy and he knows it, but bigger fish to fry, no doubt.

 

 

 

Positions of the parties

 

  • The local authority’s position is that it will await the outcome of the PII hearing and will then take stock. Ms Morgan understandably submits there is a limitation upon the assistance she can give in relation to the Wiley balancing exercise, given that she has no knowledge of the material over which the SSHD asserts her claim for PII. Ms Morgan does though make a number of observations particularly as to the sufficiency of primary evidence absent disclosure. Ms Morgan’s overarching observation is that I should approach the balancing exercise on the basis that if the care proceedings conclude for want of established threshold criteria, the likelihood of the local authority being in a position to safeguard the child – or justify interference in his life – in any effective way would be virtually non-existent.
  • Mr Twomey suggests that the very significant delay in making the PII application calls for an explanation and raises a serious issue as to the merits of the claim. Mr Twomey suggested that when I considered the claim there were a number of issues which may be relevant but which might only be probed in CLOSED session. He cited eight matters and asked a number of associated questions – all of them useful to me during the CLOSED session.
  • On behalf of the child’s guardian, Mr Parker suggests there are two points which undermine confidence in the SSHD’s evaluation. First, that the unwillingness to provide disclosure was a position arrived at long before the balancing exercise set out within the Certificate. There is a risk, accordingly, that the Certificate is simply an ex post facto justification of the SSHD’s position. Mr Parker’s second general point is that the premise for the balancing exercise is flawed in that the SSHD understands the local authority’s application is for a supervision order whereas the interim measure does not reflect the true nature of the proceedings.
  • Mr Parker makes four points in relation to the Wiley balancing exercise which, he submits, increase the balance in favour of disclosure – the insufficiency of available primary evidence, the inappropriateness of the Channel programme as an alternative method of safeguarding, the current unavailability of the Desistence and Disengagement Programme and the unreasonableness of requiring the mother to surrender her travel documents permanently.

 

1. Relevance

 

  • The first question, as to relevance, is simply satisfied. The SSHD proceeds on the assumption that the material is relevant and, in principle, disclosable as the result of the 4 October 2016 orders for disclosure. That is clearly right.

 

2. Would disclosure damage the public interest?

 

  • The second issue is confronted within the Certificate in this way. The SSHD identifies that the Government’s approach to PII requires her to focus specifically on the damage that would be caused by the disclosure of the particular material in issue and to assert PII only if satisfied that disclosure of that material would bring about a real risk of real damage to an important public interest. The SSHD expresses herself satisfied that the material referred to in the sensitive schedule would cause serious harm as it includes information of one or more of eleven specified kinds.
  • Within her OPEN submissions, Ms Wheeler explained that the reasons include those relating to national security though it is not possible to be more specific in OPEN about the nature of the harm that would be caused by disclosure. The effect of the material engaging national security considerations was that disclosure would create a real and significant risk of damage to national security (§19 of the Certificate).
  • I have sound reasons for agreeing with the SSHD’s evaluation based upon materials provided to me in CLOSED.

 

3. The Wiley balance – factors for and against disclosure

 

  • The last part of the Wiley exercise involves balancing the factors in favour of and against disclosure. The SSHD when considering the impact of non-disclosure takes into account three specific points – the nature of the material, the open and available material and other powers to protect the child.
  • The SSHD considers the factors in favour of disclosure to fall into two categories. First, the strong public interest in ensuring that children are protected from the risk of harm and that the material of potential relevance should be available to parties to family court proceedings. And second, that in general legal proceedings should be conducted openly; open justice principles are in play and are an important factor in protecting the rights of individuals and maintaining public confidence in the justice system.
  • To my mind, the most significant, weighty and powerful of the factors militating against disclosure is that the material engages considerations of national security. The SSHD formed the view that disclosure would create a real and significant risk of damage to national security. I accord great respect to and share that assessment on the basis of the material made available to me in CLOSED session, namely Ms Wheeler’s CLOSED submissions and the Sensitive Schedule (or damage assessment).
  • The conclusion of the SSHD that national security considerations are engaged, a judgment formed on the basis of comprehensive materials made available to her, in Ms Wheeler’s submission, should properly be accorded great deference. As Lord Templeman observed in R v. Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police, ex parte Wiley [1995] 1 AC 274 @ 281, “As a general rule the harm to the public interest of the disclosure of the whole or part of a document dealing with defence of national security or diplomatic secrets will be self-evident and preclude disclosure.“

