Radio Free Stan

Hooky

2012-01-08T00:16:00.002Z

Schools live and die these days on league tables and Ofsted rankings. It's widely reported that many boost their exam results by teaching to the test and concentrating effort on kids with borderline grades. I suspect though that the increase in cases I'm seeing in Magistrate court involving truancy may be an attempt by schools and local authorities to boost the attendance scores.

We had four cases this particular afternoon - as opposed to one every few months previously.

(a) single mum with difficult child - she has tried everything and produced a file of her increasingly desperate attempts to get support from the school and the local authority. Their response was to send her a fixed penalty notice and then to hire an expensive barrister to hassle her in our court.

(b) family who took a particularly troubled kid on holiday during the last week of term - nothing timetabled for the last week of term and permission had been granted for all the other kids in the family. So it was a bit naughty when they went anyway, but the local authorities response seems like overkill. Their response was to send them a fixed penalty notice and then to hire an expensive barrister to hassle them in our court.

(c) foster family who have taken on a number of highly difficult kids - I personally would have recommended them for the New Years Honours list for the miracles they've worked with their other kids. But even their skills and energy weren't enough to ensure attendance of one particularly troubled child. Guess what ? The local authority gave them the support they needed and then were sympathic and patient ? Nope - their response was to send a fixed penalty notice and then to hire an expensive barrister to hassle them in our court.

Makes me cross - the expense of these actions are monstrous and would be better spent on helping the families involved. OK, they fell short of their responsibilities, but in all three cases we found that this was deserving of a tiny fine or an absolute discharge.

(d) was a bit different - the accused father had turned up drunk first time, had been sent away, failed to appear for the next hearing, which had led to a new charge. When he failed to appear this time, we issued a warrant to bring him in. He finally showed up two hours late, too drunk to participate. The ushers pointed him in the direction of the police station.

Personally, I've got no problems dealing with (d) - you have to worry about the child involved - but why the other three prosecutions ? The local media were in attendance and scribbling away - could it really be all about publicity and getting a message out to parents ?

January

2012-01-05T16:30:00.001Z

I'm signing up for French lessons and joining a gym.

Shut up - I am acutely aware of how badly this reeks of New Year, New Start and how the chances are against my new enthusiasms surviving into February and beyond.

But surely it is better to have a possibly doomed attempt at something rather than not even trying?

In this vein, I thought it wrong of the British Liver Trust to describe January detoxes as "medically futile". I can understand their contention that it gives a false sense of security, but I can't imagine anyone criticising a heroin addict who decided to stay clean through January because as far as I can see, the only way that people ever get off drugs is 1. Stay clean for a day 2. Repeat step 1.

I'd say go for it - enjoy the feeling of making some changes during January and if it turns out not to be permanent then so what - nothing is really permanent and there will be another January along real soon.

My last press-up

2011-11-06T11:18:00.000Z

I used to like press-ups. You can do them anywhere and they exercise the chest, arms and shoulders in a way that compliments the lower-body work-out I get from cycling.

Anyhow, a couple of weeks ago I went down for the first of a set (30 I hoped), when instead of a nice tension across the pecs I got a crunching noise from the shoulder/neck area. I stopped and wondered what had gone wrong. Neck felt a bit tender, but no big deal.

Later, however, I developed a white-hot stabbing pain all along the arm to the tips of my fingers that even the leftover hospital-strength cocodamol from the bike accident didn't touch.

Hard to explain how little effect these powerful pills had - there was zero diminution of the pain and absolutely no rest from it. I was rolling around the floor and trying ice and heat, meditation and medication, but to no avail.

Eventually I did what I only do in the most dire of emergencies - I went to the doctors.

Fortunately I saw a sympathetic nurse who had experienced similar symptoms while doing yoga.Turns out I have in my spine something called "facet joints" which connect vertebrae and control the twisty motion in the same way that disks control the bendy motion. Somehow I've damaged one of these and in the aftermath my ulnar nerve was "pinched".

You've got to love the term "pinched nerve". Sounds like such a minor thing - like a Chinese burn. Instead it's a total immersion pain that makes it impossible to think. Getting my foot crushed did hurt - but the pain could be numbed by drugs and ice.

Nerve pain is a completely different animal. There's no prospect of numbing the pain - instead you have to interfere with the way the brain works when it receives the pain signals. This brings you into the realm of drugs that were originally designed as anti-depressants.

I was put on a low dose of amitriptyline just before bedtime - starting with 10mg and going up to 20mg - compared with the antidepressant dose which is around ten times higher.

I can't actually say if this helped but I was able to sleep, which was something of a medical miracle. The downside was that sleep brought me hyper-real, disturbing "Philip K Dick" dreams where I would be walking along a city street and everything around me would start breaking down like a malfunctioning amusement park before melting like a Dali painting while the Universe shouted random error messages at me.

Heaven alone knows what ten times the dose does for your dreams, but I stopped taking them as soon as I felt that I could get to sleep naturally, which was three or four nights of surrealism later.

I'm still pretty sore - but its just "normal" pain which I'm coping with normally with paracetamol and ibuprofen. I'm also getting some physio and acupuncture. Pretty naffed off that it's taking so long to mend but I'm sure I'll be a menace to traffic on my bike before too long.

Think I may have done my last press-up though.

13 @ Olivier Theatre

2011-11-03T23:20:00.000Z

Mike Bartlett's "13" is a glorious mess of a play with immense ambition, tons of passion and a big muddle of complicated ideas. Bit like the inside of my head sometimes.

The plot is simple :-

* There's an all-too-believable war coming between Iran and a "US-led coalition"
* A number of people in London are suffering from a shared dream of monsters and they are sleep-deprived and going slightly round the twist.
* A charismatic preacher arrives in a London park, stands on an upturned plastic bucket and starts to talk philosophy to passers-by. An anti-war protest crystallises around him.

The ideas involved are far from simple - religion, war, death, politics, the nature of protest, social media, how crappy my generation is and how great his is ...

Bartlett continues his habit from "Earthquakes in London" of having more than one subplot play out on stage at the same time, with the actors from one subplot passing through the other like ghosts and having radically different conversations over the top of each other. Sounds complicated, but somehow it works - although you don't get much in the way of silence and stillness.

I loved this play - loved the ambition, loved the passion, loved the big muddle of complicated ideas.

Politely Illegal

2011-10-10T02:04:00.000+01:00

He was very polite. When the policeman first asked him to blow into the bag, he refused politely saying there was no point because he knew that he was over the limit. When he was told that not taking the test was a crime, he still refused. Politely.

Back at the station he remained polite, but refused to take the test. He was reminded that if he refused to take the breath test again he would be charged with the offence of refusing to take the test. He refused. Again. Politely. And was charged with refusing to take the test.

Then he was led to the cells and asked the policeman how long he would be inside "10-12-14 hours - until morning anyway".

Then in one possible scenario, he panicked, changed his mind and asked (politely) to be allowed to take the test. But the copper told him to stop messing them around and get in the cell.

In the other possible scenario, that conversation never happened.

Then in the morning, even though he knew he had been over the limit, and even though he had consistently refused to take the test, he got an expensive lawyer to very impolitely try to get him off on a technicality.

The lawyer made much of the fact that couldn't be sure that he hadn't had a final change of heart that had been cruelly denied by a policeman in a hurry. And OK, so he left it late, but is it possible to define how late is "too late"?

We didn't have much sympathy for these argument and found the guy guilty.

What boggles me though is that this civilised, polite guy, did something wrong, got caught, acknowledged it was wrong, felt shame for doing it and yet still expected somehow to escape punishment. What is in his head ? Does he feel himself a victim? Does he feel he's been "punished enough already" ?

One interesting fact I got from the defence solicitor - it takes about 1 hour for the alcohol in breath to fall 7 micrograms. So say you decide to play for time and manage to delay the process by ten minutes then your reading would only be one microgram less. If you were twice the limit you'd have to stonewall for five hours - by which time you for sure would be charged with refusing the test.

Suspended

2011-09-28T00:39:00.005+01:00

I have to admit still being puzzled by suspended prison sentences. To me, a crime is either so serious that only a prison sentence is appropriate or it isn't. What are we actually saying when we suspend a sentence ? And how do you explain it to the victim of a crime when the perpetrator "gets off with" a suspended sentence order.

I had two recent examples that might help. Both of these came into my court on the same day.

(1) A rather nasty common assault - two drunk young women beat up another drunk woman - with kicks and blows to the head with stiletto shoes. Had a bunch of equally drunk lads not intervened, I'm sure there would have been a murder. Both girls had little previous. Sentence : 12 weeks immediate custody

(2) Local cab driver with a serious cocaine addiction that he funded by stealing golf equipment from cars at the many plush golf courses in my area. Charged with theft and possession. Fairly extensive previous for similar. Sentence : 12 weeks suspended.

So what were the difference ?

* The girls had no dependents i.e. nobody else would be harmed by them being imprisoned
* The girls had committed a violent crime
* The girls were first-time offenders
* The cabbie had substance issues that probation reckoned could be addressed through a drug treatment programme. This could prevent further offending in a way that 12 weeks prison would be unlikely to manage.
* The cabbie had children.

There's no scientific way of putting the above together and deciding to get G4S to take the girls down and releasing the cabbie rather than vice-versa. We could have decided it was a "bit extreme" to send two first-timers to prison. We could have decided that the cabbie's considerable previous meant that he was due some stick this time. In the end, we need to decide which outcome is best for society as a whole.

Now there's a phrase that bears repeating : "... we need to decide which outcome is best for society as a whole"

Heck of a job description, isn't it ?!

Gummigeschoss

2011-09-07T23:51:00.000+01:00

... is the German word for "Rubber Bullets". Sounds to me like a new type of Haribo - a bit like Gummi Bears, just shaped like a bullet.

Anyway, I left for a holiday in Germany the night after the riots kicked off . My foot was still messed up after the accident and I had meanwhile picked up some species of fever that burned so fiercely that I couldn't sleep and so I watched over and over again on the 24-hour news channel as familiar towns repeatably burned and the financial markets entered a repeated death-spiral.

I couldn't help humming "Ride of the Valkyrie" - it was that kind of night.

While in Germany I wasn't out of touch because I had the "Bild" newspaper and my erratic German language skills.

Here's a link to one of my favourite articles :-

(original) Kann ich jetzt noch nach London reisen?
(translation) Can I still travel to London ?

What's the German for "Yes - of course you can - just avoid the bits that are on fire" ?

After a wonderful holiday full of good beer, Currywurst and way too many Brötchen, I came back to find that the English press and political establishment weren't any more coherent than a sleazy German tabloid with more boobs than headlines.

But you know what ? I'm going to be one of the few people in the country who doesn't have a strong opinion on "What Must Be Done". You see, I don't live in these neighbourhoods and anything I said would be under-informed and naive.

Exactly like the Lie-Dem MPs for Waitroseshire who seem to think the Mags and Judges should have given the thugs a nice big hug and a community centre.

Or the Tory Boys who ran amok in the early '90s with the Bullingdon Posse - they want a big stick for poor people who smash stuff up.

As for the Labour Party - I couldn't work out from their impenetrable billshut what exactly their position was. Sorry.

Vote Stan.

Newton's Law

2011-07-30T13:04:00.003+01:00

Newton's first law of motion is very soothing I find :-

"A body will continue in its present state of rest or, if it is in motion, will continue to move with uniform speed in a straight line unless it is acted upon by a force."

I was working from home Friday morning and decided to take a bit of a bike ride in my lunchhour to clear my head. I was proceeding down the main street of a local village, very much at a uniform speed in a straight line, when an external force, in the shape of a BMW, came out of a sidestreet and acted upon me.

The physics became quite complicated after that. The car hit my back wheel, I skidded 180 degrees and ended up facing the way I had come, on my back with my right foot trapped under the bike.

24 hours later - this is what we have (yes, I am using one of my crutches to hit the button that takes pictures on my webcam) :-

No broken bones, just a bunch of what are coyly described as "soft tissue injuries". Could have been much worse - I'll just be hobbling around on crutches for a day or two.

Now, as a Magistrate I know very well that "emerging from a side road into the path of another vehicle" is a specific example of "driving without due care and attention" and he could be in line for a fine plus 3 to 9 points or a possible discretionary disqualification. As it happens I don't have any inclination to bring the law into this. Once I've given the bike a lookover I might send him a bill for any damage to that, but otherwise I just want to move on.

Sometimes stuff happens and the criminal law really doesn't help. Too early to tell how this might affect my thinking next time I get a careless driving case in court.

A Woman Killed With Kindness @ National Theatre

2011-07-13T23:08:00.000+01:00

I've always loved the bit in the computer game "The Sims" where you've finished tinkering with the zillions of different settings that actually probably don't make any difference to the health or happiness of your virtual family, and you hit the button to fast-forward them through their day - stopping when they start yelling at you in Simmish so you can sort out their problems or (more often) so you can look on helplessly while tragedy unfolds.

That's pretty much what they've done with the play "A Woman Killed With Kindness", currently on preview at the National Theatre. The stage is split in two - and two barely connected plays take place in each half. Sometimes one side will fast-forward : the actors moving slow or not at all while servants whizz around moving stuff. Sometimes they both fast-forward. And then eventually everyone is on the same side and doing the equivalent of yelling at The Player in Simmish.

The actual plays are guff of the worst order - leaden iambic nonsense - but the acting was of a high quality and the staging was tremendous, which just about made it worthwhile for me. If only that team and that cast had picked a play with some substance. Grr!

Or as they say in Simmish (while shaking their fists) : "No pala!!! Ooh kay kay keelah!!!"

Booze and You Lose

2011-06-30T23:49:00.001+01:00

You can be addicted to adrenalin, tanning, body-building, overeating, arson, undereating, texting, gambling, sex, work, porn, cosmetic surgery, computer games, self-harm, power, powerlessness, smoking, masturbation, caffeine, exercising, stealing, violence, vomiting, exposing yourself, social networking, shopping, religion, pleasing people, perfectionism, collecting junk, making money and to any one of a thousand of pharmacology's greatest "hits".

The Ministry of Sound reckon you can be addicted to bass and Robert Palmer points out you can also be addicted to lurve.

But it's the addiction to alcohol that is the one that I find the most horrifically fascinating.

How can it be so widespread in all cultures, so apparently random in its victims and why is it so difficult/impossible to cure ?

Although alcoholics come in all shapes and sizes, end-stage alcoholics have had all the personality drained out of them, and yes they look and behave very similarly indeed. And unfortunately that's the kind of alcoholic we get through the Magistrates court.

Unless you're a social worker or a Magistrate or live with an alcoholic yourself, I'm not convinced you would know how damaged these guys and gals are. You'll maybe have an image of drunk people shouting, fighting and chucking up in the street on a Saturday night. Most of these people aren't alcoholics at all - they'll feel rotten in the morning, sleep most of Sunday and have a quiet night on Sunday. Merely enthusiastic amateurs.

Let me take you through the five levels of true alcoholism :-

(1) Adaptation - you drink so much and so often that your body chemistry changes so that the same level of alcohol has less and less effect.

(2) Losing Control - you drink to avoid feeling lousy rather than drinking to feel good. Thanks to your body's adaptation you need to drink so much you can't remember what happened the previous night. You don't drink just in the evenings - every hour is happy hour now. People start noticing and your work is noticeably affected.

(3) Manipulation - your life, assets and friends are used like chess pieces to get you the drink that is your main reason for living.

(4) Control, What Control ? - drink, pass out, drink more, repeat until drink gone, beg/borrow/steal more drink, drink that, repeat

(5) End State - body and mind broken, alcohol is consumed as a reflex until death occurs through organ failure, poisoning, choking, hypothermia or suicide.

We had a late stage alcoholic in the dock this Monday. He was overweight and sweat was gushing out of him. He'd been picked up on Friday night stealing meat from a supermarket to swap for booze and so when we saw him he hadn't had a drink in 60 hours and was really struggling. He had advanced heart disease, diabetes and cirrhosis of the liver. He was in his fifties but he had the face of an eighty year old who had died the previous month.

He had a considerable history of crime - back when he was just a Stage 1 or Stage 2 alcoholic, he had raped and burgled houses. Recently though he was only capable of drunk and disorderly and shoplifting - a cynic would have said that in this case, alcohol does seem to have done the world a favour.

He had failed many times to attend alcohol treatment programmes and recently the Magistrates had adopted a familiar pattern of giving Conditional Discharges where they could and short prison sentences when they couldn't. We decided this was one of those "couldn't" occasions, so off to prison he went.

Well, not quite. He reportedly collapsed in the cells and had to treated by paramedics. I'm sure the prison authorities won't thank us for dumping him on them, but what exactly were we meant to do ?

