COURT AVAILABILITY– Good availability next two weeks! !  I am, at present, honouring my pledge to support the bar action, but I am bitterly disappointed at the conduct of the CBA, who have met the MoJ alone, and carried on as if solicitors do not exist and deprived HCAs of a vote in their ballot (see NEWS below) Current availability see http://www.freelanceadvocacyservices.uk/. 

I am still accepting work in legal aid crown court case where legal aid pre-dates 1st April, appeals against sentence or conviction, committals for sentence, s36/38, private cases, Mags Court, police stations, and regulatory cases. 

Book via gregfoxsmith@msn.com  

Current Bar Action. “No returns” Postponed after secret CBA meeting with MoJ from which solicitors were excluded. Now we have the ballot of criminal barristers on whether to accept “the deal”, the link for the ballot is here, although solicitor advocates are excluded. 

CBA Statement with details here.  LCCSA response here.  CBA Monday message (04/06) here

Blog by junior counsel Lucy Wibberley on why barristers should vote NO is here

100miles. I will be attempting to cycle the Surrey 100 in July, and attempting to raise money-please consider sponsoring me   https://www.justgiving.com/CyclingSurrey100

More FAILING GRAYLING transport shambles

Grayling was trending again on twitter (and not in a good way) this week after ongoing train cancellations and timetable shambles. Chris was supposed to meet MPs but had to cancel some meetings after he didn’t timetable them properly (I’m not making this up) and then gave a statement in the house where he said that those responsible should resign.

“It’s completely unacceptable to have someone operationally in control and not taking responsibility,” Failing Grayling declared hysterically. At that moment, satire died. (Full sketch by John Grace here, and here is a further extract: If you were writing a new series of The Thick of It, you’d hesitate to create a character like Chris Grayling for fear no one would believe in him. Even in the current cabinet, a confederacy of dunces where the sole qualifications for membership are being a bit dim and entirely incompetent, the transport secretary is a class apart. To say that Failing Grayling has more than his fair share of bad days is a category error. Because that implies he has the occasional good one. He doesn’t. Every day is a desperate, losing struggle against the chaos caused by his own hopelessness. But even for a man who has turned his failure into a monumental work of performance art, Monday hit a new low. Or, as Grayling might see it, a total triumph. The moment he formally achieved the coveted status of the idiot’s idiot”

(FULL BLOG ON GRAYLINGS TENURE AS JUSTICE SEC HERE )