 

Other available evidence

 

  • Ms Wheeler urges me to consider the other factors put forward in favour of non-disclosure. Firstly, the existence of other available evidence from which the court may be able to draw inferences and find the threshold criteria satisfied. Second, in the event that the threshold criteria could not be satisfied and thus a public law order was unavailable, there could be recourse to other safeguarding measures such as the ‘Channel Programme’ and a new Home Office initiative, the ‘Desistence and Disengagement Programme.’ Thirdly, steps could be taken to disrupt travel plans involving flight to a war zone by continued passport restrictions.
  • It is clear that the SSHD’s contention as to the availability (and sufficiency) of other evidence causes the local authority, in particular, very real anxiety. Unwittingly, I suspect that I have contributed to the problem by observations made in the December judgment which play into the argument that further disclosure from the Home Office was (or is) necessary: see §§ 35, 39 – 42.
  • At that stage, however, I had not been required to consider the Wiley balancing exercise, I was not privy to Ms Wheeler’s CLOSED submissions and I had not considered the Sensitive Schedule. The landscape now is very different and disclosure questions call for a modified response.
  • Ms Wheeler is right to draw my attention to the available evidence. It amounts to a mixture of established facts as well as matters which give rise to likely inferences. It is unnecessary to descend into the particulars beyond observing that both parents have been stopped at airports (father in June 2014 and February 2016; mother in January 2016) and questioned pursuant to Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. A police officer from the Safeguarding Unit of the Metropolitan Police Service Counter Terrorism Command (SO15) has made a statement. So, too, other officers who conducted the port stops and interviews.
  • More detail of available evidence is set out within paragraphs 3 to 8 of Ms Wheeler’s submissions dated 14 March 2017. Furthermore, Ms Wheeler makes the valid point that the letter from HM Passport Office dated 3 August 2016 refusing the father’s application for a replacement passport is of significance. It can and should be taken into account, argues Ms Wheeler, as part of the evidential picture.
  • I agree with Ms Wheeler’s submission that the Home Secretary’s decision to exercise the Royal Prerogative so as to refuse to issue the father with a passport (based on the assessment that he is an Islamist extremist who seeks to travel to Syria for jihad) is ‘evidence.’ The Home Secretary’s decision is amenable to judicial review but there has been no challenge.
  • I also agree with the suggestion that the denial of a replacement passport on the basis of the exercise of the Royal Prerogative would not be, of itself, sufficient to establish the threshold criteria. Clearly it is a factor of relevance which could be taken into account as part of the evidential picture though it is impossible to assess quite how much weight might be attached in advance of any hearing.

 

As I said earlier, these cases leave me uncomfortable. Yes, a flimsy and vague threshold could be constructed on the basis that the parents have been stopped at airports and questioned under the Terroism Act and that the Secretary of State has seen material such to persuade them to refuse to issue the father with a passport, but if the parents assert that these actions were wrong, mistaken or the result of some form of racial profiling without foundation in reality, how is an LA to prove likelihood of significant harm?

 

The Judge says something very important about the documents that have not been shared. In essence, they wouldn’t themselves establish threshold even if they could be seen and relied upon

Nature of the material – future progress of litigation

 

  • With the future of these proceedings in mind, it is appropriate that I should discuss a matter which arose during the course of CLOSED session. It seems highly unlikely that the material upon which the SSHD has formed her assessment leading to the application for PII would advance the local authority’s case to any significant degree. On any view, the material could not be provided to (and therefore be used by) the local authority for the purpose of legal proceedings, whether to inform its assessment of risk or for the purpose of commissioning any expert intervention. Moreover, the material does not advance an understanding of the parental relationship or contact with or intentions towards the child.

 

 

The judgment and story rather fizzles out there. Perhaps there was an application to withdraw the proceedings, perhaps not. We may never know.

 

 

 

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Reading the will

Posted on March 20, 2017 by suesspiciousminds

 

Of all of the various duties that one might imagine the President of the Family Division to have, being in charge of whether the late Princess Margaret’s will should be unsealed and opened to find out whether an individual is her illegitimate child (said individual having ABSOLUTELY NO evidence) is not one I had in mind.

Yet we learn today that it has happened not once, but twice.