In a perfect world, maybe we would stuff him in a taxi to The Priory where he would receive the medical and psychology help he needed before being released, a new man, back into a society to which he would now be capable of contributing.

**Rude word deleted ** !

You can't effectively section somebody for stealing bacon. And would people start feigning addiction to get a nice cushy rest-cure rather than prison ? And what about the shops - the law needs to protect them from having their shelves stripped bare. Remember, it's not all about the criminal - the victims' interests also need to be considered.

And anyway, Amy Winehouse continues to lose her fight against alcoholism despite receiving the best help that money can buy, so there's no guarantee that even the "dream" solution would get the job done.

I had a momentary mental panic about sending a dying, sick man to prison. But that's what Magistrates do on your behalf. If you don't like it, write to your MP and tell us to stop.

Legalese 101

2011-06-15T14:28:00.001+01:00

Part of an irregular series on court vocabulary and the way it is interpreted by this Magistrate:-

Melee

Translation : "My client did not hit the complainant, but even if he did, it was an accident
Example Usage : "I maintain that the broken nose was most likely sustained in the ensuing melee rather than as a result of any premeditated act by my client".

My client tells me that ...

Translation : the phrase itself has no meaning except to prefix a statement that is at best a half-truth but which might persuade a bench to think twice about imposing custody.
Example Usage : "My client tells me that he has an interview for a job on Monday"
Contrast this with : "My client has an interview for a job on Monday" - this is most likely true because the brief will have actually seen proof before making such a verifiable statement in a court of law.

Assault

2011-06-12T12:06:00.000+01:00

I didn't have much confidence that I was going to enjoy my training session on the new guidelines on Assault. I had a sinking feeling that that this would be yet another attempt by The Powers to stop me imprisoning people who deserve prison just to save a few quid.

In fact the Guidelines are rather good. You feel there are some fine minds at work here and the detail indicates a huge amount of practical experience. True, there is a slight softening of the penalties involved in low level assault, but equally there is a hardening at the upper end which was a pleasant surprise.

I remember well a Common Assault case that I blogged about back in 2009. This was a hateful case where a man had argued with his pregnant wife (she was sitting on the stairs in their house) - she had yelled back that he couldn't hit her because she was pregnant - he shrugged and made sure that all his punches were to her face while in the background their young daughter was yelling for him to stop.

For some reason this was charged by the CPS as a Common Assault (s39) to which the defendent gratefully pleaded guilty, ensuring that all we could give was a tiny prison sentence or a Community sentence.

Under the new rules this would go right to the top end of the newly extended guidelines thanks to increased culpability and increased harm (premeditation, presence of a child, pregnant woman afraid for unborn child, sustained assault) and suddenly our wife-beater is looking to get the full six months (less guilty plea allowance). Doesn't quite make up for the CPS undercharging the offence, but that's someone else's issue to resolve.

One of the worked examples in the training materials concerns a drunk who punches an ambulance worker in the face while they were doing their duty. As Stanetta is intending to pursue a career as a paramedic, I'm probably not the right Magistrate to ask what the correct punishment for this should be. The model answer is "High Level Community Punishment" - I'd prefer something involving electricity.

The Only Way is Ethics

2011-06-11T21:13:00.000+01:00

The most honest person in the world lives in Brentwood, Essex.

My rucksack and the shiny laptop I bought last week stayed on the train when I got off at Ilford. I ran around headlessly going through phases of panic, nausea and finally resignation after trying all the things you try when you lose something.

The next day I got a call from the station at Brentwood - my rucksack had been handed in by the most honest person in the world, they had found my phone number inside and could I please come over and collect it.

An experience like that gives you a nice warm feeling - someone out there did the right thing for someone they didn't know.

Thanks, whoever you are for giving me back my rucksack. my laptop and my faith in humanity.

Rapture Deferred ?

2011-05-22T11:36:00.000+01:00

The Reverend Camping should be brought before the international court for his crimes against Mathematics.
I don't mind that he's stared at the Bible so long that he has seen hidden messages in it - as a godless heathen this is none of my business. But when he claims to have some Mathematics to back up this assertion, that's when I get interested.

Although, when you actually look at his reasoning, it isn't anything like Mathematics at all - more a kind of painting with numbers.

The argument runs like this :-

(1) The bible contains words about judgement day that can be substituted by numbers :-

Atonement = 5
Completeness =10
Heaven= 17 (no, really - Heaven 17 !)

(2) Therefore obviously (5 x 10 x 17) squared is a special number - 722,500.

(3) The bible contains more words about judgement day that can be substituted by numbers :-

Those who are to bring the Gospel = 2
Wrath = 23
Judgement = 43

(4) 2 x 23 x 43 =1978

(5) Therefore judgement day will be 1978 years after the crucifixion of Christ.

(6) Christ was crucified on April 1st in the year 33

(7) Therefore judgement day will be in 2011

But which day ?

(8) Let's convert that 1988 (solar) years into days using the conversion factor 365.2422

1988 x 365.2422 = 722,449 (and a bit left over that we'll ignore)

(9) Whoa, Nelly ! Stop the bus !! That's just 51 short of the special number 722,500 we derived in point (2)

(10) So judgement day will be 51 days after the crucifixion date of April 1st - i.e. MAY 21st

Q.E.D or Amen - it even fits in with another of his theories that the end would be 7,000 years after the Great Flood, which was obviously in 4990 BC

Hard to know where to start with this - a few questions spring to mind

Why those numbers for the first set of words ?
Why multiply them ?
Why square them ?
Why those numbers for the second set of words ?
Why multiply them ?
Why NOT square them too ?
Why solar years ? Surely your God works off the lunar calendar (hint: Easter)

And that's without arguing the toss about whether the date of the crucifixion was definitely that day.

It's all a bit messy too - bits of days left over - a totally meaningless 51 days.

You'd expect more from The Creator.

Serious, Proper Rape

2011-05-18T21:27:00.001+01:00

"the classic rape, where someone jumps out of a bush...serious proper rape" : Ken Clarke

Dear Kenneth Clarke,

Anyone who works in the criminal justice system knows that their words are like live ammunition when they speak. The issues involved are so raw and personal for the victims that any off-hand insufficiently sensitive remark can cause offence and anger. Does the man in charge of the whole system not get that ? You patronising simpleton.

Why didn't you simply say that all rapes are serious, but that some rapes deserve extra punishment ? If pressed on what rapes those might be, you could have quoted from a Crown Prosecution Service sentencing guide:-

Aggravating

Offender ejaculated or caused victim to ejaculate
Background of intimidation or coercion
Use of drugs, alcohol or other substance to facilitate the offence
Threats to prevent victim reporting the incident
Abduction or detention
Offender aware that he is suffering from a sexually transmitted infection
Pregnancy or infection results

It's almost impossible to read the above without imagining just how bad an offence rape can become at the extreme.

Especially when you bear in mind that those aggravating factors are taken from the guideline "S5: Rape of a child under 13". Would the rape of a 12 year old without any additional aggravating factors be considered as not serious or not a proper rape ? You total cretin.

All rapes are serious, all rapes are proper rapes. You absolute buffoon.

Please be more sensitive with your language when you speak about these matters in the future and maybe I'll be more careful with my language when I speak about you.

Jackass.

Yours,

Stan

England and Wales and the Border Esk

2011-05-16T09:02:00.001+01:00

Some days in court you wonder why you bother.
The morning was composed of trials that couldn't happen because some people or some paperwork was missing, and usually the absence of people was due to them not being sent some paperwork in time.

I blame the royal family - these wedding bank holidays have caused chaos in the government bureaucracy. Although someone in the previous court should have realised that setting a court date two weeks in the future was optimistic considering so few of those days were working days.

We did some busy-work (statutory declarations and the like) but even so, we had finished the morning business well before 11:00.

The afternoon was given over to private prosecutions, which can be very interesting indeed. We've seen everything from illegal truckers to truancy enablers, copyright criminals to benefit fraudsters. This afternoon though was devoted to fishing licence evaders.

Now don't get me wrong, a crime is a crime, and fishing without a licence involves entering a business premises and taking goods without making an attempt to pay. Fish larceny if you like.

But the police deal administrative with way more complex crimes than this with on-the-spot fines and cautions, and traffic wardens hand you a ticket if your car is illegally parked - so why oh why oh River Wye does this stuff end up in a Magistrates Court ?

Nobody bothered showing up to plead guilty or to attempt a defence so we managed to sentence a half dozen of these cases in less than an hour and that was the business of the day concluded. We had been in court for less than two hours total and had not seen a single defendant.

One interesting bit of trivia though : Scottish devolved government took over control of fishing on Scottish rivers - except for the Esk, which meanders back and forward across the English border. And so, the whole of the Esk (even the Scottish bits) remain under English law. This means that it is possible for Scottish people to be well inside Scotland doing some fishing and end up in an English court because they haven't got an English fishing licence.

Old Man's Slippers

2011-04-13T12:38:00.000+01:00

I am being royally teased by the Stan Clan at the moment because I have reached the stage in my life when I can properly appreciate a good pair of slippers.

I bought these from M&S and they are outrageous comfortable - you feel like your knackered old man's feet are being hugged by memory foam.

I could care less that they look like footwear favoured by OAPs. I mean, only my close family will ever see them and anyway just how trendy do slippers get anyway ?

Fashion faux-pas ? Je ne regrette rien.

Christmas Time

2011-04-10T19:59:00.001+01:00

The Magistrate Court calendar is a little out of whack from reality. While some cases can be dealt with in a matter of days, others drag on for months. So just as the daffodils are coming out, Christmas has come to the courthouse in the shape of a bunch of offences dating back to December.

Christmas 2010 was not a season of goodwill to all men, and it certainly wasn't to all women. It was the season of dysfunctional families forced to spend time together, with an added sprinkling of financial worries, unreasonable expectations and binge drinking.

There's a widespread delusion that domestic violence is about a mentally deficient alcoholic man in a dirty string vest beating up on his long-suffering wife because his dinner wasn't on the table when he got back from the pub. In fact, it's hardly ever about that.

Tommy Cooper beat his wife. Hillary Clinton beat her husband. Ringo Starr beat his wife. Liza Minelli beat her husband. Abraham Lincoln was beaten by his wife. With Humphrey Bogart it was more 50:50 with his wife. The legendary libel lawyer George Carman punched his wife in the stomach when she was pregnant and threatened her with two knives, saying: "Which one do you want in you first?"

The abuse case I worked on concerned a very successful local businessman who took his family out for Christmas dinner, had a skin-full, went home and then proceeded to beat his wife and then his teenage son who had gone to protect his mum. Despite his entire family coming to court and giving consistent testimony against him, he still insisted that he was the victim - in his view his son had jumped him for no good reason and his wife and other kids had lied to get back at him (for reasons unknown). Had his dog been called as a witness, I'm sure he would have protested that that dog had always had it in for him.

There were some particularly disturbing details in the story. For example, the wife, as soon as the argument started, went to the kitchen to tidy cupboards while her husband verbally abused their teenage daughter in the lounge. It spoke volumes of a long pattern of abuse that she can cope with only be going to a place where she has power and blocking out the unmanageable.

I looked at the man in the dock and wondered what was going on in his head. I sensed incredible weakness - a man who had lost the control he craved and could only impose his will through throwing his weight around.

I almost pitied him.

Almost.

Three Wise Men (and Norbert)

2011-03-19T13:05:00.001Z

We have a knitted Nativity set in our window at Christmas (doesn't everyone?).

This gets packed away in a big crate with the rest of the decorations in January and stowed on a high shelf in the garage. Except this year, one of our wise men fell down behind the sofa and missed out on being packed.

He's still around. This is partly because I can't be pestered to get the crate down, but mostly it's because it amuses us to have him around and we imagine he is Norbert, the not-so-wise man, who set off from the East with the Magi, but made an absolute hash of following the star (how hard is that ?) and ended up really quite a long way from Bethlehem still carrying his present for the baby Jesus.

Socks, I imagine - I don't believe Norbert's taste in presents is any better than his navigation skills.

Stand-up, Stand-up for Jesus

2011-03-18T23:10:00.001Z

I couldn't quite believe "Thought for the Day" this morning. Some total whack-job (Rhidian Brook) evaded security and managed to deliver a surreal dead-pan treatise on why the gospels are more comic than tragic, before he could be dragged away from the mic, medicated and sent back to the Home for the Bewildered.

I'm no bible scholar, but isn't the story of Jesus highly tragic, with a twist of hope? Not comic, not by any stretch. Jesus by all accounts was a serious man with a serious purpose who was messily killed by other serious men. Yes, it is eminently possible for a sermon about some of the issues in the gospels to be comic and for a talented preacher to make a congregation roar while still making a serious point. But that doesn't make the source text in any way comic.

He was also seems under the impression that Jesus was born in a pig sty. Hello ?!

I'm looking forward to Rhidian's sequel, in which he explains to Muslims that the Koran is more comic than tragic. He should definitely avoid using cartoons to illustrate his points though.

A Change in the Weather

2011-03-17T09:24:00.000Z

Can't actually remember the last time I read a novel from end to end - it has been several years anyway.

I did finally get the chance since I've been on the train to London and not the car - the police get all agitated when you try reading a good book while you're driving on the M6.

I'll probably not wait a couple of years now that I've read "Solar" by Ian McEwan. His protogonist is a physicist with a planet-sized ego and a planet-sized appetite (and not a small planet either). A fairly blatant metaphor for the human race in other words. If you want the plot spoiled, read this bunch of spoilers masquerading as a review in The Guardian, otherwise just trust that the prose is excellent and well-worth the effort. All but one of the characters are one-dimensional but this is absolutely justified since the book is written from the point of view of the Prof and this is exactly the way he sees the world.

Funny how climate science seems to be chasing me around whenever I get cultural - I enjoyed the imperfect but rather brilliant play "Greenland" at the National Theatre recently. Written by four separate playwrights it gives you four different human insights into our present muddle about climate change.

* A teenager who wants to do something and can't understand why everyone else (especially her parents) don't.
* A troubled mother and daughter in family therapy - the fact that the neighbour leaves a light on all night for his dog is a crime against the planet in the daughter's eyes. To the mother though, this fretting over nothing is a sign of mental illness.
* A geography student on a field trip to the warming Arctic
* A climate modeller's affair with one of Ed Milliband's advisers in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks

The play was treated by the critics and bloggers like a polar bear treats a guillemot chick, but I rather liked its complexity and craziness. Climate change is a complicated subject best left to atmospheric physicists, but our personal and political response to it is even more complex and this is where Ian McEwan and the four "Greenland" playwrights can make an important contribution to the debate.

The polar bear in "Greenland" was excellent too - worth the price of a ticket alone.

Stan The Album

2011-03-15T12:38:00.002Z

I've compiled a Spotify playlist containing all the music I've mentioned even tangentially during the last two years of the blog.

Click here.

It's quite a mixture of songs I love, songs I hate and songs I love to hate. Watch this space for a Dub Step remix sometime soon.

If you love music, have a broadband connection and haven't yet got Spotify, I really don't understand how your brain works.

Update : Playlist now contains everything I could find covering the whole five year life of the blog.

Bungee Judge

2011-03-14T21:30:00.002Z

A number of the inhabitants of my little bit of England get a fair bit of coverage on the front and back pages of the tabloids, so when their business makes it into court there tends to be quite a buzz about the trial.

I've not sat on any of the newsworthy cases before and frankly I was looking forward to reporting here how it feels to be involved in one.

So when I heard that a particular lady was due in court on one of my days, I thought that my chance had come.

I arrived early, around 09:00, went to the retiring room and read the order of business - no mention of the lady in question. One of my colleagues turned up and asked if I wanted to see the cells under the court - she knew one of the security guys well and he wouldn't mind giving us a tour. Excellent idea.

The cells are ancient - very minimal - the main feature being that the heating comes up through the bottom of a long metal bench. The facilities for the prisoners were much better than those provided for the guards I couldn't help noticing, but even so, not even up to Travelodge standards.

The guard's walkie-talkie squawked and we were told we had to leave because prisoners were arriving. We stepped out into the compound in time to see a WPC handcuffed to a very tall black woman in a very short red dress. You can tell I have reached a certain age because my mental reaction wasn't "Phwoarr!" - instead it was "By 'eck, she's not really dressed for this".

We went back to the retiring room to find a District Judge fresh off the train from London. Nobody knew he was coming but apparently we needed to move to a neighbouring court room for a Domestic Violence trial and he was to take care of the rest of the day's business, including the Lady in Red.

Now, I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but ... Is it possible that The Powers That Be don't trust Lay Magistrates with newsworthy trials ?

