It has been quite some time since I last posted and a number of things have happened, in no particular order:

1) I have continued to battle through training and I now take a number of courts solo.
2) I continue to battle with the trains in order to get to work and constantly rail (pardon the shocker of a pun) against the outrageous cost of season tickets.
3) I am having to fight quite hard against a growing desire to jack it all in and return to my native county's quiet green lanes, where I will be forced to live in penury having no idea of what else to do for a living...

The impetus for this new post - potentially heralding a return to more regular blogging - is my growing frustration with interpreting and following statutory amendments. Have no fear that I have gone all geeky and academic, the anger has a very political basis. Put simply, since New Labour gained power there have been an astonishing number of hideous pieces of legislation, most notably in Criminal Law with the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and the new Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. I'm sure any lawyer can reel off a handful of Acts they'd like to see ceremonially burnt and those two are at the top of my list!

Currently I am working through some sentencing training exercises provided by the well-meaning people of the Judicial Studies Board for Legal Advisers. The problem I face now is regarding the imposition of community penalties for non-imprisonable offences, or more correctly, the problem I face is that the CJIA 08 purports to alter some parts of the CJA 03. The parts of the 03 Act are not in force yet, rendering the 08 amendments entirely pointless! For goodness' sake, who comes up with this crap!?

It seems to me to be a prime example of incompetent people (read: ministers) desperately trying to justify their existence (and in the case of Parliamentary draftsmen their enormous salaries). If only the Govt. would stop reacting to every press report with knee-jerks which would make an SS trooper green with envy, then the chances of correctly sentencing a given person for their crime would be far greater.

But enough procrastination for now...