 

Re Benmusa 2017

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2017/494.html

 

This new judgment is short enough to set out in full

Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division :

 

  • I have before me, as President of the Family Division, an application by Malika Benmusa dated 6 March 2017 and received by the court on 9 March 2017.
  • The application was made on a Form N244. In answer to question 3 on the Form, What order are you asking the court to make and why? the applicant has said “To apply to unseal the will of the late Princess Margaret.” In answer to question 5, How do you want this application dealt with? she has placed a v against the words “without a hearing.” In answer to question 10, What information will you be relying on, in support of your application she has placed a v against the words “the evidence set out in the box below.” That reads as follows (I set out the manuscript exactly):

 

“My name was changed as a child as my date of birth, I belive around the age between 3 to 4 years old. My mother did not consent to this, but later on found out. I belive that both names are in the will. And it is explained. My father was in charge of my mother will, but failed to give me what is rightfully mine. So I belive this has been taken out of his hands and put back to the president of the Family Division (Sir James Munby.)”

Below that the applicant has signed the usual statement of truth.

 

  • The practice in relation to the sealing of royal wills, and the actual events surrounding the sealing of the will of HRH Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, who died on 9 February 2002, were explained by the then President, Sir Mark Potter P, in Brown v HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and others [2007] EWHC 1607 (Fam), [2007] WTLR 1129, paras 6-10, and, on appeal, by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers CJ, giving the judgment of the Court of Appeal, in Brown v Executors of the Estate of HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and others [2008] EWCA Civ 56, [2008] 1 WLR 2327, paras 4-8. The circumstances in which a royal will might be unsealed, and the process by which and the persons by whom such an application might be made, were considered by the Court of Appeal in Brown, paras 35-48.
  • The will of HRH Princess Margaret is contained in a sealed envelope which bears the following inscription:

 

“HRH PRINCESS MARGARET

(ORIGINAL WILL)

SEALED PURSUANT TO THE ORDER DATED 19th JUNE 2002

NOT TO BE OPENED WITHOUT LEAVE OF THE PRESIDENT”

I have personally examined the envelope, but I have not opened it. I have not read the will of HRH Princess Margaret nor do I have any idea as to its contents.

 

  • I have no hesitation in concluding that I should strike out the applicant’s claim. My reasons for doing so are shortly stated. The applicant has not articulated any intelligible basis for her claim. The facts alleged by the applicant neither assert nor identify in any intelligible way either any link with HRH Princess Margaret or any link with her will. The applicant has not identified the grounds or the source or sources of the various beliefs upon which she relies. In short, her application is hopelessly defective.
  • The application is, accordingly, struck out.

 

 

 

The linked cases are more detailed, and set out the last time that this happened.

 

In that case, Mr Robert Brown alleged that he was the illegitimate son of Princess Margaret and that her will would prove it.  It was perhaps unfortunate that the only material evidence he had in this regard was his birth certificate, showing that the two people who brought him up were registered as his parents. If that proves it, then I myself am now ninth in line to the throne, I fancy.

 

  • In his affidavit of some 26 pages the Plaintiff states at the outset (at paras 1.1 and 1.2) that the purpose of his application is to identify whether the Royal wills make any provision for or concerning an illegitimate child, he having an interest in the matter because he claims that he is the illegitimate child of Princess Margaret.
  • As part of the matters relied on in support of that claim, he produces a Kenyan birth certificate signed by Cynthia Joan Brown (nee Lyall) in which she names herself as his mother and states that he was born in Nairobi in Kenya on 5 January 1955, his father being Douglas Richard Brown, a builder by occupation. The relevant Kenyan Ordinance (No 2 of 1928 dated 9 June 1928), exhibited to the affidavit of the executors’ solicitor, Mr Bridges, states its purpose as being “to Provide for the Notification and Registration of Births and Deaths and Other Matters Incidental Thereto”. It makes clear that the registration of the birth of a child in Kenya was compulsory (section 8(1)) and that the provision of false information or particulars was a criminal offence (section 20).
  • In law a birth certificate is prima facie evidence of all matters required by statute to be entered in the certificate: see re: Stollery [1926] Ch. 284 at 310 and Jackson v Jackson & Pavan [1964] P. 25 at 30. The birth certificate is thus prima facie evidence that the Plaintiff’s mother was Cynthia Brown. Furthermore, it is clear from the rest of his affidavit, that the Plaintiff accepts that Cynthia Brown, now deceased, recognised and brought him up as her own child. Curiously, he makes no reference to Douglas Richard Brown, named as his father in the birth certificate save, in passing, as follows. He states that he does not accept for the purposes of his application that his birth certificate is an accurate record on the grounds that such date is inconsistent with an entry in the ‘Births’ section of the Times of 7 January 1955 which gave his birthday as the 6 (not the 5) of January which, he adds, is also that recorded in the hand of “D R Brown” in his tax return for the year 1955. Nonetheless, in exhibited correspondence with the Treasury Solicitor, he refers to Douglas Brown as ‘the name of the gentleman that ‘raised’ me’; and in a letter addressed to Buckingham Palace in 2002 (see para 33 below) he makes reference to aspects of his upbringing by Douglas Brown. Thus it does appear that the Plaintiff was brought up by Cynthia and Douglas Brown (both now deceased) as their own child.
  • At paragraph 42 of his affidavit the Plaintiff states:

 

“I have not been told that I am the illegitimate child of Princess Margaret, or even that I was adopted. It is a conclusion I have arrived at be [sic] deduction.”

At paragraph 2, he explains that process of deduction as follows:

“[M]y conclusion that I am the illegitimate child of Princess Margaret is based upon a jigsaw of personal recollections, events, circumstantial evidence, conversations, reactions and extensive research.”

 

  • None of the matters subsequently set out at length remotely constitutes evidence supportive of the Plaintiff’s claim.
  • At paragraph 2.3 the Plaintiff asserts in respect of Princess Margaret that “there could have been a hidden pregnancy.” In support, he states that Princess Margaret was reported as ill with a “rattling cough” during the “early days of 1955” and that “photographs suggest a growing waistline compared with the elfin waist of 1954”. He also refers to the record of a Privy Council meeting held on 5 January 1955, ostensibly to discuss measures to be adopted in the face of a threatened rail strike, and states that “Examination of the reports and subsequent events of the rail strike left me unconvinced that the reason for the Council meeting was the strike.”
  • At paragraphs 4.1 to 4.4 of his affidavit he relies on his ‘Personal Outlook’ or ‘Instinct’ as being ‘the key element and driver’ of his claim, citing a sense of not belonging to the family environment in which he was brought up and refers to instances of members of his family in England having appeared reticent in responding to his enquiries about his origins. At paragraph 4.5 he describes the relationship of his ‘mother’ with his siblings as having been closer than with himself

 

 

 

The Court of Appeal (I think very kindly) had this to say about the foundation of his claim.

 

This belief is without any foundation and is irrational. It is, however, held in good faith

 

If you listen closely, you can hear a thousand conspiracy theories fermenting about this sealing of the will.

I think best left sealed up, in case the will establishes that James Delaney has no legitimate claim on Nootka Sound. You don’t want to upset James Delaney…

 

“I have a use for you”

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No comment

Posted on March 10, 2017 by suesspiciousminds

 

This rather leapt out at me in a Kent County Court case. No great legal significance. But. Well, no comment

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/OJ/2017/B5.html

 

Kent County Council v B, W & S (Combined Judgment : Delay : Refusal to Split Siblings) [2017] EWFC B5

12.For completeness, I recall that matters were somewhat delayed by the revelation that the woman Solicitor representing Mr. S, the father of the youngest child, was having some sort of relationship with the mother’s brother, Mr. B, a witness and Intervener in the case which might have produced some sort of confusion and conflict. That Solicitor, perhaps unwisely, has attended both this Court Hearing and been seen in the public foyer, and also attended at the Crown Court, presumably to support Mr. B. It was necessary therefore for Mr Kenny, Mr. S’s Counsel, having properly notified the Court of this, to receive his professional instructions from a newly appointed Solicitor in order to ensure a scrupulously fair Article 6 complaint Hearing.

 

 

13.This matter was reported to the Designated Family Judge for Kent and also to this Court’s High Court Family Liaison Judge. I gather that some sort of complaint has now been made by the Local Authority about that Solicitor’s conduct.

 

 

14.Regrettably this is the third occasion to my own direct knowledge when an issue of conflict has arisen through this particular Solicitor’s potentially conflictual behaviour in becoming personally close to parties or witnesses. I do not need to spend any more time on that issue beyond reflecting that it causes delay by having to have a new Solicitor representing a client and also, no doubt, causes extra costs to the Legal Aid Fund.