The most damning piece of evidence I can find is that the biscuits in his retiring room were just the normal Magistrate selection - the admin staff hadn't had enough notice to nip out and get the special Judge-quality biscuits made from caviar, saffron and gold-dust before the DJ parachuted in.

As it was, our trial ended up lasting all day and it was challenging and fascinating and really quite rewarding. Hizzonnah next door dealt with the lady in a few minutes and then presumably got the next train back to London. I can report that a racket was briefly made by the members of the press and other interested bystanders, but unfortunately I still can't tell you how it feels to be in the glare of media attention. Sorry.

Weasel Words

2011-03-09T00:11:00.001Z

I'd like to nominate British Foreign Secretary (for now) William Hague for an award for services to avoiding the damn question.

When asked to respond to a comment from an exasperated colleague that he lacked enthusiasm for the role, he created the following smoke soup :-

“These are historic times and momentous events are taking place and I say to you very seriously that all of us who have taken on the job of shouldering responsibilities at this time must see those responsibilities through for an extended period of time in the face of any criticism of setbacks.”

Now, English is my first language and I can't pick the bones out of that lot - maybe it lost something in the translation from whatever language William Hague's brain speaks. Didn't he used to be a Yorkshireman ?

What's the deal with Radiohead, Stan ?

2011-03-06T19:05:00.002Z

... surely they're just another group, right ? Why can't you just listen to the new "King of Limbs" album a couple of times and just darn well decide whether you like it or not ?

The long and short of it is that I'm not nearly musician enough to judge. It's like the first time I tried to read "Ulysees" I thought it was incoherent piffle. This was because I was a simpleton. When I was slightly wiser I re-read it and realised that it was actually the best novel of all time. I wasn't the only one - look at the reviews for "Ulysees" when it came out - George Bernard Shaw (who should have known better) said "In Ireland they try to make a cat clean by rubbing its nose in its own filth. Mr. Joyce has tried the same treatment on the human subject"

But.

It really hasn't grabbed me and shaken me like their previous albums - sorry guys, it sounds to this fan very much like a whole album of B-sides. Very listenable with some nice ideas but nothing that lands the killer blow like on every single previous album :-

Pablo Honey (1993) - "Creep"

The Bends (1995) - "Just"

OK Computer (1997) - every single second of every single perfectly formed track

Kid A (2000) - "Everything In Its Right Place"

Amnesiac (2001) - "Pyramid Song"

Hail to the Thief (2003) - "There There"

In Rainbows (2007) - "Reckoner"

The King of Limbs (2011) - ???

Any Radiohead Head wanting to contradict me need to tell me which album King of Limbs replaced in their Top 3 Radiohead albums and which track from it now features in their Top 10 Radiohead tracks.

Dongleology

2011-02-24T21:02:00.000Z

I've got a Vodafone mobile internet dongle that I use when I'm away from home. Staying in a Travelodge in the East End of London, I'm surrounded by high buildings, and even though I get a nice blue 3G signal, it seems to drop out if the dongle is moved an inch or if the wind blows or if anything moves anywhere in England.

I've solved the problem as per the attached photo. Basically you put a dongle in an empty coffee mug. This is bizarre enough, but it seems to work even better if you leave the spoon in the cup too.

Sometimes you solve problems with science - sometimes you just need to stick your dongle in a mug.

Radiohead Free Stan

2011-02-23T19:31:00.001Z

You never really grasp a Radiohead album the first time you hear it, so I'm not in total shock that I'm not immediately bowled over by their eighth offering "King of Limbs".

The album it most resembles is "In Rainbows".

But without a track as strong as "The Reckoner".

And much, much. much, much shorter.

Let me listen to a couple of dozen times and I will report back.

Meanwhile I recommend Track 6 "Codex" and Track 8 "Separator" - these two are likely to be coming to an upscale coffee house near you real soon. They're both definitely well crafted and tonal - superior chillout music. Too early to tell yet if they're anything more important than that.

Confidence and Paranoia

2011-02-15T15:11:00.000Z

New Radiohead album due out at the weekend !
New Radiohead album may suck and I'll be as depressed as ... er .. the average Radiohead fan.

Bolton Wanderers may qualify for the UEFA cup !
The following season, the overstretched squad inevitably flirt with relegation

Low interest rates !
High inflation rates

"Horizon" - Consistently excellent factual science on the BBC (get it on iplayer now !)
"Outcasts" - Consistently blooming mediocre science-fiction on the BBC (avoid, avoid)

A cyclist's observation

2011-02-12T14:50:00.000Z

If you can get a bike down both sides of your car, then your car is not parked; rather it has been carelessly abandoned in the middle of the road.

8 day week

2011-02-02T00:42:00.000Z

Our administration team has been slashed over the last few years and the few remaining staff are good people who work very hard for little money to remove the many obstacles in the way of us doing what we do.

The following email though suggests that maybe the increased workload is starting to take its toll :-

Is anyone available for a Saturday Court on Friday 19th February please?

Strong Words

2011-01-21T14:37:00.000Z

The subject of the book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat" suffers from a condition called Visual Agnosia - a complete inability to recognise familiar objects caused by some sort of brain damage.

Also, something like one in ten of the population do not have sufficient stereo vision to "see" 3-D television.

I wonder if I am suffering from something similar with regards to "Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show !".

I'm not saying I don't find it very funny - I'm saying I can't even recognise it as a comedy program - I only know that it is a comedy because the studio audience guffaw throughout and it is listed on the "Comedy" section on the BBC i-player. The Powers at Radio 4 must think it's utterly hilarious because they keep commisioning new series (six at the latest Count).

Vest. Banana. Marimba. Oswald Mosley. Plinth. Dogger, Fisher, German Bight. Einundzwanzig. Sumatra. RAM. Bird Cage.

The above is what the program sounds like to me, a random soup of words without meaning or substance and certainly not funny, no matter the silliness of the voice you read them in.

So, either I am brain damaged, or this programme is a total waste of the paper used to write it and the studio in which it is shoddily acted.

Do let me know whether I'm alone on this - if so, I'll get a check-up from the neck-up and have my brain adjusted. Otherwise, I'll be asking Radio 4 to please commit to commissioning comedy shows that actually contain, you know, humour.

By the way, I also don't "get" The Shuttleworths, but Mrs Stan assures me that this is simply because I'm from Lancashire.

How to make £2000 a day or £1 a day in prison

2011-01-02T21:04:00.001Z

I'm a Maths graduate who qualified as an accountant who now makes his crust crunching big data sets for complicated companies. Give me numbers and I'm a happy man.

Well, I was until I became a Magistrate.

A few months ago we saw a farmer who had broken all kinds of environmental legislation the previous year by burying asbestos, spent uranium and kryptonite in his cow field (only a slight exaggeration). He had been heavily fined - then had stopped paying - threatened with prison - started paying again - stopped paying - threatened with prison - continued not to pay - given a final warning - didn't pay - sent to prison.

We sent him down for 12 weeks, a sentence which effectively wiped out the £100,000+ in fines and compensation he still had to pay. He'll likely only do six weeks, which means that every day inside would be equivalent to over £2,000.

Fastforward to more recent events and we have a drug addict with over 200 previous shoplifting offences who walked out of a supermarket with £24 worth of meat under his jacket. Over the previous few decades Magistrates had tried on him just about all the punishments and education programmes in the book - all had failed and the last half dozen times all that was left was the sort of short jail sentence the current Justice Minister hates us using (but not enough to change the law to stop us).

We were no different from our predecessors and we sent him down for 8 weeks - which if we assume he does half, means that his £24 of bacon cost him roughly 24 days of custody.

Unfair comparison ? To make it "fair" should we have given the farmer 460 years? Alternatively, should we could have sent the meat thief down for 17 minutes ?

There's a point there somewhere about how you drive yourself crazy trying to compare sentences given for different crimes to different criminals. The world of The Law is very different from the world of Logic and Reason - it has built up over time, cares too much about some behaviours and not enough about others, is inconsistent and frequently contradictory.

But I'm increasingly in awe of it - imagine a world without Law - a world where there's nothing to stop farmers from poisoning rivers and drug addicts from stripping the shelves bare. There are a few thousand things I'd change if I ever got elected to something though.

Vote Stan.

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance

2010-12-10T22:07:00.003Z

The Stan household have spent the last week stomping around the house, periodically climbing onto soap boxes and railing at each other against the despicable coalition's raid on the higher education budget. Join the demonstrators at the barricades? Not a chance - it's cold out there and I'm allergic to being beaten about the face and neck by police batons.

Here's an idea for some alternative cuts that can be made :-

* Trident (£16.8m per missile)
* Royal Family (£38.2m per year)
* Magistrates' Biscuits (£198.6m per year - excluding bourbons)

There are much saner ways of saving £200m than castrating the higher education budget. The diverse problems we are going to face over the next few decades are going to need a diverse bunch of educated people to solve them. Not just one or two rich kids.

I really hope that I don't have to talk to any politicians in the next month or so - I'm just so angry with them all right now. I'm afraid that one of the LiConDem politicians is going to show up on my doorstep selling a message of progressive big society and I'm going to attempt to beat them to death with their own smug-gittiness.

A house carrying a ukulele

2010-12-07T11:08:00.001Z

I'm indebted to the Guardian for tipping me off about Israel Kamakawiwoʻole - who for obvious reasons will be referred to as "Iz" in the rest of this piece.

It's an amazing story - told best here at the Honolulu Advertiser - of a recording engineering in Honolulu being called at 02:30 by a polite traditional Hawaiian musician with a burning desire to do some recording that night.

Iz turns up with his ukulele - the recording engineer gets him a chair strong enough to support his massive frame - and in an half a hour he has laid down a set of songs, including a version of "Over the Rainbow" that will make you wonder whether Judy Garland really knew what she was doing.

That's "Over the Rainbow" ! Voted song of the 20th century by everyone who matters - it's the defining soundtrack for infinitely painful longing to be in a better place you can almost taste at a time of suffering. I'm sure at any given moment since 1939, someone somewhere on Earth was singing that song. And yet this giant decided that he had something new to add that couldn't wait for morning.

It's a far from polished performance, with liberties taken with the tune and pronunciation, but what extraordinary intensity! Hear it here - it could be the highlight of your week.

Unfortunately Iz died from weight-related respiratory problems at a tragically young age so we're robbed of getting to know him better. I'm convinced that it's impossible to sing like that and not be a totally wonderful person. It would be a twisted world if you could fake that degree of humanity.

Oh, and it's been number one in Germany since October - wouldn't it be a better Christmas Number One here in Britain instead of the usual plastic R'n'B X-Factor android? Hint, hint.

Nightmare

2010-12-06T19:52:00.002Z

"I'm a real nightmare with administration - I get into SUCH a mess (nervous giggle)"

The defendant was trying to explain why she hadn't responded to a request to identify who was driving her car when it was photographed jumping a red light.

The chairman was being infinitely patient - but he was being tested by her habit of cutting him off before he had managed half a sentence. She was obviously nervous in court, but this was obviously pretty typical behaviour for her.

"I got two of these through in the same week and I responded to the speeding one so I thought they would take the same details for the red light one"

"But you got a reminder - didn't you realise something ... ?"

"No - I don't really read it properly - I know I should have - like I say, I'm a NIGHTMARE (really nervous giggle)"

"I'm afraid 'being a nightmare' isn't an adequate defence. Your problem now is that the 6 points we have to impose for this offence will take you to 12 ..."

"No - I've only got 3 points so far ... haven't I ?"

"I regret that DVLA records show you have 6 point so far - 3 for defective tyres and 3 for speeding."

"Oh - I just thought there was a fine and not any points - I think .... I didn't really ..."

(completing the sentence in my head) ... didn't really read the fines notices properly because I'm a nightmare

"I'm afraid that we will have to arrange another session to discuss the ban - it is possible that you can claim 'Exceptional Hardship' - I'm assuming you need your car for work ?"

"Oh yes, I'm a nurse"

Yeek ! She doesn't read forms and she's rotten at administration and she gives powerful drugs to sick people.

Now, that's what I call a nightmare.

Father and Son

2010-11-24T14:28:00.001Z

The man in the dock did not look capable of all the assaults he had admitted to. He was short and skinny and his hair was greying and receding. He was quite a successful tradesman and lived in one of the better parts of one of the bigger towns in my patch.

But there hadn't been a mistake. Here was a man whose default reaction to stress or perceived slight seems to be to beat someone up. In the case of his wife his assaults included considerable mental cruelty in addition to actual violence. He also terrorised the children by telling them that he was "going to kill grandpa" or "throw mummy through the window". Reading between the lines of the CAVA reports, his abuse of the children was not only mental, but this wasn't part of the charge against him.

We declined jurisdiction and passed the case up the Crown Court where a more suitable sentence could be handed down. He had been behaving himself on highly conditional bail so far, so we were inclined to grant it again.

Not surprisingly the conditions on his bail included non-contact with his wife and the children. The defence lawyer, however, made an attempt to convince us, now that he had pleaded guilty and that they were no longer witnesses, to allow him to see his kids. One of his little boys had given evidence against him on video link and was reportedly feeling guilt because his evidence was putting daddy in prison.

Please, Your Worships, would you please let a father see his seven year old son so that he can reassure the boy that he did the right thing and that daddy still loves him? Heartbreaking stuff.

There was no confirmation from the mother that she was fine with this, so we really couldn't take the accused's word on the situation - for all we knew he would use this order from the court as yet another weapon against his wife. And could we trust that his intentions to the son were as honourable and pure as his lawyer suggested ?

So, no - we didn't allow this. There's always a tension between the criminal's human rights and protection of their victims, but in this case I think we did good. Some days in court you are faced with the most hopeless situations where no decision you make will make things better. You just need to do what feels like the right thing and hope that it turns out to have the least bad result.

Canard Défoncé

2010-11-20T22:25:00.001Z

I love the story of the French farmer who, when nicked for posession of 5kg of wacky-backy, basically claimed it was for personal use - just him and his ducks. Excellent for worming them he says. Probably means they don't have problems with cataracts as well. You would hope they don't get the symptoms of bad short-term memory loss and paranoia - although I would pay good money to see an absent-minded paranoid duck.

Haven't seen a lot of marijuana possession charges in court recently - I suspect the police are taking care of this particular business, rather than it having gone out of fashion.

It all takes me back to my interview to become a magistrate - I was asked to rank the following offences in order of seriousness and give my reasoning :-

(a) assault police officer (one punch in the face while being arrested)
(b) domestic violence (some bruising)
(c) driving without tax and insurance
(d) shoplifting (frozen chicken)
(e) driving recklessly near a school
and
(f) student possessing a single cannabis joint

Try it yourself and then try answering the question "So you chose (x) as the least serious - why don't you think it's a serious matter ?"

I'll not tell you my ordering, but I did put (d) last. I can understand why someone would put (f) last. But to me, someone who support the illegal drugs industry is much more dangerous than someone desperate enough to steal a frozen chicken.

And guess which category of villain most often ends up getting a custodial sentence ?

Stan is in London

2010-10-22T14:08:00.001+01:00

No, I do not want your free newspaper.

Thank you for sharing your infantile music and body odour with me.

I'm not invisible - I'm a human, very much like yourself. So step off my *%&£ing foot.

How much ?!!

Does anyone here speak English ?

Again, no, I do not want your free newspaper.

There are no foolish questions, only foolish silence

2010-10-19T23:31:00.000+01:00

I love the many and varied ways that search engines bring people to my patch. During the last few weeks I've seen the following on my web log :-

"marks and spencer gay"
"stan wors"
"stanbang"
"miles davis wife beater"
"difford & tilbrook simple words"
"douglas adams free brest radio"
"radio. animation"
"england 500 pounds"
"parallel parking fire engine"

If you're the person looking for "radio.animation", please get in touch - there are issues we should discuss.

The person looking for "stanbang" will be very, very disappointed.

Missile Defence

2010-10-19T00:32:00.000+01:00

I've heard about Rory Delap's throw-ins for some time, but on Saturday I got to see a few close up, and they were amazing.

I always wondered why they caused so much havoc - Ok, so he does long throws?! Big deal - I've seen some of the Bolton lads do that.

No, no, no - it's not that Delap's throws are long - it's more that the ball fizzes flat and fast, almost directly at the goal like a Smart Bomb. The ball starts at an altitude of seven feet and it stays there for about 40 yards just begging for a deflection or a knockdown. The pace is a real shock - as fast as a sweetly struck corner.

The really clever bit is that you can't be offside from a throw-in, so Stoke City can pack the penalty area with all their big lads (and they are all big lads), so absolute mayhem is absolutely guaranteed.

