John Hemming's Web Log

This article in the Sunday Express highlights the fact that currently Queens regnant are treated as being less important than Kings regnant. It is, in fact, a matter of discussion as to what title the Monarch's spouse is given when the Monarch is crowned. There are a number of options to deal with this: To give the monarch the choice of a number of titles for his or her spouse To have all called the same. To have a resolution of parliament to resolve the issue each time. I personally think a bit of flexibility is best so the option of calling them all the same is not the one I would pick. However, it should be clear who is the monarch and who is the spouse. There is a bill coming to parliament that would facilitate resolving this aspect of sex discrimination where a Queen is treated as being less important than a King.

This proposal from the Chinese Government is an interesting aspect of family law that probably does not exist in any democracy. "China has passed a law requiring adult children to visit their elderly parents regularly or risk being sued. The law does not specify how frequently such visits should occur, but warns that neglect could risk court action."

There is a continuing debate about Marriage and the meaning of Marriage. In 2011 Mostyn J addressed the all party parliamentary group on family law and spoke about what marriage was from a legal perspective. The speech can be read via the report  here Historically marriage was more about children than adults.  Today, however, from a legal perspective it is mainly about an ill defined economic contract which can cost at lot of money to terminate. The aspects of family law that relate to the care of children have been taken substantially outside the law of marriage.  Additionally in the last parliament the common law duty of a husband to care for his wife was abolished - without a peep from anyone at the time. Hence Marriage today is mainly legally about divorce law. Generally family law in the English and Welsh jurisdiction has evolved through the courts with an element of intervention from parliament.  However, because it is not the sort of things that f...

I am not sure that there is a category of people that is always truthful.  It is clear from Hillsborough and the Andrew Mitchell sagas that police don't always tell the truth. Politicians are not always honest, nor are business people, nor are doctors, nor indeed are judges and other lawyers. That is why transparency is so important because it has two effects: a) It allows independent people to work out what the truth is. b) It discourages people from lying because they know that people can discover that they have done so.  That is why I am concerned about the decision to stop people from listening to independent court recordings. This is a movement away from transparency and accountability.

Sir Albert Bore has referred to the "jaws of doom". This he has done when central government are cutting the spending power of the city council by 1.11% in cash terms. Nationally the figures are 1.7% (across England). At the same time the council has decided to put up the wages of all council staff paid under £7.20 to £7.20. This is called the "living wage". Many people who earn less than this get tax credits. Hence it is substantially a swap between central government costs and local government costs. They have also included the 16-21 year olds. Hence some of them have had increases of 75% or 85%. It is a nice policy in the sense that it is being nice to people. However, because they propose also to ensure that contractors do the same they wish to find £10m per annum for the same policy. At the same time they want to raise more council tax by charging people on JSA 24% of the council tax. The council could find £10m pa by sacking over 300 additional st...

This is a meeting of the procedure select committee looking at the issue of the reasons as to why the Education department doesn't answer questions properly.

This story in The Telegraph where a SpAd threatens the newspaper with Leveson over an Expenses story is such a good example of why politicians should not be writing the press regulation rules that you couldn't make up a better one.

This provides more information about the case.

I was surprised that Liberty seemed to be backing a role for government (through Ofcom) in monitoring the activity of the press regulator. However, This story in the Mail on Sunday appears to contradict this. Why should those whose function is to investigate wrongdoing by the powerful be held to higher standards than anyone else in society? Judges have a different view on communication and information than others. They tend to believe that it is better to be tightly controlled. Hence it is not surprising that he came up with an idea to stop journalists squirreling away information in the hope that at some stage it might be useful. The point about that is that at the start they don't know for certain that it is useful. Hence if you apply a public interest test to that process at that stage then you basically stop the collection of information. Even Ed Milliband could see that this was wrong. The timing of the Welsh Government's attempt to censor Pobl y Cwm (see here ) c...

