Sometimes I honestly cannot believe the government is seriously proposing people could be convicted and sent to prison for TWO YEARS (two years?!?) by the Magistrates’ Court with the automatic right of appeal safeguard removed. You read direct research like this 👇🏼 and shudder.

Please remember that if the Lammy Leak is watered down to ‘only’ the Leveson Proposals then such a climbdown doesn’t make either version palatable, acceptable or a compromise.

The unpopular, uncomfortable truth about jury trials is that those who need them are not ‘others’. People I’ve represented: police officers, university students, taxi drivers, teachers, chemists, business people, *children* & those who simply went for a drive in their car.

It’s actually a commendable effort to simultaneously misunderstand the role of the CPS, the job of the DPP, the function of a jury, the impact of guilty pleas, the difference in status between allegation, charge and conviction and to deliver that ignorance in just 16 words.

Training to be a criminal barrister: 5 years. Cost of bar course: c.£13,000 Role: Complex, sensitive human & legal problems. Distressing material. Punishing hours. Responsibility: High. People may be sent to prison. Median annual income for juniors in first 3 years? £12,200