Some managers say that these throws should not be allowed, usually after they have been on the receiving end. I don't see how you could phrase a rule to stop it without going to the extreme suggested by Arsene Wenger - replace all "throws ins" with "kick ins".

Nope, Delap's throws are as much a part of the beautiful game as Ronaldo's dribbling, Drogba's marksmanship and Rooney's excuses. Delap is a unique athlete and it was a joy to watch him work. An even bigger joy though was that Bolton won - with the deciding goal coming from a Bolton long-throw ...

Prejudice is ...

2010-10-05T10:51:00.001+01:00

Prejudice is natural and unavoidable, or so we were told at the Magistrate training. There is absolutely no way that a Magistrate can be without prejudice - the trick then is to make sure that prejudice stays in your head and you do not ever act upon it. Discrimination is the bad thing and this happens when an imperfect, human, normally-prejudiced Magistrate starts treating people differently on account of the very little information they know about them and their crime.

It's not just race, sex and religion they're talking about. I admit to an internal sigh whenever I see that the defendent has the postcode of our biggest council estate. I've seen some real wrong 'uns from round there and it's a natural instinct to jump to conclusions. And because I'm aware that this is my prejudice talking, I can make a special effort to be awake to the possibility that I'm not treating this person fairly.

On the flipside of this I'm favourably prejudiced towards soldiers and ex-soldiers. Partly it's because of my brother, Sgt Major Stan, but mostly it's down to them risking their lives and health to do an important job that I'm so grateful someone is doing. Military service shouldn't be a part of the decision-making when there's a choice between giving someone a break and not giving them a break, and I do try to keep it that way.

When it comes to the crime, domestic violence is one where it's easy to take an instant dislike to the Accused. However, you need to keep in mind the person is innocent until proven guilty and that situations are never as straightforward as your first emotional response to the phrase "Domestic Violence" might suggest. After two years in the job I'm getting much better at this ... but ...

The other day I had to deal with a child pornographer. He wasn't accused of being just some casual surfer of the material, he had allegedly abused the children himself. The pictures were of varying levels of seriousness but went right up to Level 5, which is as bad as it gets.

There was a persistent screaming in my head the whole time he was in the dock. The very fact that he was breathing was abhorent to me. I could feel the damage he had done and deep down in my modern, liberal mind there was pure unnuanced hatred for this ordinary-looking man. No dirty raincoats or horns and forked tails and a whiff of sulphur, by the way.

Fortunately, all we had to do was to hear his bail application before committing him to the Crown Court, where a judge will have to battle with his inner caveman to deal with him fairly and dispassionately.

I admit it now, I don't think I could manage that.

My male colleague was even more steamed up than I was when we retired. The female Chair was just relieved that we didn't have to look at the photos - on a previous case the Prosecution had insisted that the Magistrates see the photos involved and it had made her sick. Not nauseous - actually sick. And those were "only" Level 4 pictures.

Even now, writing this, I still feel ill-will towards him. I hope that the years he spends in prison for his crimes (if proven) will be punishing. But I can say this - in court, we three choked down our personal feelings and treated him just like any of the thousands of unconvicted people who pass through our courts every year. It's the way you would want it if you were ever wrongly accused of such a crime, right ?

If, by Stella ...

2010-09-30T00:00:00.002+01:00

If, by Stella, you mean the evil liquid that gives courage to burglars, fuels wife-beaters and encourages rotten drivers to give it the beans, then it is a canker on society and deserves to be consigned to the darkest pit of hell, from whence it certainly originated.

However, if by Stella you mean that perfect complement to a night of chilling-out for the weary Magistrate after a hard day in court, that thirst-quenching fruit of the Belgian brewer's art, that golden chilled draught that calms the mind and relaxes the body, then I am wholeheartedly in favour.

****

I'm not the first person to hold several mutually contradictory opinions on alcohol. The classic source is the 1952 speech by Noah S "Soggy" Sweat Jr. , a young Mississippi lawmaker who held forth on the subject of whether Mississippi should continue to prohibit alcoholic beverages. This is the so-called "If-By-Whiskey" agreeing-and-not-agreeing response:-

My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be.

You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey:If when you say whiskey you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman's step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.

This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.

****

My last Magistrate session was an object lesson in the evils of alcohol. Businesswoman driving drunk, banned teenager fancied a trip down the pub, homeless alcoholic set fire to a bin that he didn't like much and a habitual burglar decided to smash a window six days after doing eighteen months for several similar.

In all of the cases, the booze seemed to give them the illusion of superhuman powers and a cloak of invisiblity.

But it's no good blaming the alcohol. Ban it and they'd find some other way to get off their heads and all you would do is to upset the large number of responsible drinkers (including me).

Strikes me that there's a medical answer here somewhere, but that's not the business I'm in. We make our honest attempt to provide punishment, rehabilitation and protection of the public and just because we aren't perfect doesn't make it a bad system (i.e the "Nirvana Fallacy")

Anyone got any better ideas ?

(In the spirit of full disclosure, this blog posting was typed under the influence of one bottle of Stella.)

All Souls time again

2010-09-26T22:53:00.001+01:00

The Guardian recently challenged some of the greatest minds of our age to answer the 2009 All Souls' General Paper. OK, the greatest minds they could get for the money and who happened not to be doing anything more useful at the time. If you can read Will Self's pretentious attempt at answering the question "Is there something inherently coarsening about sport?" without vomiting and yelling then you are a better person that I.

The All Souls paper is something I've blogged about before - basically you get three hours to write three essays on subjects that deserve about a decade of intensive study each.

The question that grabbed my attention was "Does it matter whether there is life elsewhere in the universe?"

Here, in full, is my attempt :-

Does it matter ?? Does it flipping matter ??! Are you serious ? No, really - are you so thick and unimaginative and soulless that you would even ask this question ? Really ? Because if so, you should come over here and say that, but I should warn you that even though I am a pacifist, I really will have to slap you.

As you can tell from the above paragraph, it matters to me quite a bit. Here is one of the major philosophical questions and it's possible we can answer it once and for all. We're probably never going to see our souls under an electron microsope and we probably aren't going to get God's address and phone number. But it is possible that a faint stream of zeros and ones might one day reach our radio telescopes and prove absolutely that we are not alone in the universe.

Imagine - what Art will they have ? Fantastical inventions ? Philosophical Answers ? How about Religion ? In fact, you could work your way through the Dewey Decimal System and find that there would be not one area of human thought that would remain unaffected by contact with an alien intelligence.

And if that doesn't tempt you into caring, imagine this - one of these green dudes landing their saucer in Regents Park and walking/crawling/sliding down the ramp with a picnic basket full of the best things to eat from the Andromeda galaxy. Mmmm.

Of course, it's possible that they'd find humans quite tasty. And this is probably the most compelling reason of all to care about whether there is life elsewhere in the Universe.

Complete Logical Disconnect

2010-09-17T14:39:00.002+01:00

The Pope, he say :

"Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live."
"As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny."
Er ...

(a) Is he calling me and my atheists friends Nazis ?
(b) What exactly is "atheist extremism" ? People really not believing in God even harder than normal atheists?
(c) Wasn't Hitler a Catholic who believed in God and hated atheists ?
(d) Before working out he was a fruit-loop, the Cathoilic Church in Germany supported Hitler's party in their fight against atheist Communism and when he came to power, they signed a Concordant agreeing to not speak out politically as long as their rights were respected.
(e) Aren't most of our current problems caused by religious extremists and religious people being beastly to differently religious people?
(f) Does he really believe that Dawkins in a bigger threat than Bin Laden ?

Twenty Second Century Blues

2010-09-17T01:05:00.000+01:00

I was in a pub chatting with some of my colleagues, all of whom know and consume a diverse bunch of music and plenty of it.

The question came up "What music from today will survive a hundred years?"

Drmmer Dave reckoned folk music, having already survived several centuries, was good for a few more. What else ?

Stanetta has a 73 year old song "They Can't Take That Away From Me" on her Spotify playlist. Not sure if the lesson here is that the Gershwins' songs or Sinatra's singing has lasting merit. She also has the 45 year old "Feeling Good" by Nina Simone, so there's two songs already likely to outlive me.

Here's my guesses - if you're reading this in 2110, feel free to laugh if the only music from our age that you're still listening to is Rick Astley "Never Gonna Give You Up"and "The Macarena":-

(1) Religious music, whether gospel or that new-fangled Christian Rock. I can't abide it, but I suspect that they'll still be singing "Amazing Grace" in various styles right up to the heat-death of the Universe.

(2) Instrument-related Music - people buying guitars will always play "Stairway to Heaven" in the shop. Pianists will always play "The Entertainer". As long as these instruments survive, the copyright
on these pieces will be infringed for millenia.

(3) Karaoke Favourites- if you fancy yourself a singer, you will want to measure yourself against Ella/Nina/Frank/Tom (delete as applicable). In this category I nominate "Suspicious Minds" by Elvis Presley. Although sad, creepy, overweight, middle-aged guys in open-necked shirts will definitely still insist on singing "Delilah".

(4) Roots - Rock music is just a creole of Blues, Jazz, Gospel with a bit of Folk and Country. Modern musicians of any age have phases where they check out the origins of their style of music. I have no doubt that 22nd century musicians will look back and find Robert Johnson's "Sweet Home Chicago" and think "Oh. This Works. Why would we want to make it more complicated than this ?!"

(5) Dance music - the dances will change, but would anyone bet against "Dancing Queen" being played at weddings 100 years from now ?

And finally, whatever bands are playing in 2110, I'll bet the roadies play "So What" by Miles Davis while they're setting up.

London !

2010-09-15T22:22:00.002+01:00

Welcome from the capital of "a third world country " where "new and aggressive atheism is rife" (copyright 2010 Cardinal Kasper - hope the gout gets better).

I've been enjoying London's theatre scene, where it's possible to attend the bonkers "Earthquakes in London", the sublime "War Horse" and the impenetrable "A Disappearing Number" in three nights and all for the price of a cheap seat and a pie at Stamford Bridge. I also managed to fit in some data warehouse consultancy, but that's not really worth typing about.

I've been staying at the halls of residence of the London School of Economics to keep costs down - if you're not too proud to live like a student, this is an excellent way to live cheaply in London during the summer. Not nearly as much fun as Drummer Dave's narrow boat, but on bright side you get to rub shoulders with future billionaires and world-leaders. Seeing teenagers getting up early to eat fruit for breakfast is a bit of a shock though.

I nearly typed "Long Boat" instead of "Narrow Boat" - a Viking Long Boat on the Thames ... now there's an excellent idea.

I've really tried hard to hate London over the years. As a Northerner, it goes against the grain to find anything good about it.

But the Theatre ! The Thames ! The Boris Bikes ! 24 Hour Sushi !

Don't spread it around, but I'm starting to like it. Maybe one day I'll come to love it.

Not Just a Ball Game

2010-08-29T20:29:00.000+01:00

The half-time show was from the World Freestyle Football champion, John Farnworth. This guy can do just about anything he wants with a football, keeping it up on his head while skipping with a rope was my favourite. Some good footage available on YouTube here.

If controlling the ball was all you needed for success in football, then this guy would have it made. However, the match that bracketed his performance was a demonstration that football is far more than a game of keepie-uppie.

Bolton started with a worrying lack of care and it wasn't a surprise when Birmingham scored. It was much more of a surprise when our goalie got sent off for dishing out what I imagine he thought was a well-disguised smack in the mouth.

Then Birmingham scored again and all seemed lost.

Except.

Bolton clawed their way back into it with guts and low cunning.

First, Kevin Davies bullied his way into the box and drew a foul for about the millionth time in his 250 league games for Bolton. 2-1.

Then something really surprising. Robbie Blake, who I thought was a washed-up makeweight, knocked in a blinding freekick for the equaliser. Fact : I'm officially the worst judge of footballing talent in the world. Check out my fantasy football team if you don't believe me.

Amazing fightback and it was a pleasure to hear the players applauded off the field. Shame about the treatment of the referee, who got most decisions right, but I wasn't about to point that out to the mob.

Dubious Means

2010-08-17T19:19:00.001+01:00

All of the fines that Magistrates can impose are calculated as a multiple of the miscreant's "relevant weekly income" - which is the figure they've scrawled on their means form.

You'd expect that these figures are checked ? No, they are not.

Spot checked - maybe one percent of them ? Nope.

We have to take the offender's word as to how much they earn, and without wanting to be rude, some of these people have been repeatedly proven to be unreliable in other matters, so it's entirely possible they would lie here.

As a result, the fines imposed I suspect are often grossly under-calculated, except in the cases where the offender has been helpful enough to tell the truth.

So, here's an opportunity to increase government revenue and remove a penalty for honesty. Spot-check the forms when Magistrates have suspicions that the income is understated and check a small percentage of the rest.

I'll give you an example:-

A part-time security guard, who also ran a business trading cars, was caught driving his girlfriend's car which he claimed to be taking for an extended test drive of over three days with a view to buying it. When stopped by police, he protested that his motor trader's insurance covered him to drive any car for any length of time as long as he was thinking of buying it. To cut a long-ish story short, we decided that this wasn't on and found him guilty of driving without insurance.

When he filled in his means form, he disclosed his income as a security guard, but nothing relating to his income from motor trading. His solicitor had told us that his motor trader's policy was costing him over £1,000 per month, so presumably he was earning at least as much to make it worthwhile.

We had no alternative but to fine him a multiple of the extremely low earnings he had disclosed, despite knowing damn fine that he had other sources of income.

I don't think that's right.

Vote Stan.

Bang the bell, Jack; I’m on the bus

2010-08-12T07:00:00.002+01:00

Jimmy Reid, the Glasgow union leader, has died.

I used to work on Clydeside - in fact at the same yard where he had. In his day they built ships for Cunard - in mine we finished off gas turbines and sold them to the Middle East. Today ? Nothing happens there.

His idea of a "work-in" in 1971 to protest the withdrawal of government subsidy was pure genius. A strike would have been an uplifting act of vandalism that would have hastened the end of the yards by scaring business away. Instead, they stayed and without pay (and even "without bevvying") they completed the ships they were working on.

You've got to wonder whether this would have been a better strategy for the miners in 1984. Sure, the miners had a genuine grievance - unfortunately Arthur Scargill was no Jimmy Reid.

Take a look at the speech he made on the subject of "Alienation" as Rector of Glasgow University the year following the work-in. Even flat on the page his words have impact. He was acclaimed as one of the best orators of his time, so I can imagine that in person he would have been yet more impressive.

Can't resist including my favourite bit of the speech at the bottom. It's an analysis of society that is as relevant and as poignant today as it ever was then.

At a time when we desperately need more Jimmy Reids, today we've found ourselves with one fewer.

Alienation is the precise and correctly applied word for describing the major social problems in Britain today. People feel alienated by society.

Today it is more widespread, more pervasive, than ever before. Let me at the outset define what I mean by alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control.

It’s the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel, with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies.

It is expressed by those young people who want to opt out of society, by drop-outs, the so-called maladjusted, those who seek to escape permanently from the reality of society through intoxicants and narcotics.

Society and prevailing sense of values leads to another form of alienation. It alienates some from humanity. It partially dehumanises some people, making them insensitive, ruthless in their handling of fellow human beings self-centred and grasping.

The irony is they are often considered normal and well adjusted. It is my sincere contention that anyone who can be totally adjusted to our society is in greater need of psychiatric analysis and treatment than anyone else.

Inception

2010-08-09T18:31:00.000+01:00

I really, really wanted to like this film. A well-funded, original, science-fiction script - these don't come up that often, so what's not to like?

Well, as it turns out, there's quite a lot not to like.

For a start, Leonardo DiCaprio cannot act. Well, OK he can, in the same way that Roger Moore "acted" in the Bond films. And the sad thing is that he's actually the best drawn character in the film. The others don't even count as one-dimensional. Nothing against the actors - they just didn't get a thing to work with.

And then there's the plot. The thing about science fiction is that everything is possible. Everything. The very best science fiction is tautly written, with detailed internal consistency. It creates a world unlike this world, but one where, over time, you develop an understanding of the way it works. Read Larry Niven's "Ringworld" for the best example I can think of.

"Inception" is the opposite of this - there's no development - just every once in a while a new plot device falls from nowhere. It wouldn't have been a surprise if the next time the plot ran into trouble, the writer would have some breakdancing antelopes surf in on a bed of luncheon meat and eat the problem. In science fiction you don't have to use the laws of the real world, but you damn sure need to have some kind of rules.

Without too much in the way of Spoilers, the bit that really annoyed me was that Edith Piaf played in a dreamer's ear was perfectly audible even though the dreamer who was living a much slower pace than reality. Surely the music would be slowed to the point of inaudibility ?