It is unusual for The Sun to come out critical of the system. This Article by Jane Moore is not officially from "the sun", but it is exceptional to get this reported. It properly identifies the flaws in government policy in keeping what is happening in the courts secret. " IT can no longer be ignored by those who purport to be in charge of this country that something is deeply rotten at the core of Britain’s social services."

this briefing is a good summary of the new standards regime. The new regime reinforces democracy ensuring that councillors are primarily accountable to the electorate.

I have just started reading the World Energy Outlook 2012. It will take some effort to properly review this, but it is an interesting document. Followers of my comments will have noted that oil demand by the OECD peaked somewhere between 2005 and 2008. It depends whether you look quarterly or monthly or even daily (and those figures would be hard to get in a reliable sense). However, in terms of millions of barrells of oil per day old demand is about 10% less than it was. The first interesting thing about the WEO is that with the "new policies" scenario that is their key scenario in fact oil consumption continues to go down from 2020 to 2035 (in the OECD). On a 5 yearly basis the USA's consumption is shown as peaking in 2010. (page 564) OECD Europe oddly enough has its highest figures marginally in 1990, but that is only because 2000 is missed out. I think again the peak for Europe (OECD) would be somewhere in 2005-8. The other interesting element is looking at t...

This is a post by someone who was adopted. The person concerned was adopted at age 7 months which is only just into the start of the period at which people could get RAD and hence is a good case to be considered as part of what the government wish to achieve. The underlying problem in terms of government policy is the failure to properly and scientifically approach the analysis of the policy. It is absolutely no good at all simply picking on a few examples where things have worked out well and using those as justification for the policy. What is needed is an analysis of the effects of each step in the decisionmaking process. For example there is a step of a court order placing one or more children for adoption. What needs to be studied is what the consequences are of this. It is wrong to simply consider the children that do end up adopted, you also need to consider those that don't. The Education select committee (actually its predecessor) visited Denmark and considered ...

Rico Sorda has kindly extracted my speech of today onto his web log here I shall highlight the key element: Parliament has to stand on the side of the powerless. Whitehall mandarins, judges, BBC managers, council bureaucrats and professionals all have their own interests and a desire to hide mistakes. Parliament needs to balance the scales on the side of the weak—those without wealth who are crying out and not being heard. The saga of the Ariel and Prospero statue warrants a read as well.

As a result of the efforts of the Deputy Lord Mayor there is now a special Birmingham Poppy (which I used to attach my more traditional poppy for the remembrance service today)

This web page has the BBC interviewing various people (including myself) about Jersey. One of the commentators said that those on the side of the establishment were given twice as long as the anti-corruption campaigners. I haven't checked this.

Warning: Most of this is in Italian.

There will, of course, be a move to claim that all the current stories revealing historic coverups are historic and have no relevance today. However, this would be misleading. I know of recent cases of children being maltreated in care that I have reported to the authorities and received an inadequate response. It is also obvious that the action of banning Leah McGrath Goodman was part of a coverup. This happened in 2011.

This is a report about the possible economic consequences of peak oil from the IMF. The report is impressive because of the way in which it looks at a number of the key issues. It comes to similar conclusions to those which I have highlighted. Historically the DTI refused to do a risk analysis on peak oil because it was "too risky." I need to allocate some serious time to reading the IMF report.

Humanitarian Crisis for Indian children and their families in confiscatory child care proceedings abroad The original document is here . A case for intervention under human rights laws for the repatriation of Indian children facing foreign confiscatory care proceedings to their relatives in India, instead of being consigned to foreign state institutions or foster care, or being given away in forced adoption abroad. Summary Petition to the National Human Rights Commission to:  recommend that the Government of India institutes a formal and transparent mechanism for the return to India of Indian children caught in confiscatory child care proceedings abroad  commission a legal and statistical study on the functioning of confiscatory child protection or child welfare laws abroad  spread awareness of the humanitarian concerns raised in this petition 12 October 2012 To, National Human Rights Commission Faridkot House, Copernicus Marg New Delhi – 110 001 Re: Petition to the Na...