The Barrister Bard

When asked what is the most addictive and destructive drug in circulation today, most people would put heroin or crack cocaine at the top of their list.  In reality, it is alcohol, freely available, and the more so since the Licensing Act 2003 came into force.

You may remember the controversy surrounding the Act, which brought the prospect of 24 hour drinking to tippling millions.  The thinking behind the Act, as outlined by the government, was twofold:  firstly, or so it was argued, abolishing licensing hours would persuade drinkers to ‘pace’ themselves when drinking in public, and secondly, it would avoid the dangers associated with bladdered drinkers being ‘tipped out’ onto the street, all at the same time, and looking for alcohol fuelled trouble.  On both counts, the Act has failed miserably. Alcohol is responsible for more violence, in the street and in the home, more diseases, more lost days at work, and a greater drain on the precious resources of the NHS and the emergency services, than all the so-called hard drugs put together.  And sadly, there is no light at the end of the tunnel, as alcohol remains freely available, not just in pubs and clubs, but in every supermarket and corner shop in the country.  Half hearted attempts are made to persuade retailers not to sell to under age kids, but profit is profit regardless of who’s paying.

And not content with drinking and driving, the Brits are now drinking and flying.  Incidents of drunken behaviour on planes have increased by 30% over the past year alone.

As Boris Johnson will tell you, it all started with Dionysus, the Greek God of Wine, and Bacchus, his Roman counterpart.  Both were credited with inspiring ritual madness and ecstasy through wine, freeing the drinker from his normal self by releasing his inhibitions.  Not much has changed in the intervening two thousand years.

And now word reaches me from across the Channel that binge drinking, thought until recently to be the sole preserve of the British, is now afflicting our French adolescent cousins.  Le Binge-Drinking est arrivé!  As an aside, it has always struck me as strange that when raising a glass of alcohol, the French say bonne santé, as if drinking and good health are synonymous, and as Boris Johnson will tell you, ‘cheers’ comes from the French bonne chère, meaning good demeanour!  Surely a better epithet would be à la mort lent. I knew you’d be interested.

So what’s to be done, here and abroad?  It’s tempting to blame it all on Gary Glitter, but you can’t blame him for everything.  The Licensing Act should be repealed, with rigorously enforced and much shorter opening hours for pubs and clubs.  Licensees must take greater responsibility for their clientele and stop serving alcohol to inebriates, preferably before they become inebriated.  If they don’t, they should be closed down and prosecuted.  Happy hours and all you can drink for a fiver should also be abolished.  The tax on alcohol should be doubled overnight.  After all, the government are pleading poverty and empty coffers, so what better way to fill them?  And those who have budgeted for twelve pints of mine host’s Old Peculiar will find they can only afford six.

The specific gravity of popular beverages should be reduced dramatically.  Get rid of ‘extra strong’ lagers and beers.  Old and New World wines are also increasing in SG, something to do with global warming, so add water.  Stop serving wine in balloon glasses, which in some cases amount to a third of a bottle, and go back to pub measures.  Supermarkets and corner shops should be prohibited from ‘in your face’ displays, and stop promoting BOGOFs.  They should also be subjected to the same rigorous selling hours as pubs and clubs.

All this may be a drop in the ocean, but we’ve got to start somewhere.  Short of prohibition, it has to be worth a try!

On one level, the new offence of causing death by driving whilst uninsured, unlicensed or disqualified, or all three, is a welcome addition to the criminal law and will address a real injustice which has existed for far too long.

But again, besides being too little too late, it approaches the problem from the wrong direction.  You can’t bring back the dead, and the sadness and the grief over a needless death can hardly be assuaged by a term of imprisonment for the perpetrator, assuming, of course, that a place can be found in our chronically overcrowded prisons.

It is an all too depressing and familiar scenario.  A car, often a rust bucket of dubious provenance, is sold at auction or through the local press, at a price even an unemployed youth can afford, and off he drives into the sunset.  All the seller wants is his few quid and he’s happy.

The rules regarding the sale and purchase of cars is honoured more in the breach than the observance.  Registration documents are often incomplete or out of date, if they exist at all.  So I propose as follows:

1. As a first step, it must be made unlawful to sell a car if it’s not registered to the seller.

2. Both the seller and the purchaser must complete the changes required of them at the time of sale, notifying the DVLA of the change of ownership. The purchaser must produce verifiable details of his current address.