And the final third of the film was like being tied up in zero gravity and pushed slowly along a hotel corridor. Really slow and totally pointless.

Don't get me wrong, it's a perfect accompaniment to popcorn on a day off - it just felt like an opportunity lost to explore the weirdness of dreams.

For example, I was once chased though a bowl of muesli by a wooden mosquito - someone ought to make a movie about that.

"Bad Character" is not a town in Austria

2010-07-31T22:41:00.000+01:00

Johnny Boy (not his real name) is in trouble - he is charged with assaulting Jimmy Victim, an act witnessed by an unconnected third party - Jacqui Witness. Sounds like a fair cop ... but ...

Does it sound like an even easier decision if you know that Johnny Boy has a dozen previous convictions for violence ? He's done it before ... surely he's more likely than a regular Joe to do it again, right ?

How about if Jimmy Victim has his own previous record that marks him out as a small-time gangster ? Hmmm ... could be Johnny Boy was acting in self-defence and isn't it now possible that Don Jimmy is not telling the truth, the whole truth etc?

How about if Jacqui Witness has numerous alcohol-related convictions and until she was caught recently, she subsidised her income with benefits fraud? Not a reliable witness maybe.

Now put all three pieces of information together - basically a villain hit a villain and we should believe it because an alcoholic convicted fraudstress told us so.

This is where Bad Character applications come in. Before the main hearing, a bench of Magistrates can decide which of these pieces of information about the chequered history of the parties involved can be used in court.

In this particular case here, we allowed the previous violence of the defendant to be mentioned and only the violent previous offences of the victim (actual assaults but not money laundering, threats of violence, fraud and lots of etceteras)

After some debate we didn't allow Jacqui Witness' previous fraud to be mentioned and we didn't have any hesitation in denying the application in regards her alcohol convictions.

Goes against my basic instincts to restrict information in this way though. Surely we can trust the Magistrates trying the case to use the previous history where it seems relevant and to disregard it where it doesn't, rather than having a pre-trial trial with one bench of Magistrates pre-chewing the evidence for another bench ?

Also saves money - hint, hint.

Mercury Prize Time Again

2010-07-23T12:13:00.000+01:00

I've mentioned before that I like the Mercury Prize, even when I fundamentally disagree with the judges (Spreech Debelle - was that supposed to be funny ??).

I use it as an alarm clock to remind me mid-year that I don't want to turn into one of those clueless middle-aged men who thinks The Smiths might still be making albums, so I'd better check that I've listened to a shed-load of new music.

But it's a pretty poor line-up this year :-

Paul Weller and Corinne Bailey Rae have made better albums
Dizzee Rascal is over-rated, over-exposed and under-good.
Two lots of insipid folky Irish bollox.
Laura Marling is very good, but Ellie Goulding is much, much better and she didn't get a nomination
The xx, Foals, I am Kloot, Biffy Clyro are the kind of bands supported by "students with too many posters of Betty Blue, The Blues Brothers, Big Blue and Blue Velvet on their blue bloody walls!" (ref: Spaced), so I'm never likely to approve.

I liked the token jazz entry (as usual), but it's never going to win and is hardly revolutionary.

In addition to the Ellie Goulding snub, there's another absentee I can't understand - Gorillaz's "Plastic Beach".

This is exactly the kind of album I expect the Mercury Prize to tip me off about - what's not to like about an album with tracks featuring collaborations between Mos Def and Bobby Womack, and between Mick Jones and Paul Simonon (my favourite bass guitarist - "Guns of Brixton" - goosebumps) ?

Oh well, there's always next year.

“The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.”

2010-07-22T00:43:00.000+01:00

The best known Magistrate Blogger, Bystander, has been getting some lip from the Provisional Wing of the Magistrates Association.

I'm referring here to the half dozen or so people who settle scores on the Association's rather creaky and very private members bulletin boards.

In summary, their problem with Bystander is that he says stuff they don't agree with and that he should stop moaning and get behind them and help them achieve their worthy purposes.

Last time I fell foul of this cabal, I was told to stop moaning and to get behind them and help them achieve their worthy purposes.

I'm detecting a pattern - you have to applaud their consistency at least.

I'm not going to write a full-on diatribe. This is mostly because I'm really quite stupid and not much of a writer. Instead I'll rely on a quotation from a properly smart writer, Mark Twain:-

“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

I support the worthy purposes of the lay Magistracy unconditionally and I have put a tenth of my household income and most of my free time on the line for it. The Magistrates Association, however, only gets my support when it deserves it.

Hope that's OK with everyone.

Quick - must post something ... Oh, this'll do

2010-07-19T14:56:00.000+01:00

I haven't run out of things to say on the blog - it's just that every day brings some new horror/wonder and my grasshopper mind skips off into the undergrowth.

Some highlights :-

(a) Government fiscal policy - the dictum of "if it hurts, it must be doing you good" can be disproved by putting your head in a drawer, and closing it repeatedly until you realise your mistake or you get to the point where the whole process has done you so much good that you need to go to hospital now.

I'm in all favour of trimming fat, but these sadists seem to want the muscle and bone and lots of screaming too.

(b) I have no sympathy for Raoul Moat. I do have sympathy with people who have complete mental breakdowns, but only the ones who dissolve into tears and get help. This guy was just a thug who lost his sense of proportion.

(c) I have no problems with Christians, Muslims or Jedis, but only one of these groups is imposing their toilet design on me.

(d) I don't know what happened to England in the World Cup either, but I'm reminded of the following piece of racing advice "Always bet on the best horse with the best rider". If you ever thought this was England, try the trick with the drawer described in (a) above.

Irony

2010-07-09T11:00:00.000+01:00

I was watching a man in the dock clutching a paper bag. He was in extreme danger of vomitting and was shaking like a leaf.

The problem was that he had been detained overnight in a police cell and hadn't been able to take his methodone prescription. He was on a dose of around 100mg, so he must have been a recent serious heroin addict.

On top of this, he had learning disabilities and didn't seem too clear why he was there. To make matters even worse, it was one of the hottest days of the year and it must have been stifling behind the plexiglass.

And his alleged crime ?

"Animal cruelty"

Sometimes the criminal justice system really doesn't get it.

Even sitting in the garden one can still get stung

2010-06-19T16:25:00.000+01:00

My attitude to gardening is similar to my attitude to rap music - I don't like it at all, but that's OK because I'm pretty sure it's not really aimed at people like me.

I'm rich enough to have a fairly significant garden but unfortunately I'm way too poor to just pay someone with talent to do something with it. The result is that after four years of relative neglect, the garden is ugly. I had a look out the other day and couldn't find one thing I liked about it. After a short discussion with Mrs Stan we came to the conclusion that everything should go.

And for the last week or so I've been demolishing anything woody with saw, crowbar and fork. Actually quite satisfying - tackling a large tree root is like solving a cryptic crossword - it takes you an age to work out how the root connects to the trunk, which other roots are supporting it and whether to use the saw or to bash it to pulp with the business-end of the crowbar. Nice feeling when you finally rip it out with your hands. Terrible feeling when you've spent hours cutting every visible side root and the thing still won't move.

Now we've got a big empty garden. Next-door are freaked out that we can see across the fence now and are building a trellis similar to the one Israel are building round the West Bank. I'm putting grass seed down everywhere until we can work out what we actual want.

And that's the last you'll hear from me about gardening for a while.

Nothing Like a Dame - No, really, nothing at all like one

2010-06-08T20:01:00.004+01:00

In my interview to become a Magistrate, I was asked whether an assault by a man on a woman should be sentenced differently to an assault by a woman on a man. Instead of coming out with the answer I suspected they wanted, I actually said what I believed at the time.

Suspected Model Answer

"Heaven forbid ! An assault is an assault and all should be treated alike"

Actual Answer

"An attack by a strong person on a weak person is an abuse of power and the weaker person deserves some extra protection from the law".

I didn't say this was always the case with man-on-woman violence (could be big woman - little guy) and I pointed out that some relationships are same-sex and that I would have the same opinion if a big guy was knocking lumps out of his smaller male partner.

I did end up passing the interview, but knowing what I know now - what an idiotic argument. Just because someone is physically bigger, does the law give them an extra responsibility ?

I blame my upbringing - it really didn't prepare me for some of the women I've seen from the bench recently :-

Ms A - is longterm unemployed in her 30s, but looks more like 55. Alcohol and Class A drug history, with some thieving and prostitution to pay the bills. New boyfriend is a perfect match for her, except that sometimes she thinks he's stealing her drugs and she beats him, sometimes with the crutch he got the last time he "fell down the stairs".

Ms B - is a scientist in her 50s. She had an almost cartoonishly bad divorce last year from her ex, who is a respected doctor. She hates him. To the point where she closed the front door on his head and kicked him in the babymakers when he came round to talk about custody arrangements.

Ms C - is 20 and pregnant by a man twice her age and half her IQ. He's a big bloke, but with not a bit of violence in him. She likes to drink and when she does she falls out with him and attacks. I've seen the pictures of bruises and the marks made by her nails. He took this for years and stayed quiet until eventually his mother made a complaint to the police.

I'm not sure what the moral of this tale is. Mostly that anyone who makes simplistic statements about domestic violence is an idiot. Or a Daily Mail journalist. Most likely both.

Radio 4 - Sometimes Really Quite Good

2010-06-02T22:02:00.005+01:00

Radio 4 gets it so terribly wrong a lot of the time. Atrocious sit-coms; history of the world in ten million bits of fluff; The Garlic, Olive Oil and Aga show. And as for that Agricultural Soap Opera - Grrr!

However it does excel often enough that I keep on coming back.

Take tonight's edition of "Front Row", their regular Arts programme. It would have been an interesting enough companion to chopping carrots for Sweet and Sour Chicken even with just the articles about Highgate Cemetery and the new Doctor Who online game. But it was the musical items that made it really special.

First off was a report on Derry's attempt to become Britain's next city of culture. Cue music from The Undertones, the most joyous and ballsy music there ever was. Guaranteed to make you smile, except it reminds me that the world has been without John Peel for nearly six years now, and that's a crying shame.

Second was a piece on how Rhianna's "Umbu-reller-reller-hay-hay" has become a modern classic that is being covered by an insane variety of bands from punk to indie to light jazz and onto (my favourite) Rockabilly. Listen to The Baseballs' version and I challenge you to have no emotion about it. Made me smile, made Stanetta stomp off in disgust. That's no mean trick.

A hand bag ??!!

2010-05-22T15:16:00.003+01:00

"The Guardian" published a general paper from the All Souls, Oxford fellowship exam. It's a gruelling test that Keith Joseph passed and Hilaire Belloc failed, so it's not a perfect gauge of a person's worth.

You write an essay on three from a list of 34 topics. Here's my attempt, which probably shows I'm more suited to be a fellow at Ar Souls, rather than All Souls.

Q1 : "Is it immoral to buy a £10,000 handbag ?"

No. Not at all. As long as it's your ten grand, this is as close to a win-win situation as you will find in economics. The purchaser gets something that will impress other rich, selfish idiots and the seller gets £10,000. Selfish and stupid, but not actively immoral.

By the way, I love the choice of a handbag as an example here. Is it possible that most fellowship candidates will be male and unlikely to understand the utility of spending anything on a handbag ? And will they see that spending several billion on Trident and several tens of millions on a football player are much worthier subject for criticism ?

Wonder how many expensive paintings All Souls has on the walls, and yet they can only afford to sponsor two fellowships per year? Hmmm.

Q30 : Is string theory science ?

Yes - it's what scientist do, so it's science. Repeatable experiments are for wimps.

But I do think their time would be better spent working on a beetle that eats everything in a suburban garden that doesn't taste good in a pie.

Q29 : Why "hug a hoodie"?

(1) So his whole posse will laugh at him and call him a batty boy, innit.
(2) For warmth

I'm not drunk occifer, I've only had ti martwonis.

2010-05-18T19:58:00.007+01:00

It has been illegal since 1925 in the UK to drive a vehicle while drunk. It wasn't until 1967 however that anyone bothered to say exactly how drunk.

The Road Safety Act of that year introduced the first legal maximum blood alcohol drink driving limit of 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood and there was some good science to suggest that, in the absence of something extraordinary, this equated to 35 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath or 107 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of urine.

The breathalysers available in 1967 were pretty basic and involved crystals changing colour (see below), so they didn't provide an acceptable quality of evidence. There was also a lot of discussion of civil liberties and the pub landlords went ballistic. To cut a long story short, it wasn't until 1983 and the introduction of the Lion Intoximeter that we ended up with the procedure we know and love today.

As a sop to those who distrusted the breath tests, the Act of 1981 introduced an option that anyone who blew under 50 could ask for an allegedly more accurate blood or urine test. The police choose the method - either get a police doctor to come and take blood or measure the alcohol content of the second of two urine samples given within one hour.

All this is fine - but after a quarter century, surely we trust the breath technology enough by now to dispense with this ?

Can you guess what happens if the doctor can't find a vein and the accused can't wee twice in an hour ?

Let's just say that lawyers get rich and Magistrates lose the will to live and the accused still gets their ban.

Scientific Footnote

1967 breath test - Orange-yellow crystals of a mixture of sulphuric acid and potassium dichromate in a tube turn to blue-green chromium sulphate and colourless potassium sulphate when the mixture reacts with alcohol breath. Check the colour by eye - if blue then naughty; if very blue then very naughty.

Modern breath test - the breathalyser has a platinum anode which acts as a catalyst to cause the alcohol in the person's breath to oxidise into acetic acid. In the process, the alcohol molecules lose electrons, producing an electric current, which is proportional to the amount of alcohol in the breath.

An accurate ammeter will give you a more accurate reading than checking crystals against a colour chart.

Florence + The Machine @ Blackpool

2010-05-10T17:27:00.002+01:00

I went to an awesome gig at the Blackpool Winter Gardens. It was 1982, I was 16 and Ultravox blew the walls down.

I went to an awesome gig at the Blackpool Winter Gardens. It was yesterday, I was 43 and Florence + The Machine blew the walls down, set fire to the roof and stomped up and down on the ruins.

Her voice is miraculous, her stagecraft is compelling and her backing band really know what they're about. The live version of "Girl With One Eye" was Edgar Allen Poe scary and the singing, whooping and bouncing rendition of "Rabbit Heart" had the energy of a military coup.

Totally faultless and I can't see how she can possibly improve, but by jingo I'm looking forward to watching her try.

All Governments are Coalition Governments

2010-05-08T12:43:00.002+01:00

The title pretty well says all I want to say. There seems to be so much fear that a Lib-Con or Lib-Lab-Green-SDLP-SNP-Acronym alliance will be in some way inferior to single-party rule.

Think about it though - the Labour party is composed of many feuding groups and contains characters like Frank Field and Dennis Skinner whose views bear little or no resemblance to Peter Mandelson's. On the Tory side, anyone who spots a similarity between David Davis and Zak Goldsmith deserves a prize.

The point is that they put their differences aside when they have to and co-operate where they can. Sounds very much like a coalition government to me.

Vote Stan.

Wake Up and Smell the Chaos

2010-05-07T14:31:00.002+01:00

I did say I wanted all the political parties to lose, and blow me if that wasn't the way things worked out. Cameron missed an open goal, Brown took a kicking and Clegg did some step-overs but didn't do much of anything with the ball. A three-way nil-nil-nil no-score-draw, and now it's time for extra time and penalties, with the potential for a replay.

Stanetta wanted to watch my "The West Wing" box-sets now that she's old enough, and we've just finished watching all seven series together. I like to compare the deadlocked Democratic convention in series six with the current Lib-Lab-Con fatal embrace. Somebody is going to have to talk to somebody and work it out.

Vote Stan.

Overthrowing the Government

2010-05-06T19:01:00.002+01:00

Yes, I'm the kind of geek who will sit up all night watching the election results come in. This year I'm not particularly struck by any of the parties involved and I've ended up voting for the one I feel the least contempt for. It's like watching Manchester United vs Chelsea - you desperately want them all to lose.

The Conservative candidate in my constituency has been MP for the last 8 years and is likely to remain so for the next 40 years if he so desires. Despite this, his leaflets try to make out out that he is the "Change" candidate. If he wants change so much, maybe I should give him 50p and tell him to clear off.

Vote Stan.

Some random points to bulk this out

The yellow "Vote LibDem" signs look too much like speed cameras
I had Bakewell pudding and custard for breakfast this morning
Saw this amazing Anne Stevenson poem on the Tube - love the way that no word can sensibly be swapped and that no punctuation is optional.