 

 

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Happy birthday to me

Posted on February 13, 2017 by suesspiciousminds

 

 

The blog is five years old today.  My goodness

 

 

During those five years, you’ve been exposed to more 80s pop culture references than Stuart Maconie’s diary, we’ve had adoption explained via passive aggressive notes on a student fridge, learned about how difficult it is to get contact with your child if you are Edward Scissorhands, watched me lose and win an award (winning feels better, no matter what all my hippy teachers tried to tell me), compared our child protection system to nuclear warheads, considered a man who sold bleach as a cancer cure  (also the case where the parents sought advice from a man whose website claims he “Turned Hawaii into a verb”),  watched and winced as policemen, social workers, guardians, lawyers and even Judges got told off for doing things it is hard to believe, attempted to replace the phase “inherent jurisdiction” with “magical sparkle powers” to better reflect its use, had His Honour Judge Wildblood QC favourably compared to Rowdy Roddy Piper, inspected the threshold criteria in Harry Potter and a written agreement from Romeo and Juliet, conducted a retrospective on Tolkein’s short-lived career as a court reporter,  translated Pride and Prejudice into teenager speak, toldyou all how NOT to write a letter of instruction,  examined a Nigerian fertility clinic that managed to deliver babies to people who weren’t actually pregnant,  pondered abut what would happen if we used Truth Serum in Court, found out why it’s best to have your case on just after lunch rather than just before AND deep breath

 

written a bloody book!

 

I’ve written a book, find out more!

 

If you haven’t already ordered the book, please do. I really want as many people as possible to read it.

 

I’ve written 906 blog posts, and the above is a tiny sample of them (I forgot Kate Bush’s non-molestation order, just for one)

I doubt very much that there’s anyone who agrees with every word I’ve said over the last five years (I don’t think that I actually agree with all of it), but I hope that over those five years I’ve made some of you smile, some of you take heart, some of you reflect, some of you frantically copy and paste into a case summary and some of you feel slightly less miserable on a Monday morning.

I should say that I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it, but I know that you haven’t, because I’ve had an absolute blast.

 

Not retiring, just reflecting.  If you missed any of the highlights (my description, not necessarily that of others) then there’s a link to them below

 

Adoption law illustrated by way of passive-aggressive post-it notes on a student fridge

Scissorhands versus Scissorhands

 

“The award-losing family law blog”

A big thank you to lots of people

Always/never

 

Woo Woo Woo (You know it)

 

And I’m all outta bubblegum

The Boy under the stairs – an imaginary judgment

 

“A pair of star-cross’d lovers…”

 

Why Tolkien never made it as a Court reporter

“So he was all, like, Pride, and I was all, like – nuh-uh, Prejudice?

Mis-practice direction – how not to write a letter of instruction

One of these nights you’re gonna get caught, It’ll give you a pregnant pause for thought

 

Would we want The Truth to be out there?

 

“Your Honour, may I hand up my case summary, and a pastrami on rye?”

 

 

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Your very best friend

Posted on February 13, 2017 by suesspiciousminds

 

No, not this guy

 

I also hate that duck, and he is not my very best friend, despite what he claims in song form

I also hate that duck, and he is not my very best friend, despite what he claims in song form

 

I want to do a little thought experiment with you.

Step 1. Imagine your very best friend. Try to get them in your mind. For shorthand purposes, as I don’t know the name of the best friend of each and every one of you, I’m going to call this notional best friend Janice.  Imagine that friend, get them firmly in your head. I’m also going to assume that out of 100, you’re going to score this friend 80 or above – so it’s someone you like a lot, and someone you can count on.   (On this friendship scale, Bert and Ernie, or Joey and Chandler are 100, Ant and Dec high nineties.)

 

Step 2. Imagine that you feel like you might have put a little bit of weight on. Not a lot, just a bit. Christmas, orange matchmakers, a bit too cold for running. So you say this to Janice, and you also say “I want you to help me lose weight. I know I’ve got no willpower, but with your help, I can do it.”  Janice kindly agrees.

Step 3.  Janice suggests that you give up some of the things that you like. It’s not ideal, but you know it is for your own good, so you agree. Janice says “I know you’re weak-willed, so I think maybe I should pop in on a Tuesday, make sure you’re not eating that bad stuff, and sticking to salads and quinoa and whatnot.” You agree.

Step 4. Janice pops round every Tuesday. She watches what you eat, asks you about what you ate yesterday, maybe what you’re going to eat tomorrow. She says “Maybe I should just check in your cupboards, while I’m here. Make sure there’s no jaffa cakes in there.”

Step 5. You get home on a Thursday. There’s a note from Janice pushed through your letter-box. “Called round – disappointed you weren’t in. Decided it would be best if you didn’t always know which day I was going to come check up on you.”