3. It should be unlawful to sell a car that does not have at least 4 weeks extant on its MOT certificate.

4. It should be unlawful to sell a car, and allow the purchaser to drive away, if the purchaser cannot produce a valid certificate of insurance, even if it’s a cover note for four weeks.

5. It should be unlawful for the seller to allow the purchaser to drive off without producing a current driving licence.

6. And finally, the police must be more proactive.  If they stop a car being driven by an uninsured or disqualified or unlicensed driver, besides their existing powers to prosecute, they must be given the power to confiscate and crush it.  This will achieve two purposes: to deprive the offender of the means of illegal transport, and to remove from the road dangerous and unroadworthy vehicles.

These measures, if rigorously implemented, will go some of the way to reducing death on the roads, and make them safer for all of us.

Breaking news! Paul Gadd, aka Gary Glitter, is back in the UK, albeit under protest, and as I write, will be welcomed with open arms by the fragrant Jacqui Smith, our ineffectual Home Secretary, clutching a Sex Offenders Protection Order [SOPO] in her hot little hand.

I have the deepest reservations about the efficacy of these protection orders, on two grounds. They don’t work when they should, and I question the right of any government to subject offenders to draconian restrictions which, on the face of it, breach their Convention rights under Articles 3 and 8, the right not to be subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, and the right to private life.

I remind myself that Mr. Gadd spent three years in the Ho Chi Minh correctional facility in Ho Chi Minh City, having been convicted by the Ho Chi Minh Supreme Court of sexually abusing under age girls from the Ho Chi Minh School of Spiritual Enlightenment. Is this a personality cult, or what!?! Whatever happened to good old Hanoi? Anyway, Paul’s three years in choky amounts to a six year sentence here in the UK, and time and enough to repent of his transgressions.

All this nonsense started with the Sex Offenders Act 1997, amended by the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000, and further amended by the Sexual Offences Act 2003, but after all the huff and puff, nobody stopped to think it through. The need for this scattergun legislative overload was apparently in response to “public concern” over predatory paedophiles roaming our streets, ready to jump out on unsuspecting children. Until then, most “right minded members of society” thought that a peedofile [sic] was something to do with horny feet.

On latest estimates, there are now 30,000 on the Register, and at least half of them shouldn’t be there. The consequences of registration, as Paul Gadd is about to find out, are out of all proportion to the perceived risk that registrants are supposed to pose. It involves regular and constant monitoring of every movement, with visits from the police and the supervising officer at all hours of the day and night. Restrictions on contact with minors is understandable, but extending the definition of minors to young persons up to the age of 18 jars uneasily with the lowering of the age of consent to 16. And finally, there are restrictions on overseas travel.

If a determined predatory paedophile chooses not to conform, there is little the authorities can do about it. All he has to do is up sticks and move, and then ‘decline’ to register his new address. He may be picked up if he’s unlucky, but the chances are slim. He can change his name, his appearance [note to Paul Gadd, dump that ridiculous Ho Chi Minh goatee beard] and he’s foot loose and fancy free to commit further crimes if he’s so inclined, or better still, get on with the rest of his life.

There may be an argument for registering our most dangerous offenders, but this “come one, come all” approach isn’t working, and worst of all, it’s simply unfair.

My daughter, an extremely attractive twenty three year old, recently went “clubbing” with some girlfriends.  Her ‘stepping out’ gear was a joy to behold, certainly to the rutting male, although, as her father, it raised parental eyebrows.  When I asked her the next morning if she’d enjoyed herself, her answer was: “We were seriously overdressed!”

We’ve all seen them, every Friday and Saturday night, in every town and city in Little Britain, and in all weathers, gaggles of giggling girls teetering along the street in ridiculous high heels and skirts barely covering the essentials, on their way to some ‘dive’ or insalubrious and overpriced nightclub to get seriously lashed.  A colleague of mine described these skirts, somewhat crudely, as “Fanny Pelmets.”  And what is our reaction?  Almost without exception, we say: “They’re asking for trouble!”  And then we read of some girl, heavily intoxicated, crying ‘rape’ and claiming compensation.

Which brings me seamlessly onto the news that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority [CICA] has recently reduced the compensation it would otherwise have awarded a rape victim because she was lashed at the time, and presumably, giving every appearance that she was ‘gagging’ for it.  This approach has been criticised by a spokesperson for the government, who tells us that a rape victim is a rape victim regardless of the circumstances, full stop.