Attention Music Buffs

2010-05-05T10:38:00.004+01:00

I think Usher's "OMG" is ripping off the bass line from Savage Garden's "To the Moon & Back", but I'm not enough of a musicologist to make it stand up in court.

Anyone else suspicious, or do they just share one of the limited number of tonic-dominant bass lines available ?

Knicker Crime

2010-05-05T09:33:00.005+01:00

I got a nice letter from the chairman of the magistrates' Training and Development Committee basically confirming that my recent appraisal hadn't shown up any signs of open bigotry or senility and that it wasn't yet time to cart me off to the Rest Home for Befuddled Former Magistrates. Not for another three years anyway.

In other magistrate news, there was an outbreak of sanity in Bedford when the District Judge decided that it was not in the public interest to prosecute someone for having trousers so low that you could see their pants. The Telegraph, fairly typically, doesn't pass up an opportunity to snipe at the Human Rights Act - I'd like to think the DJ decided that it was just no part of his job to be Fashion Police.

I have however sat with not a few reactionary magistrates who might have nodded along with this, and then would have attempted to impose an additional haircut and National Service requirement.

Personally, I'm in favour of this gentlemen having low slung trousers - it'll slow him down next time he has to run away from the police.

Lost - The Plot

2010-05-01T17:45:00.001+01:00

Oi ! You ! The script writers on "Lost" - I'm coming to get you.

Yes, I know you've finished writing it and the final series is airing on Sky just now. But this gizmo on a my head is a hydrogen bomb rigged to explode on impact so I'm hoping to break the time-barrier and make you change some stuff when I come down there and head-butt you.

Do I have your attention ? Good - I only have a few perfectly reasonable issues.

Firstly, quit putting in new twists before you've resolved some of the old ones. After a while there's no drama - you just shrug and think "Oh that bowl of mushroom soup hasn't been explained. I'll bet we won't hear a word about it for twenty episodes and then it'll fall on someone's mother's bodyguard's sister's head for no good reason."

Secondly, characters. If you will insist on gratuitously introducing new ones, you dilute even the comic-book paper-thin characters we almost care about. Best to work on the basis of one-in, one-out. And when you kill one off, make sure they damn well stay dead.

And thirdly, totally ignore me. I'm just a guy with a nuclear bomb on his head. What you do is totally marvellous - do you really have to stop after series 6 ?

Choked

2010-04-13T22:11:00.003+01:00

Kathleen Eckelt is a forensic nurse in the Baltimore area, and I am grateful to her blog for this stone-cold round-up of domestic violence injuries.

Those of you too lazy to click on the link should at least learn the following information about a choke-hold:-

It takes only 11lbs. of pressure, held bilaterally for 10 seconds, to cause the victim to become unconscious.

If applied to a person under stress during a struggle, a strangle may make the person unconscious almost immediately, while it may take several seconds for a calm person to pass out.

If released, consciousness returns in about 10-20 seconds.
If held for 50 seconds, damage is usually irreversible.
Death occurs at 1-2 minutes.

Policemen are no longer allowed to use this type of restraint against a strong, violent male prisoner due to the deaths that have occurred as a result of the compression on the airway.

It takes only 4 lbs. of pressure to obstruct the jugular veins.

To make a comparison:

It takes 6 lbs. of pressure to pull the trigger of a gun.

It takes 20lbs. of pressure to pull the tab on a soda can.

Can't help thinking this Magistrate is going to take a particularly dim view of people who mistreat their partners in this dangerous manner.

The Rare Good Song

2010-04-12T17:51:00.007+01:00

I was in a café the other day and they played "I Can't Dance" by Genesis followed by "Losing My Religion" by REM. It occurred to me that these two are examples of songs that I love from people who haven't produced a single other song that I like.

Further examples include :-

"Shelter From The Storm" - Bob Dylan
"Could It Be Magic" - Barry Manilow
"Can't Speak French" - Girls Aloud
"Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps" - Olivier Messiaen

I'm not talking about "One Hit Wonders" - there are plenty enough of those. What fascinates me is that someone can produce one thing that works for me amongst a considerable mountain of stuff that doesn't.

Any further nominations gratefully received.

Restrained

2010-04-11T19:04:00.004+01:00

Among the 1.6 billion pieces of legislation brought in by the government in the last decade (a rough estimate, I admit) there have been some good ones.

Take "Sections 12 and 13 of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004" for example.

Before this law came in, a victim of domestic violence would have had to :-

(a) Wait for the criminal case to result in a guilty verdict
(b) Apply to the civil courts for a restraining order

After this came in :-

(a) Magistrates issue a restraining order at the end of the criminal trial, whether proven or not, if the court considers it necessary to protect a person from harassment.

Imagine you're in an abusive relationship - doesn't that sound like an improvement to you?

Even though this act was passed in 2004, for reasons passing all understanding it only came into force last September, and so I only came across it for the first time the other day.

In that case the Defence lawyer contended that even though his client had just been convicted of something that might have killed his soon-be-be-ex wife, this was a one-off and he had no previous violence conviction. Probation had rated him as a low risk of re-offending and the only thing the Restraining Order would achieve would be to make it difficult for him to maintain his relationship with his teenage son. It would be "a sledgehammer to crack a nut".

After a fascinating discussion in the retiring room with two particularly experienced colleagues, we decided that some nuts do need a sledgehammer and granted the restraining order.

Maybe we've just spoiled the relationship between a father and a son, but more likely we've given a man another reason not to hurt a woman.

I'm sleeping fine.

Letts Get Stuck In

2010-04-07T11:59:00.004+01:00

The only thing I have in common with Quentin Letts is that neither of us can write quite as well as we think we can.

It seems he's the type who keeps a list of people who have irritated him in some way. The result is his book "50 People Who Buggered Up Britain" which is 277-pages of sheer sneering whine.

His prose style is bizarre - like a collaboration between a petulant adolescent and a dyspeptic retired judge. But that's not the real problem with the book.

HIs choice of targets is bewildering enough - some of these people were doing their job or the right thing or both. Heath sacked Enoch Powell - and that was a bad thing ??? Callaghan started us on the long road to decimalisation ???

Some of the blows are particularly low and lazy. Why criticise Ed Balls for having a silly name and goggly eyes when his handling as Education secretary of the Baby P case is so much more worthy of invective?

The main gripe I have though is that Britain plainly isn't "Buggered Up". Heck it stand to improve, but this country is one the best things about an imperfect world. It works as least as well as it always did and in some ways it's getting better and better. Just ask the stream of people who stow away in boxes and take very shallow breaths to get here.

And it's not individuals who do the damage. All of the issues that annoy Letts are the result of large complicated (but dull) social forces. For example, it's simplistic (but oh so human) to pretend that John McEnroe was responsible for our lack of respect for referees because he so publicly lost the page with one in 1981. How much easier to blame a person.

So in short: wrong-headed, plain wrong and not that well written.

Quite a bit like reading "The Daily Mail" .

Douglas Adams, Ulysees and The Wire

2010-04-03T20:15:00.004+01:00

In hospital I read two and a half out of four books of a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" compilation. I was reading it right up to the point where I had to put on my dressing gown, grab a pillow and walk down to the operating theatre. Made me feel very Arthur Dent.

I did consider taking Ulysees, which is my favourite book ever - but I figured I would need something a bit less demanding and the decision was a good one. Haven't read these incredible books since I was half my current age and they have aged a lot better than I have. Except for the stuff about digital watches.

Coming round from the anaesthetic, I came up with the theory that "Hitchhiker's Guide" and "Ulysses" are fundamentally the same book:-

Arthur Dent = Leopold Bloom
Ford Prefect = Stephen Daedalus
Zaphod = Blazes Boyland
Trillian = Molly Bloom
The Universe = Dublin
Milliways = the brothel where Stephen and Leopold meet.

Plus, both books start with a shave.

Recovering at home, I'm working through the complete box-sets of "The Wire" that Mrs Stan gave me for Christmas.

Must - resist - temptation .... must - not - rave - incoherently - about - its brilliance.

You do lose yourself in the world of street-level Baltimore and it must be difficult to follow without a dictionary. I hope the following is useful:-

"The hopper's carrying a burner" - the frog has a barbecue

"re-up" - concerning up

"G packs" - what you keep g-strings in

"The civilian's carrying weight" - big fat non-soldier

"The Game" - cricket, I think

"He's not a fiend, he's slinging" - a morally good, but incompetent darts player

"The sh*& is tight" - I'm constipated

"McNulty" - A device for turning alcohol into outrage

Plumbing on the mend

2010-03-27T11:36:00.005Z

Just a quick note to say I'm back. In fact I've been out of hospital since Wednesday morning, taking it easy at home.

Message to anyone contemplating the Bladder Neck Incision (BNI) - it will be uncomfortable for a few weeks but never actually terribly painful. Takes a hell of long time to heal, but it will. Definitely worth it - the difference is really quite startling. Worst part is the way being in hospital and the anaesthetic and the catheter play havoc with your digestion system. Funny how there's never any flatulence in hospital dramas when there's so much in real hospitals.

My recovery is actually faster than I expected - less than a week after being discharged I'm daring to venture out to see Bolton vs Man United at the Reebok. I suspect it'll be worth it, if only to watch Rooney have some fun with our slightly dodgy defence.

Low Water Pressure

2010-03-21T21:34:00.004Z

There are bloggers who delight in shouting every tiny detail of their lives at the internet. I'm not one of those bloggers.

Tomorrow I'm going into hospital for a bladder operation - if you're so-minded and not at all squeamish you can google on "Bladder Neck Incision" to get way too much information about the procedure. YouTube even have a video of the operation, which I warn you does look like a cross between the end of "2001 - A Space Odyssey" and a slasher movie.

I didn't tell you about all the delightful preliminaries and probes and investigation over the last few months, but I didn't particularly want to say and I'm pretty certain you didn't really want to know.

I'm likely to be in hospital for a couple of nights and then at home straying no far from the toilet for a couple of weeks.

The upshot of this for you is that I'll either be strangely quiet or blogging every hour on the hour for the next few weeks.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

Chief Whip

2010-03-20T21:58:00.004Z

The best way to annoy someone who claims to support the BNP is to ask them for five BNP policies that aren't about immigration. If they can't come up with five they're just a straightforward racist. If they do come up with five then they are a well-informed racist.

If you do the research (and I did, as a service to my readers) you quickly see that the non-immigration policies seem to have been hastily cut-and-pasted from the "Have Your Say" section of the Daily Mail online. I skipped past a lot of the blah blah - but it was one of their policies on my beloved Law 'n' Order that woke me up with a bump :-

We support the re-introduction of corporal punishment for petty criminals and vandals,

Can you imagine a Magistrates' Court under a BNP government?

"Mister Lifter, you have admitted the offence of theft. We have therefore sentenced you to twelve medium-level strokes of the Number 3 cane across your bare bottom in the town square. Because of your not guilty plea, we'll go easy with the last three."

Magistrates have sworn to implement the letter of the law of the day, no matter how deranged and deluded the government of the day might be. Makes me wonder whether I would actually continue under those circumstances.

Oh, and has anyone noticed that the BNP hates Sharia Law for being brutal and then wants to introduce beatings for shoplifters ?

I guess fascists don't do irony.

Satyagraha@ English National Opera

2010-03-19T22:47:00.003Z

Da da da da dad dad dad
Da
Da
Da Da
Dadadadadadadadadadad ... dadadadadadaaa

Doodle-a-coodle-a-toodle-a-loodle-a-doodle-a-poodle ...

(Repeat)

Philip Glass' opera "Satyagraha" is wonderful music to have on when you're studying. I can testify that three hours of repeated arpeggi over what might as well be random pieces of Sanskrit is the perfect way to soothe your subconscious while your forebrain is trying to make sense of such wonders as the Jordan curve theorem.

Quarter of a century later, I've forgotten everything I know about abstract algebra, but at the performance of Satyagraha by the ENO in London I saw this week, I was shocked at how I had near note-perfect recall of the music.

I should have brought an algebra book though, because unfortunately there's not enough happening on the stage to keep your forebrain occupied.

It's meant to be about how Tolstoy, Tagore, Gandhi and Martin Luther King are stages on the road to "Satyagraha" ("Truth Power"). What that actually involves on stage is men on stilts doing huge origami, giant puppets, and (about 90% of the time) people walking in exaggerated slo-mo across the stage ...

.. left
... to ... right

and then

right ...
to ... left

and then ...

(repeat until brain death - and then a couple more times for luck)

I nearly had a giggle-fit during one of the big metaphorical half-hour paper-folding sessions. It was solemn and serious and probably as allegorical as all get-out, but without warning, my mind conjured up the image of Rolf Harris sitting next to me and whispering in my ear :-

"Can you guess what it is yet ?"

That said, there were many positive points to the evening. The vocalists were incredible, the score is inventive and well worth hearing and the concert orchestra were patient and disciplined.

But bring a book. Or some ironing. Or Rolf Harris.

No Trouble, No Trouble

2010-03-12T14:03:00.004Z

Thanks to "Soul Music" on Radio 4, I am not going to moan about the BBC for a whole year. They can continue to spend my licence fee money on utter garbage like Graham Norton, Total Wipeout and four-hour amateur dance phone-in shows for every one of those twelve months and they won't hear a peep out of me.

"Soul Music" has a simple premise - that there are pieces of music that have had a huge impact on the lives of a sufficiently interesting range of people. It is currently into its 9th series, and it's amazing to me that they've taken this long to get round to "Dido's Lament" by Purcell.

It's a song of very few notes that has an effect similar to pepper spray on anyone with a soul. Or maybe just me. Anyway, there have been amazing recordings over the years, from Janet Baker to Hayley Westenra and I would have loved just to listen to all of the performances back-to-back. Instead, the programme looked a little deeper.

Firstly it tried to explain note by note just how Purcell managed to ratchet up the emotion. Pretty elementary stuff for any musician I'm sure, but quite a revelation for a civilian like me.

Then, as well as covering the more famous recordings, it spent some time looking at some of the more unorthodox attempts. Alison Moyet didn't quite do it justice in a smoky jazz style, but mostly they looked at Jeff Buckley's performance at the 1995 Meltdown Festival.

I love Jeff Buckley's work and this is one of the best songs of all time. You might expect the combination of the two could not possibly live up to my expectations.

Ohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The cellist at the recording was interviewed and he described how Jeff Buckley arrived with the lyrics written out on paper, with the high notes written high up and the low notes low down. He obviously thought to himself "typical blooming rock star" ... right up to the moment when he started to sing.

Jeff Buckley's voice is a freakish four octave-wide gift from the gods. It's crammed full of raw emotion and undiluted musicality. He took that song from fifteen generations ago that has been performed by thousands of the best singers of all time and made you think about it in a new light. It certainly blew away the cellist who said that the performance made him realise he knew nothing about music. He knew the theory, he could play the notes, but he just wasn't anywhere near to Jeff Buckley in terms of feeling it.

I've said enough - Jeff Buckley's recording is on YouTube and the episode of "Soul Music" is still available on the BBC website for a few days only.

Enjoy.

Dispirited

2010-03-09T14:09:00.005Z

I have never seen anyone more in of help than Steve. You couldn't watch him for too long without his constant shaking giving you motion sickness, and he just about managed to stay standing when the charges were put to him.

He was picked up in the toilets of a local supermarket with a bottle of vodka that he had tried to take through the security barrier. The alarm went off, he ran to the toilets and had managed to chug 1/3 of the bottle before the security guards yanked the cubicle door open. He had been in custody overnight, so that was the last drink he had had and he was well into withdrawal when we saw him the next morning.

If it seems a bit harsh to lock someone up overnight for stealing a few gulps of cheap vodka, Steve's problem was that last month he had already been up before the Magistrates for stealing vodka from supermarkets. This previous bench had asked Probation for reports and had sent him for a detox at the hospital. All he had to do was speak to probation, save his own life by attending the detox appointment, come back to court to be sentenced and meanwhile stay out of trouble

Steve, however, was so far into the bottle that he managed 0/4 of these tasks. His defence lawyer said that he didn't attend detox out of fear. I can't begin to imagine just how daunting that must be. Probation's attitude seemed to be that they are already fully occupied with people who want help to be wasting time on those who don't attend appointments. Under these circumstances, Steve was definitely going to prison.

Prison is the wrong place for Steve. He'll dry out sure, but all the problems in his life that led him to drink will be there and then some when he gets out. He also won't be in prison for anything like long enough for the prison service to do any work on him.

So Steve's going to be away for a few weeks. I truly hope he hits bottom there and comes out fighting, but I'm experienced enough now to realise that that 's unlikely. I'm pretty sure I'll see him in court again.

