Bag's Rants

And round we go again. Justice takes another kicking.

A few years ago means testing for legal aid was stopped because it was too bureaucratic and costly. But of course after a few recent cases where really rich people received legal aid it raised it's head in the media and yet again our wonderful government swings into action and reintroduced it in another knee jerk legislation. It will save £35m apparently.

The new 26 page form is defined by a Department for Constitutional Affairs spokesman as a *cough* simple financial test and is designed to be as simple as possible. It is being rolled out to magistrates courts now and extended to crown courts by the end of 2007. How much will this cost to run?

My favourite bit was where they said in the vast majority of cases, privately-funded defendants who were cleared would be able to recover some or all of their legal costs. Some of their costs. That means found not guilty but still have to pay the costs. How is that right? It's a travesty that you can be accused of a crime. Make your case in court and still be worse off. With double jeopardy for some cases you can double or even triple the costs.

If they are concerned about the legal fees maybe they should look at making legal aid funding a maximum of £50 ph¹. Then if someone wants to exceed that then they can but the rest of us at least get some help. It's only going to save £35M anyway. Is £35M enough to fund even a few meals for the troughs at Westminster? Plus of course we have the running costs which are bound to be estimated wrong.

So as usual we screw up hundreds of people just to get a few odd balls sorted. Read the full story here.

UK Justice still the best you can afford.

Justice is getting harder and harder to find in the UK. The system seems to be changing to allow our criminal class to be better off. Free legal aid, lower fines, few custodial sentences while those in work don't get legal aid, big fines and custodial sentences for white collar crime. There is clearly an objective in action. Nobody can cock up so much to turn justice on it's head accidentally. All it means is that those who know how to use the system get the best from it and your ordinary guy in the street get screwed. He doesn't know his rights, can't get advice because he doesn't know if he can afford it. Coupled with the fact they are now adding on additional costs to stop us from pleading not guilty.

I think we need a new name for our justice system. Maybe something that doesn't have the word justice in it so we know what we are getting.

1) A totally made up figure. I have no idea what legal costs are. I know they are expensive though.

posted by Bag @ 11:46 am