 

How much, out of 100 are you scoring Janice on the friendship stakes now? Remember, this is your best friend, and you did ASK her to help you lose weight. And you do WANT to lose weight.  Still, though…

 

Maybe your friendship is becoming a bit more like this...

Maybe your friendship is becoming a bit more like this…

 

Let’s continue.

Step 6. Janice calls round on a Monday. She has some weighing scales and a measuring tape.

Step 7. Janice says that really, to find out why you’re fat, she wants to talk about what you used to eat when you were young, find out what the patterns were then.

Step 8. Janice wants to check your phone, make sure you haven’t been dialling for pizza or takeaways. She asks if you’ve got an itemised bill she can look at.

Step 9. Janice suggests that you join a group, weightwatchers to help you with your problem.

 

How are you feeling about Janice now?  Are you contemplating making a voodoo doll of her out of macaroni and pesto?

Step 10. You ask her to stop. You don’t want this any more. You regret ever involving her. You’re happy as you are. Janice says “I’m not going to stop, not until you’re slim enough”.  You ask her what “slim enough” means, and she says “I’ll tell you when you’re slim enough”

 

If you’re not hating Janice with a burning passion now, then hello Dalai Lama, it is a real honour to have you read my blog. Thank you. And “Free Tibet!”

 

I’m sure you’ve clocked what this piece is really about. But let’s see it through.

Now imagine that Janice ISN’T your best friend, who you scored 80 out of 100. She’s a complete stranger.

Now imagine that you DIDN’T ASK her for help, she came along uninvited.

Now imagine that you don’t even want to lose weight, you were already pretty happy with how you were.

Finally, imagine that we’re not talking about weight at all, we’re talking about how you parent your children.

 

How do you feel about Janice now? Worse, or better?

 

This one? Or THIS one?

This one? Or THIS one?

 

 

It is pretty hard to imagine, unless you’ve been on the receiving end of it, what it must be like to have a social worker come into your home. It hasn’t happened to me, so I can’t really capture it. I suspect it hasn’t happened to 75% of social workers.  So this heavy-handed metaphor is a way of capturing it.

All of us disliked Janice really early on in that chain of events, even though she started as our best friend and she was doing us a favour. We all wished her bodily harm by about step 8.  (Not you, obviously Mr Lama)

I’m not saying that social workers shouldn’t visit homes – sometimes it is necessary, and important to safeguard children. But we should always try to think about what it is like being on the other side of that doorstep, how it must feel, and to respect that. Because even when it is your best friend doing this sort of stuff, at your request, and when you wanted them there, it makes you bristle and get irritated.

 

What we ask of parents, even when it’s necessary, is no small thing.  It sometimes helps to pull back perspective and remember that.

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Structural edit

Posted on January 30, 2017 by suesspiciousminds

I received the structural edit over the weekend. That’s the big important phase of the book. This is where it goes into the arms of an editor who doesn’t know me, doesn’t have to sugar-coat anything, doesn’t have to look me in the eye and lie to me to save years of friendship. They just read the book cold, as a reader, and as an editor with a critical eye, and they then tell you what’s wrong with it.

It is a bit like a cross between getting a survey on a house that you’ve fallen crazily in love with, and singing on an X-Factor audition (only after you’ve finished singing, the Judge tells you in great detail about every note that you got right, and every note where you were a bit off key)

So it is important, because to make a book really work, you need someone who gives it to you straight. And if you don’t believe that an editor is hugely important, go and read some of the amazing Raymond Carver short stories (What we talk about when we talk about love would be a good start, or Cathedral – or Gazebo, or Menudo… damn, nearly all of it) and then go online and find the draft that Raymond Carver wrote before his editor helped him find the heart of the story. That draft is ugly. Painfully ugly. It took a collaborative effort to make the story so taut and elegant and spare that you can feel the words twang on the page like tweaking piano wire.