But at least I've helped make the world safe for the big supermarkets to continue to make a profit from selling gut-rot vodka to addicts.

Whoopee ...

A Great Week for Music

2010-02-23T19:09:00.004Z

Good music seems to have followed me around this week :-

-> Abbey Road studios is in danger of closing - cue lots of Beatles tracks and a reminder that George Harrison was the most talented of the Beatles. "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun" are a class above the rest of the Abbey Road album. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is the best Beatles track bar none. Don't argue with me.

-> Ice Dance from the Winter Olympics - yes a strange way for a straight man to spend his time, but watching Virtue and Moir skate to Mahler's gorgeous 5th as though gravity was optional - I've got goosebumps just typing this. Not as good as Brazilian football, but what is? Is it nearly World Cup time yet ?

-> "Nurse Jackie" ended with "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" by Creedence Clearwater Revival - about the only band in the world absolutely guaranteed to make me burst into song. Can't help myself.

Suspended Animation

2010-02-22T00:28:00.005Z

If you have a crash on the driving test, I was told, no matter how much it wasn't your fault, you will be failed. Even if a drunk disqualified driver steals a fire-engine and clips your bumper while you're parallel parking - the only safe decision is to fail you.

The Magistrate appraisal system seems to be similar. You could be unlucky enough to get a highly emotional case and some highly annoying colleagues on assessment day. Under those circumstances, even the saintliest of Mags could be provoked into a reaction that causes the appraiser to flunk them. And it's unfair because many other appraisees would have had a perfectly straight-forward day.

This was in my mind before my recent appraisal : "Please don't make it complicated. Bit of traffic, bit of drink-related shoplifting and home for lunch".

Atheists are rotten at praying, so of course something complicated came up.

The case concerned a rather sad older man, who was making a honest but incompetent attempt to kick his drink habit. He had countless previous for petty crime, but his most recent transgression was a year ago when he received a prison sentence suspended for two years for domestic violence.

He was in court now for getting drunk and starting a fight in a bus station.

Had it been a first offence it would probably be a matter of a fine and some unpaid work, but he had committed this offence when this suspended sentence was hanging over his head. This could make it a much more serious matter - we could decide to activate the custodial sentence he got last time and send him to prison.

Well, my opinion was that his "last chance" was one year ago and that yes, he should go to prison now. My appraiser and the chairman took the opposing view that it would be better for him to continue on his various drink/violence programs and to give him some unpaid work for this latest offence.

It did cross my mind that maybe I shouldn't be awkward during an appraisal and just nod along, but happily I took no notice of those voices and made a polite, assertive, utterly doomed attempt to get my point of view across. To the credit of my colleagues they behaved in a totally professional manner and after a short debate, I conceded that in this chap's case, we could construct a non-custodial punishment. The debate was constructive and friendly and even though my opinion didn't prevail, I didn't feel that I had "lost".

My general opinion though is that violating a suspended sentence order should lead to immediate custody in the majority of cases. Otherwise, what's the point ? I understand that immediate custody would not have been the best thing for the offender, but what about the victim of the original domestic violence and the people he assaulted more recently ?

Judging the Judges

2010-02-15T17:06:00.005Z

It's been a while since I've had anything to say about being a Magistrate, and rather untypically for a blogger, I decided against waffling on about nothing.

Administration keep cancelling my sittings and I haven't been able to get any replacements, so I've started getting letters from Management subtly implying that I'm deficient and need to pull my finger out. Quite frustrating - none of the cancellations have been my idea - if they need me to do more sessions, they should list me for more. Or stop blooming well cancelling me.

No wonder retired people are over-represented on the bench - the reality of being a Magistrate is that your sessions will be cancelled and you will have to take replacement sessions at short notice to make your quota. This is likely to hack off even the most saint-like of employers.

Anyway, enough whingeing, today was a day worth blogging, because it was my first performance appraisal.

The way it works is that after your first year as a Magistrate (and every three years after that) , you will be observed by an experienced Magistrate who will look for evidence that you are competent.

There's a detailed list of points they are looking for, but the overall thrust is to check you are following the process, don't have any undesirable personality traits and that you have a plan to become a better Magistrate.

It was quite painless - the business of the day takes precedence, so you just do what you usually do and I almost forgot that one of my colleagues was ticking boxes. The hard part for me was the "plan to become a better Magistrate" - not because I think I'm already perfect, but because I don't yet have a clear idea what I suck at.

The sample development plan includes such things as "I will read the section in my Bench Book on community penalties". I really have a problem with that - who would actually put that as a development objective rather than just, you know, reading the section?

In my case, I haven't yet been able to take part in any multi-day complex trials, so that's what I'm committing to doing next year. Hopefully this will help me get to 26 sessions next year without hassle.

Who'll be my role model now that my role model is gone ?

2010-02-07T11:56:00.003Z

I walked into the room while Stanetta was watching "American Idol" right about the time that a wide eyed adolescent male contender was saying "I hope one day to become a role-model."

This blew my mind. A role model is usually defined as a "person who serves as an example, whose behaviour is emulated by others". Is this really what he had in mind ? And can you actually set out to be a role model - surely you just do what you do "with clean hands and composure" and almost accidentally become one.

The John Terry saga illustrates for me that the "role" part of "role model" has been forgotten. If you're looking for a great example of a muscular, thuggish centre-back, then John Terry is a great choice. Since when was he supposed to be a model father or model husband ?

I think Ron Greenwood sums it up in his assessment of a previous generation's role model:-

"Ask me to talk about Bobby Moore the footballer and I will talk for days. Ask me about the man and I will dry up in a minute."

An Open Letter to a Young Football Hater

2010-02-02T20:54:00.005Z

Yes my love, I do see exactly why you might think football is a worthless game and with moral garbage on legs like John Terry, I can understand why you might think football players worthless.

But look what happened tonight. Crystal Palace are in administration. They were so skint that they couldn't play their star striker at weekend because the administrator wouldn't take the risk of him being injured before they sold him off.

They were so lacking in resources for tonight's cup game that they had to play a defender in attack - someone who had almost accidentally scored a handful of goals in over 200 games.

They were playing Wolves, who are in the Premier League - they're not a great team but they should have easily been able to have seen off this shower.

What happened ? Well, the stand-in striker scored a hat-trick in one amazing seven minutes of football that Roy of the Rovers would have struggled to match.

It wasn't just the goals - it was watching the contrasting emotions that made the experience special. And this wasn't manufactured fictional emotion like you'd see in a good production of Macbeth - this was real human feelings of the type you never see anywhere else.

Take a look at the Palace fans - team up for sale and in real risk of relegation - they turn out for a cup game and sing their hearts out and, blow me, something magical and improbable happens - a miracle beyond their wildest dreams.

Look at Danny Butterfield, who is so obscure that I've just had to google to get his first name. Yesterday he was a honest hard-working footballer playing for a team on the skids. Today he's got thousands of people chanting "Butterfield for England!" His reaction of puzzled incomprehension wasn't one that any gifted actor could have matched.

Look at Mick McCarthy's face. He's the Wolves manager and he cares about doing a good job. Really cares. And his expensively-collected team have just let an unremarkable defender put three goals past them. He's not just crying - he's crying what looks like blood out of his bloodshot eye and it looks like his head is about to explode. King Lear never felt quite this bad.

Football is drama, Stanetta - it's just that it's in a language you need to learn. Come over to the Reebok and let me give you some lessons ?

One Cheer for the Economy ... Hip Hip !

2010-01-26T19:26:00.003Z

The UK economy grew at 0.1% in the final quarter of 2009. Wow - anyone feeling giddy ? Scream if you want to go faster...

The media (and the government) seem to think it's a big deal, but let's get a sense of proportion.

If I were to grow at 0.1% in the next 3 months, this would equate to a gain in height of less than 2mm and a weight gain of 100g. In other words, the difference between having a number 1 haircut and a number 2 haircut and the weight of half a cup of sugar.

And anyway, unless the economy grows faster than the population then we're not actually any better off. And according to the World Bank, UK population grew by 0.65% over 2008, which suggests a quarterly population growth of 0.16%

Whoops. We've all got a slightly smaller slice of a not-much-bigger pie.

Orange makes Stan see Red

2010-01-23T19:51:00.005Z

My mobile phone company wrote to me recently :-

"Dear Stan,

We've been asking Orange customers what they want from a credit card.
The feedback was loud and clear."

Here's what my loud and clear feedback would have been if they'd bothered asking me :-

"What the flippy heck are you doing asking us about credit cards?? If you've got some time on your hands you should be improving your rotten customer care and billing systems or your slightly iffy network coverage in Stanshire.

No, I do not want an Orange credit card - for the same reason that I don't want a Bradford & Bingley mobile phone.
Now get back to work, and the next time you contact me the message had better be about mobile phones, preferably containing the words 'free' and 'upgrade' '"

We Meet Again, Mr Coyle

2010-01-19T21:12:00.004Z

The duty of the underdog is to fight. An underdog that doesn't fight is a sheep, placidly waiting for the bolt-gun. Even though the situation seems hopeless, you've got to find some way to compensate for your lack of numbers or unpromising location.

If nothing else, if you're going to take a beating it's some consolation to know that you had them worried for a while there.

History (and mythology) is full of cases where the outsider makes a fight of it and sometimes even wins :-

Spartans vs Persians, Thermopylae, 480 B.C.
David 1 Goliath 0, Valley of Elah, 1067 B.C.
Wimbledon 1 Liverpool 0, Wembley, 1988 A.D.

In fact let's stop the list there - most of the other examples I can think of are football-related and this is the point I'm taking so long to get to.

A mathematician using Utility Theory would say that a 10% chance of a win is only half as desirable as a 60% chance of a draw, and that a defeat has absolutely no value at all.

To a fan of an unfashionable football team (Bolton Wanderers, say), this kind of arithmetic doesn't work at all. They demand that their team fight for that win and if they've tried and failed gloriously, then there's even some pleasure to be had in defeat.

This wasn't the way Gary Megson saw it. The not-lamented former Bolton manager never had the fans' taste for giving it a go and so ultimately he had to go. I personally was almost physically sick in his last game when he took off our star striker and brought on a so-called Utility Midfielder. As in "as much utility as a chocolate ashtray".

I even enjoyed watching the slightly new Bolton lose 2-0 on Sunday. Cesc Fabregas was freakishly excellent and there were ten others nearly as good and just as expensive in the Arsenal team. But Bolton played with an untypical lack of restraint and might just have fluked it. And the fans responded to this and made more positive noise than I've heard at the Reebok in some years.

Interesting that Owen Coyle has taken over as manager. When I lived in Glasgow and was a season ticker holder at the ultimate underdog Partick Thistle in the early 1990's, Owen Coyle, whether playing for Airdieonians or Dundee United, always seemed to be there to knock us down and out.

In fact, he was the reason I almost dropped Stanetta when she was one month old in 1996, walking around our bedroom in the dark listening to the relegation play-off final against Dundee United on the radio. When Owen Coyle scored the winner in extra time, I just about managed to hang onto my baby's ankle, although I think my inhuman moan of despair may have woken her up.

Better the Doofus you Know

2010-01-12T23:24:00.005Z

The hero of Stephen Fry's book "Making History" sends a male contraceptive pill back in time and makes Adolf Hitler's dad infertile. The theory was that by making sure Adolf Hitler never existed, millions of people would be spared the mayhem of war and holocaust that he caused.

What then happened though was that a different, less mad, more able man led the Nazis to victory in Europe in the 1940's and on to a lasting world domination that changed our hero's past and present very much for the worse.

I was reminded of this when I read about the government banning the organisation Islam4UK.

I actually wish they hadn't done this - Islam4UK's actions and opinions are monstrous, but they are almost comically incompetent and impotent. They have zero PR ability and are led by a failed medical student who supports his family on State Benefits. The man is so dim that he fails to see the contradiction involved in taking money from a State that he doesn't want anything to do with.

Can you imagine a situation where instead of this bunch of stroppy mammy's boys, an extreme Islamic organisation was formed that was led by someone of more substance. Imagine a man (not a woman, infidel) who was filled with something more than just lazy hatred and ambition. Imagine someone capable of building an organisation that was intelligent, well-funded, coherent and media-savvy.

Scary.

Society's best defence is actually the incompetence of its enemies. For example, Glasgow Airport was only saved because the car bomber didn't realise his jeep was too big to ever fit through the door. And the BNP will never prosper with a voter-repellent like Nick Griffin in charge.

Organisations like Islam4UK are never going to change anything and we shouldn't indulge Mr Choudary's ego by banning it.Being a member of a banned organisation is actually a little bit cool and there's a danger of making it more attractive to disaffected youth.

Better instead to charge them whenever they break the law (which they did) and to take any spare opportunity to look them in the eye, point at them and laugh.

Ha ha. Silly name "Islam4UK" anyway. Don't they realise there isn't anything more decadent and Western that using textspeak.

LOL ROFL etc.

We Don't Need No ...

2010-01-05T20:27:00.003Z

Some children skip school and their parents are committing a criminal offence if they encourage it, allow it or don't seem to be trying terribly hard to stop it.

Middle-class parents taking exotic holidays in term-time definitely wouldn't agree, but they are every bit as guilty of this as the poor parents with chaotic lives who can't or won't stop their offspring bunking off.

In this Information Age, if the kid is AWOL once, the school will telephone, write, email, twitter, poke and/or text the parents to make sure they are aware.

If the truanting continues, the school's pastoral staff of teachers and civilians will get into the act and if necessary would work with the family to resolve any of the billion possible underlying reasons.

Eventually a face-to-face will be set up to discuss needs and responsibilities and agree a way forward. If that doesn't work out and the child keeps absenting themselves, the Local Education Authority can issue a Fixed Penalty Notice - almost identical to the one you would get for littering. They've tried the Carrot of social work and now it's time for the Stick of costing real money.

Guess where the parents who don't pay the fixed penalty end up?

Not a very pleasant experience for anyone involved. Not for the skint single mum who just wanted everyone to leave her alone. Not for the teachers called as witnesses. And certainly not for this Magistrate who suspected inadequacy rather than malice here and would much rather spend his time dealing with genuinely bad people rather than acting as some kind of school prefect.

But hey, there has to be a final sanction or else the system is toothless and this wonderful compulsory education system becomes optional and kids run around unsupervised. This lady's already meagre benefits will now be short by £5 for the next couple of years and I don't feel great about that, but she did have dozens of opportunities to sort this and she passed up every one.

I know my first instinct was that this was a waste of Magistrate time, but actually this couldn't be more crucial. After all, what are the best three ways of reducing crime ?

Education. Education. And Education.

Overheating

2009-12-29T10:25:00.003Z

Talk about niche publishing - the following post will only be relevant to the tiny percentage of my already tiny readership who own a Topfield 5800 Personal Video Recorder and are having problems with it.

I bought it from a small company (3wisemonkeys.co.uk) through Amazon earlier on in the year. Worked fine for a while but then we noticed that after a few hours the quality of the TV signal would fall away to 0%, even though the strength of the signal from Winter Hill was still coming through good and strong.

I engaged in a long-running set of emails with all three of the monkeys, during which we ruled out all the standard user-related ID10T errors e.g "Are you sure it's plugged in ? Have you tried switching it off and back on again ?" Speak to any techie - the worst thing you can do for their blood pressure is to treat them like just another user. 3monkeys were polite and thorough and eventually agreed to take the machine back to have a look - if they could replicate the error then they would send a replacement.

Guess which machine ran without error for days of stress-testing at 3monkeys HQ ?

I ended up taking the "defective" machine back - this was causing me some stress at a time I didn't need stress over a mere appliance. It then became something of a hobby for me to find out what was wrong with the thing. I had many theories and all of them were falsified by experiment over a period of months, during which time I learned a lot about digital TV broadcast, reception and storage.

Then at Christmas, when I had some spare time and was rested, I read a report of overheating in a different brand of recorder in Australia. They had cured the problem there by standing the unit up on its edge, with the power unit at the top so that heat would rise away from the sensitive electronics inside the box.

Bingo - works like a dream, but does look a little odd at that angle.

It seems that the current state of the art in these digital recorders is such that you have two choices

(a) A big fan, which cools but makes a racket
(b) A little or no fan, which is quiet but which can fry

Early adopters of this technology should beware. The Topfield is otherwise an excellent product and 3monkeys are the nicest, most patient people in electrical retailing - but even so this wasn't a pleasant experience.

Stan Awards

2009-12-28T17:51:00.005Z

I love the end of year lists that clutter up the newspapers and TV schedules at this time of year. It's a great opportunity to pick up out the stuff that actually has lasting importance from the flashy and the superficial. So much the better that we've got a whole decade to look back on.