When I was young, all those years ago, and looking for a mate, the local ‘dive’ or watering hole was an obvious place to begin my search.  It was a chance for a good chat up line:  “Hello darling, you look fabulous tonight, fancy a drink?” and if the answer was yes, then the coupling ritual began.  First the ‘groove’ on the dance floor, with the ‘solid gone’ expression fixed firmly in place, then back to the bar to bellow sweet nothings in her ear, and then, after a suitable interval, the walk or ride home, wondering all the time, will she, won’t she?  And if my mate for the night looked as if she were up for it, I had expectations.

The principle of contributory negligence in the law has been with us since time began, and usually applied to personal injury claims.  As a student, the case of the fat lady locked in a lavatory was required reading.  You will remember it well.  The unfortunate lady, in attempting to release herself, used the lavatory roll holder to climb out.  Sadly, the holder could not bear her weight,  so it, and she, collapsed in a heap of paper and heaving flesh, and when she claimed damages for the injuries suffered, she was found to have contributed to them, and the damages were reduced accordingly.

Surely the CICA approach is a fair one, taking into account, as it did, all the circumstances of the cases under review.  If silly girls go out on the town bursting out all over, and getting hopelessly drunk, then, as I say, they’re asking for trouble, and they usually find it.

But we are locked into this absurd compensation culture, where fault and contributory negligence are ignored, where claims without merit are often met with handsome payouts by insurers who simply can’t be bothered to contest them for fear of being penalised in costs, and we, the sensible members of society, are penalised in higher premiums.

I don’t suppose there is anything the CICA can do about this latest government meddling, as it is a creature of statute, and the government is free to interpret the statutory rights of its citizens as they think fit.  Nevertheless, more’s the pity that the government cannot apply a modicum of common sense when determining these claims, and let the CICA get on with its job.  And besides, it would send out a clear message to those who deliberately choose to put themselves at risk when it could so easily be avoided.

When section 34 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 was enacted, it was greeted with enthusiasm by the prosecuting authorities, and with dismay by defence lawyers.  After centuries of the right to silence by suspects being questioned by the police, where no adverse inference could be drawn, the 1994 Act changed this basic right and significantly moved the goalposts.

In short, section 34 removed from the accused the right to silence, although it was hedged around with certain caveats.  Where an accused person fails to mention any fact subsequently relied on in his defence, and assuming there is a case to answer, the jury, in determining where he is guilty of the offence charged, may draw such inferences from the failure as appear proper.

The debate still rages as to its fairness, but it is now used routinely in criminal trials as added ammunition for the prosecution, the “nod and wink” to the jury, and why would an innocent man remain silent when he has nothing to hide?

Which brings me to the McCanns, briefly shifted from the front pages of the tabloids following the acquittal of Barrie George, but back again with a vengeance.  All sorts of documents have now been released into the public domain for our collective edification, the conspiracy theorists are working overtime, and we are no nearer the truth.

The sad facts are well known.  The McCanns left their three children alone in their Portuguese holiday apartment when they went out to dine at a nearby restaurant, and when they returned, only two remained.  Their daughter Maddie had been mysteriously spirited away, never to be seen again. 

As a former resident of the Algarve, and a frequent visitor over the past twenty years, I claim to have some first hand knowledge of the country.  We even spent an agreeable fortnight in a villa overlooking Praia da Luz, so I know the area well, and I have some conspiracy theories of my own, which I am not allowed to share with you.

That said, the Daily Mail, that tabloid trumpet of truth, printed the 48 questions asked of Kate McCann by the Portuguese Police at an early stage of the investigation, not one of which she answered.  I have read through the questions, and all are relevant and germane to the investigation.  It matters not whether she was a designated suspect at the time, because she was innocent of any involvement in her daughter’s disappearance and presumably had nothing to hide but maternal stupidity bordering on disbelief.

I would have thought that she and her husband would have wished to give the police every assistance, the more so because the Portuguese Police seem to be slow on the uptake to say the very least, it may have something to do with the weather, but her decision to remain silent is curious in the extreme.  Who can say what turn the investigation might have taken had she co-operated, but too late now for regrets.  There may be times when silence is golden, but there are times when it’s better to stand up and be counted.