Or (and I’m not in any sense comparing my book to this sort of thing),  Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah”, which you will have heard thousands of times, including on X-Factor.   Cohen told Bob Dylan he’d spent two full years working on the song (he was deliberately underestimating, perhaps because Dylan told him that it usually took him 15 minutes to write a song)

Cohen wrote 80 verses for that song. 80 verses. And he kept working on it, working on it, and it didn’t come off. He recorded a version, but it wasn’t right. And then he kept playing it live and kept fiddling with it, and then one day John Cale of the Velvet Underground came to a concert where Cohen played it, and Cale liked the song and he reworked it – more piano, restored some of the original biblical imagery, made it less dark and bitter and more sorrowfully uplifting.  And that song got onto an album of Cohen covers, which nobody really bought. But one person who bought it happened to be visiting a guy called Jeff Buckley, and Buckley happened to play the CD and liked it, and did a magnificant cover of Cale’s cover of Cohen’s song, and put it on an album. And nobody bought that either. Until Buckley died in tragic circumstances, and his work got re-evaluated, and in that process, Hallelujah became one of the most loved and well regarded songs around.  It just had to go through a hell of a process to find the song.

(I’ll cheerfully admit here that I stole that info about Hallelujah from Malcolm Gladwell’s wonderful podcast Revisionist History, which I highly recommend.  http://revisionisthistory.com/   I only just learned that Hallelujah wasn’t a song that the world loved straight away but one that had to be found out of the raw materials, and it is such a great metaphor for the creative process generally, that I’m using it and giving Gladwell full credit for coming up with it. )

I feel like the structural edit is helping me find the book, to bring it to where I want it to be. I can see the fixes and changes that are needed, and the good news is that the editor liked it – she hasn’t put red pen through loads of dialogue or told me that she hates the characters or that my world is flat.  I need to make some bits clearer to readers, I need to switch some stuff around with the ending, some things that I was keeping as mysteries are going to be more dramatic and tense if the reader knows what one particular character knows and is waiting to see when and if and how it all explodes, and I basically need to have more stuff happen in the first half of the book. I also need to rein back on the comic asides during moments of terror and drama…

So I’ve already reworked the first two chapters, for the better, I hope, and this rewriting phase will take about four weeks. I’ll keep you posted. Go and read some Raymond Carver while you’re waiting – he’s the best (or at least, with the help of a damn fine editor he became the best)

 

 

If you haven’t already checked out the book, please visit the site and have a look – ideally to pre-order yourself a copy, and if nothing else, to watch a video of a mouthy sarky lawyer get pelted with water bombs whilst trying to pitch what the book is about.

 

https://unbound.com/books/in-secure

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Lions, bees and sundry peculiarities

Posted on January 16, 2017 by suesspiciousminds

 

Not law at all this one – there doesn’t seem to be much new good law at the moment, it is a dry January.  So I thought I’d share with you this little bit of weirdness, which I went from never having heard of at all to hearing from three separate sources in six weeks (Dave Gorman, No Such Thing as a Fish and a book called Forgotten Science)

Each of them had a slightly different take on it, and as I was taken by the story, I thought I’d like to share it with you.

As you’ll know, lots of products use illustrations of animals to sell their products – from glossy-coated labradors on pet food to comedic chickens on pengest wings to inappropriately friendly tigers selling you over-sugared breakfast cereals originally devised to stop people masturbating.  But here is a question (which will be a bit marred if the image that you see is the product in question, so I’ll put a filler image in)

 

What food product decided to advertise its wares with a picture of a dead lion – and not just any dead lion, but a dead lion surrounded by bees?  (and more importantly WHY?)

 

I don't know about you, but I've never trusted Tony the Tiger - he always had that 70s DJ vibe to him. Operation Yewtree for sure

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never trusted Tony the Tiger – he always had that 70s DJ vibe to him. Operation Yewtree for sure

 

 

Okay, enough padding.  Anyone seen a food product that uses on its packaging a corpse of a lion surrounded by bees? You probably think that you haven’t, but I bet you have and just never noticed it. I bet there’s a tin of it in your house now. Here it is

Lyle's Golden Syrup. Now with more bees than you knew about, and 100% more lion corpse

Lyle’s Golden Syrup. Now with more bees than you knew about, and 100% more lion corpse

 

 

What the actual flipping heck, Tate and Lyle? Who puts a dead lion on their product?  And Golden Syrup has no connection to bees.  Golden Syrup  (insert your own Donald Trump joke here) is just made out of sugar, not honey.

You may have spotted the wording too (not just ‘partially inverted refiners syrup’ which is less appetising than something you want on the front of your tin) but  “out of the strong came forth sweetness”

That’s a Biblical reference, and the explanation as to the tin is just that like most well-known products, it was invented a long time ago, and like most extremely successful businessmen in olden times – paying nuff respect to God for the privilege and wealth you had gotten is just something that went down at that time.