The following are the Stan Awards for the twenty-noughties - beverage of their choice in my local coffee shop for any of the winners who fancy collecting the award in person.

Book of the Decade

Carol Ann Duffy - "Rapture" (2005)

So few words, all of them exquisite. Never has the arc of a passion been more skilfully evoked. You can read the poems in the book in an hour and that's one of the best uses of an hour I can think of. Set aside two or three hours though - you WILL want to read it over again when you finish.

Band of the Decade

Radiohead

Look, they had the album of the last decade with "OK Computer" and still somehow managed to follow it up with four great albums that bore little resemblance to their greatest hits and to each other:

2000: Kid A
2001: Amnesiac
2003: Hail to the Thief
2007: In Rainbows

Seemingly infinitely creative, even going so far as to offer "In Rainbows" as a download with a voluntary price tag.

Album of the Decade

Florence + the Machine - "Lungs" (2009)

In a different mood I could have chosen :-

Radiohead - any of the four albums from the decade
Amy Winehouse - "Back to Black" (2006)
Arctic Monkeys - "Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not" (2006)
PJ Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea (2000)

But I couldn't resist making a fuss about this amazing début album - warped lyrics, a fine voice, sound textures like no other, and an intoxicating sense that here is a performer with a future and I can't wait to hear her next five or six albums over the next decade.

TV Show of the Decade

The Wire

You've heard it all before, not least from me. Makes the best of the rest seem amateurish and lacking in ambition by comparison. Mrs Stan bought me the complete box set for Christmas.

Best. Present. Ever.

Film of the Decade

Shrek (2001)

Funny and imaginative, rewarding repeat viewing in a way that the sloppy sequels don't.

In a different mood I could have chosen one of these :-

Mulholland Drive (2001)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Children of Men (2006)
Man on Wire (2008)

Verbing

2009-12-24T11:43:00.003Z

There is a battle raging in the Stan household and poor Stanetta is caught in the middle, having to choose sides.

The dispute is around the use of the word "dialoguing", which Mrs Stan used in an essay recently and which gave me something akin to anaphylactic shock when I read it.

To me, there are valid situations where converting a noun to a verb just works. For example, I don't object to the use of "to oil" instead of "to apply oil" - nor do I whince when "chair" is used as a verb. Yet the use of "dialoguing", "medaling", "signaturing" and even "transitioning" can raise my blood pressure more than reading about a mere human rights abuse. What does that say about me ?

No, don't answer that.

In the case of "dialoguing", this was a perfectly acceptable verb form to Shakespeare, then it fell out of fashion for a few centuries before being enthusiastically adopted by the kind of management consultant that gets paid by the syllable. I'm sure it's this Bullshot Bingo association that provokes my response.

Mrs Stan and I agree to disagree on this, but really it's down to Stanetta - she inherits the English language from our generation and it will down to her lot to decide whether in future we will "dialogue our issues and language a response".

Troubled Visitor

2009-12-16T22:24:00.005Z

Some days the visitor statistics for this blog throw up a surprise - some people find themselves here for the strangest reasons.

For example, one recent visitor had found my posting on the various grades of Assault by asking Google the following question :-

"if i plead guilty to a section 20 gbh will i go to prison"

The short answer is "probably", but I have a few pieces of advice for them:-

(a) Don't rely on a Google search to make a life-changing decision like this. Get a lawyer - get one now.

(b) Pleading guilty is a smart move if you are guilty and you know you are guilty - it is likely to earn you a significant discount on your sentence or even improve your chances of escaping a prison sentence altogether. But check with a lawyer before you do.

(c) Pleading guilty is the right and proper thing to do if you know you are guilty. Not just for you, but for everyone affected by the incident and for everyone who cares for you. But check with a lawyer before you do.

(d) If you're Not Guilty then it's doubly vital that you start talking to a lawyer now.

Did I stress highly enough the wisdom to getting yourself a lawyer and getting one now ? Seriously, nobody on the Web knows enough about your position to help you out of the hole you find yourself in. Stop doing Google searches and start dialling numbers out of Yellow Pages for solicitors.

And if you find yourself back at this blog sometime, I'd love to know how you got on.

War Crimes and Bald Tyres

2009-12-15T20:29:00.004Z

There's a big tray of forms in the retiring room - I figured they were all sentencing decision proformas or biscuit requisitions. Now that I know that somehow it's possible for Magistrates to issue warrants for the arrest of foreign politicians, I will definitely pay a bit more attention.

This week's sitting didn't have nearly that amount of drama, which was just as well because the Chair didn't show up and two Magistrates with a combined total of three years experience had to take care of business.

Pick of the cases was that of a confused old man who had had two blow-outs on his trailer. His response ? Keep on driving.

Eventually a concerned citizen called the police to report a car and trailer bouncing diagonally through the town centre. The vehicle examiner's report read like an air accident report - he had absolutely wrecked the brakes, the axle, the lights. Worst of all the tyres were so far gone that he had probably carved tramlines in the road surface with the rims.

What made the case interesting to me was his utter inability to grasp that he had done anything wrong. His story when stopped by police had been that he was on the way to the garage to get the tyres fixed. Even if that was true (and the vehicle examiner was doubtful), how did he convince himself that driving a death-trap through a population centre wasn't any kind of problem ?

He was genuinely gob-smacked when we found him guilty and docked his benefits for the next two years or so. Guidelines allowed us only to put three points on his licence though, which sounds mightily lenient to me given the potential mayhem that he was risking - imagine if he had kangaroo'ed through a bus queue ?

The thought that haunts me is this : When I do my 30,000 miles per year, how many people like this am I sharing the road with ?

Consolidation

2009-12-13T22:29:00.004Z

At the end of your first year as a Magistrate (assuming you haven't run away screaming by then) you get a couple of days consolidation training to prepare you for your assessment.

Good to catch up with my peer group - lots of great war stories, but we did all promise confidentiality so I'll resist the temptation to pass any of them on. Suffice it to say that I got some reassurance that my experience of the criminal justice system I sporadically document here is not at all untypical.

We did some role-play scenarios of the type that were fascinating when we tackled them in basic training, but now we've actually experienced dozens of real cases they are completely unsatisfying. We've all seen how the outcome can depend on a number of subtle features that you won't see summarised in a one paragraph summary.

Another difference from last year was that the groups didn't get wildly different answers from the exercises. Which is reassuring - shows that the training and the guidelines actually do seem to do the job.

The biggest shock was working without an experienced Chair. You don't fully appreciate what they do until you try to replace them with a rookie and watch the process unravel.

At the end we were shown a short piece of propaganda to the effect that we should consider the effect on witnesses before agreeing to a postponement of a trial. A very laudable aim that I'll definite take note of, even though the production values of the video nearly gave me the giggles.

All in all, not nearly as blogworthy as the initial training I'm afraid.

Strange Days Indeed

2009-12-05T20:19:00.004Z

In my dreams I'd want to crash through the end of the decade sideways in a race car with bald tires, an empty tank and the brakes on fire shouting "BEGGAR ME ! WHAT A RIDE!"

What's actually happening is that I'm driving up a snow-covered hill in a 1966 Hillman Imp. My rusty 874cc engine is spluttering and my wheels are spinning as I slowly slide back into a ditch.

The run-up to the Christmas break has been so weird and warped. Stanetta has gone down with yet another ailment. Work has gotten strange in a way I'm neither enjoying nor understanding. I've got some Magistrate training and sittings to fit in. I'm tired, confused and short of patience and good humour. I've also acquired a Urologist.

Ho, ho flipping ho.

One recent task at work was to calculate the number of working days between two dates. Easy enough to say in English - actually quite difficult to write in an efficient piece of SQL. I found I kept testing it by calculating the number of working days between now and Christmas. I'd then run it again and again to see if I could get the number to fall.

Are we nearly there yet ?

And another thing ... why does "The Guardian" think I'd be interested in some free wrapping paper designed by Lily Allen ??? What's next - carpet tiles designed by Bamber Gascoigne ? Michael Palin's tiffin recipe ?

Becoming a Magistrate - The Case for the Prosecution

2009-11-22T11:09:00.006Z

When I ask a salesperson to tell me about their product, they usually give a long list of the advantages. When I ask them about the downsides, in my experience they either tell a joke and change the subject or fib their heads clean off and say that there are none.

My favourite way around this is to ask the question :

"What do you think [[insert name of competitor]] will say about your product when we talk to them?"

This usually prompts a little bit more openness - they start defending the perceived weak points of their product. This is great - because five minutes ago there were no potential weak points that needed defence.

Let's look at the sales job being done to recruit Magistrates. If you read the Government website and the Magistrates' Association public pages, it's all a warm fuzzy glow of public service and personal growth. Sounds as though everyone ought to apply, right ?

But :

"What would a bitter ex-Magistrate say if you asked them if you should apply to be a Magistrate?"

I don't have access to one of those at the moment, but please allow me to speculate:-

Imagine wanting to help your community and improve yourself. Now imagine you can't do it, because you're stuck in a crummy building applying narrowly defined government policy.

You want to help your community ? Great - there are dozens of charities that need people with your brains and energy. Thanks to the legal bureaucracy, you will spend a vanishingly small amount of your time doing anything helpful as a Magistrate. And even then - many of your decisions will help no-one. Your guidelines say you need to fine someone with no money, you fine them. You can't help an addict - you just need to keep fining or jailing them for the crimes they inevitably commit. Yes, once in a while you "win", but it's such an inefficient process - you'd be better off helping to run one or more of the charities in your area.

Want to improve yourself ? Get a better job - the one you're in obviously isn't stretching you. All you'll do by becoming a Magistrate is to make your job more stressful by taking away your free time and holidays. Retired ? See my section above on charities - they need you and you'll learn so much. Want to keep your mind active ? Crossword puzzles are excellent.

Think it'll look good on your CV ? I don't even mention it on mine - it just confuses people - makes me look like a part-time IT guy whereas the clients are looking for commitment. If you think it'll improve your chances of a political career, I suspect stuffing envelopes, making calls and generally being smarmy for a political party would be a better use of your time.

Being a Magistrate gets you little respect. Most people either don't know what you do or suspect your motives. You're tied up in Guidelines and squeezed between the police who dish out fixed penalties and cautions and the higher courts. Your powers are limited, but this doesn't stop the press getting personal when something goes wrong.

In short, what the salespeople tell you might be true - what they don't tell you is that there are more efficient ways of helping people and of improving yourself.

And with that, the Prosecution rests.

If you are considering becoming a Magistrate, please consider carefully both sides of the story. It's not all good and it's not all bad. Consider the alternatives you have, and when you've arrived at a decision, act on it.

In other words, do exactly what a good Magistrate does.

Becoming a Magistrate - The Case for the Defence

2009-11-20T21:03:00.008Z

Most instruction manuals are written by experts who really can't remember what it was like to be a clueless newbie.

For example, an AA operator once asked me whether my fallen-off-into-the-road-car-exhaust had "snapped forward of the manifold". I almost wept, because despite my extended education, there wasn't anything about the question that I understood.

Similarly, if you try researching a question along the lines of "what's so great about being a Magistrate ?" you tend to get rather unsatisfying answers.

Take the following page from the Magistrates' Association website Why become a Magistrate ?". It answers many questions, but "Why?" is certainly not one of them. I suspect the author of the page takes it totally for granted that everyone in the world knows the many benefits and that it would be a waste of typing to list them all out.

Try the main UK government website here and you get some vague Human Resources jargon and an even vaguer appeal to some kind of patriotic selfless idealism.

What you really need are some practical, tested and selfish reasons why you would benefit from getting involved.

These are my personal reasons and they are in no particular order and there are no money-back guarantees if they don't work out for you :-

Really quite a few of your pre-conceptions will not survive direct contact with the reality of the criminal justice system. This is a good thing - it's called "learning".

In your outside life you will develop confidence to make and carry out decisions that don't make everybody happy. I sweat and fret a lot less these days before doing the right thing. Look back in your life - have there been times when your attempts to please everyone have pleased nobody ? Have you avoided doing what you knew was right and mentally beat yourself up for years afterwards ? Yeah, try not to do that so much.

You'll meet some remarkable people in the retiring room. One or two opinionated bores and space-wasters but there again, too few to mention.

Doing something worthwhile that isn't motivated by the need to pay the mortgage feels great.

Stepping out of your day-job gives you some real insight into what's important and who you are. You realise that you are not just your job title.

Stepping out of your day job allows you to flex some new muscles, and to give the usual overused ones some much-needed rest

There will be times when your decisions make a real difference. During your next day at the office, check how many times you make decisions and of those decisions, how many of them resulted in any material change. Unless you're a forward air-controller or a heart surgeon, I suspect the number will be low.

By grappling with seriously hard (and often impossible) questions, you'll find that you aren't as clever as you thought you were and that there's plenty more for you to learn. I find it useful to be reminded of this now and again.

There are other minor points, involving biscuits and improved listening and note-taking skills, but the points above are the main reasons why I'm going to continue into a second year.

A bit one-sided ? Surely there are negative issues ?

Coming soon : my top ten reasons why you would be better off not applying.

My Name is Stan, and I am ...

2009-11-16T22:42:00.003Z

... a snob.

Well, a recovering snob. Maybe.

There was a time when I'd turn my nose up at a film unless it was in some exotic language and consisted mostly of an old man smoking cigarettes for three hours and then moodily bouncing off on a spacehopper. Books with plots, dance performances that actually fitted the music, poems that scanned, paintings that looked like anything at all - how on earth could any of them possibly be any good?

"Mainstream" was my favourite four-letter word and damn you for a small-minded individual if you dared point out that it has ten letters.

The first piece of evidence that I'm changing is Miranda Hart's sitcom "Miranda" on BBC2. She is in no way tries to Subvert The Form or make us think and at no point am I tempted to rub my chin and murmur "Interesting ...." or "How True!". The physical humour is rather blatant, the language is simple and the situations far from complex.

But.

She makes me laugh. Out loud and often.

I've applied my analytical brain to the reason why, and all I've got is this:-

She's a funny person doing and saying funny things.

Look also at "Flash Forward" on Channel 5. The acting is wobbly and the dialogue is risible. But, you know what ? I couldn't care less. Because what it does have is a white-hot plot and insane amounts of pace. And sometimes that's enough to get you through an episode to the usually jaw-dropping cliffhanger at the end which makes you want to tune in next time.

In my snobby days, I'd have called it a "popcorn drama" - in fact, I still do, but nowadays I add " ... and could you please pass the popcorn".

Victim of Crime (but which one ?)

2009-11-11T20:08:00.003Z

Following on from my blog about assault recently (here) - can anyone tell me what the scumbag in the following incident should be charged with ?

"I was cycling along a main road, very much "in the zone" when a car overtook me and the passenger leaned out of the window and yelled in my ear - hoping to make me fall off and damage myself in a vaguely amusing way."

It seems clear to me that some kind of assault happened, even though no actual damage was done, but I'm not actually the right person to make sense of this because :

(a) I'm a Magistrate and not a legal expert

and

(b) Because I was that cyclist, and my instinct would be to sentence him to a good kicking by the roadside. This is not a something the Sentencing Guidelines would approve of.

Don't ask me about my day - I might tell you

2009-11-09T19:26:00.003Z

Up at 05:00 to dig my car out of an ice-block. Mrs. Stan made me a sausage sarnie for the road last night, but I left it by the door thanks to my early-morning head-fog. Drove down the M6 mentally kicking myself and actively considering turning around to pick it up. Figured if I did, I'd likely be tempted to take it upstairs to my still-warm bed and eat it and then go back to sleep and to heck with making a living.

I resisted temptation and pressed on. A stale croissant and weak coffee at Warwick was no substitute for the sandwich which I was starting to hallucinate about. I could taste it, smell it in my mind. Soft sausage, crispy on the outside with plenty sharp English mustard in cotton-wool bread. Six, maybe seven feet long ...

There was some honest-to-goodness fog too, which made driving difficult - and an overturned lorry near Oxford that made driving impossible. The Sat-Nav shrugged her shoulders and took me laboriously through the car-hating centre of Oxford and onto a route that almost, but not quite, converged with my intended destination. For an hour and half my Sat-Nav told me that I was 65 minutes from my destination. If you want a vision of hell, imagine being perpetually 65 minutes away from a destination you're not particularly looking forward to reaching. And more - with every mile, you're a mile further away from the world's finest sausage sandwich.

I arrived at work to find the car-park overflowing - I had to drive around twice until I found a place even to double-park.

And then my working day started.

Next week if you hear of someone doing a handbrake turn and driving the wrong way up the M6, you'll know I've forgotten my sandwich again and this time I've decided to follow my inner voices.