This was a riddle told by Samson (yep, the guy with the hair and the strength and the murderous rages) at a wedding – he told the riddle and said that if anyone guessed it he would give them lots of linen, but if anyone didn’t, they would have to give him linen. They all tried to solve the riddle, which was this

 

“Out of the eater, came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness – what is it?”

(Now, even though you already KNOW that the answer is a dead lion and bees related, you still can’t get it, so it is no surprise that Samson soon stood with a smile and said “Stop your grinnin’ and drop your linen”  – thus predating Hudson out of Aliens by thousands of years)

Samson had come across the corpse of a lion on his way to the wedding  (when I say ‘come across’ I mean, having earlier killed the lion on a previous walk, he saw the body, because Samson) , and seeing bees around it, had observed honeycomb within the lion and eaten it and he saw that it was sweet. This is not a fair riddle, because it involves not so much solving something with logic, lateral thinking and knowledge of the world and the facts given, but just having to have been within Samson’s mind. This is the sort of solution that Mark Gattis and Stephen Moffat would have rejected as being too unfair and stupid for the finale of Sherlock.  Oh also by ‘meat’ he meant ‘food’, so that’s also cheating along the lines of having had character centred flashbacks where the character somehow confuses a red setter with a ginger schoolboy…

The wedding guests don’t react well to the riddle, what with it not being a riddle, and this leads to an awful lot of murdering and revenge murdering and revenge revenge murdering. It’s not a heartwarming tale, to be honest.

 

Then this is the bit I got from Forgotten Science, which added a whole new layer to things, frankly.  People in the past did genuinely believe that bees spontaneously emerged from dead creatures, and lions were as good as any.

Here’s the poet Virgil

A portent they espy: through the oxen’s flesh,
Waxed soft in dissolution, hark! there hum
Bees from the belly; the rent ribs overboil
In endless clouds they spread them, till at last
On yon tree-top together fused they cling,
And drop their cluster from the bending boughs

 

And here’s Shakespeare

 

“‘Tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb/In the dead carrion.” (2 Henry IV; iv. 4. 79-80.)

 

So by past, I don’t mean just Biblical times, but for ages and ages after that – in fact, the bees creation story of them emerging spontaneously out of dead animals wasn’t debunked until 1894

 

(1894 to find out that bees are made by bees having sex with other bees is a bit shocking, but elsewhere in the book I learned that it wasn’t until the mid 1600s that anyone proved that women don’t have testicles. It is somewhat weird that the expression we use to simplify sex education to young people is to ‘tell them about the birds and bees’ when the sex life of bees was so totally mysterious)

In essence, nobody ever saw bees having sex, so they must have magically appeared (the same sort of thing happened with geese – nobody ever saw geese mating, or baby geese or goose eggs, so they assumed that geese were hatched at sea, and from that deduction obviously that they hatched from barnacles on the side of ships, hence barnacle geese.

Science, Superstition and the Goose Barnacle

If you were watching early 19th century Sherlock the plots would have been even weirder than today’s outlandish stupidity)

Added to that, people had seen bees come out of corpses of animals, hence proof.  In 1894 a Russian entemologist named Osten-Sacken posited that what people thought were bees were actually a simila-looking insect called drone flies and yes, flies do come out of the corpses of animals, but not by magic, but by flies laying their eggs in rotting meat.  Weirdly, even after people dissected male bees and found their penis, they still persisted with the emerging spontaneously out of lions account. We had to rely on a blind beekeeper named Francois Huber to find the body of a Queen bee with many many snapped off male bee penises inside her (yes, the male bee dies after it is snapped off, which may be a mercy) to solve this mystery.

 

I also learned from Forgotten Science that one of the first clamours for a film to be banned in Britain was for a 1930s film called “The Cheese Mites” which involved nothing more racy than a man examining a lump of cheese with a powerful magnifying glass – which sounds ridiculous, but I never want to watch that film and am happy to consume cheddar in blind ignorance.

 

So not only was Samson’s riddle unfair, but it wasn’t even accurate. He might have seen some insects emerge from a lion corpse and mistaken them for bees, but there would have been no honey.

Who would have thought that that tin with the rather sticky lid in your larder held so many digressing stories?

 

(I’m also reminded that one of the first bits of blogging I did, many years ago (elsewhere)  was about the belief that Vipers made treacle, so there’s a strong correlation between sweet sticky stuff that comes in tins and rampant oddness – see also the Boston Molasses Disaster)

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