I am a reader of your substack and I am one of the many who is horrified by current events in Gaza which I (like many international human rights groups and genocide scholars around the world, including in Israel) would call a genocide.
Where is your partisanship regarding Israel Palestine publicly declared on this blog Joshua? I. notice that you recommend your wife Melanie Phillips as a substack.
do you agree with her recent comment on social media that "“Today’s accomplices to barbarism aren’t dressed in jackboots or the shades and braid of a junta generalissimo. They wear the suit and earnest spectacles of a human rights lawyer. It is today’s banality of evil, and it is frying the western brain." She also writes for The Times which has published the letter you've referred to above
Sadly your partisanship is meaning your readers are not being informed properly. For example you say the letter is "the letter reported in today’s Times from prominent lawyers " Would you call Lord Walney a prominent lawyer? Or Baroness Clare Fox? It's a letter from members of the House of Lords all of whom are sympathetic to Israel and some of whom are prominent lawyers,
Thank you. I note you have still not given your name.
You are right in saying that I recommend my wife’s blog, as she recommends mine. But you are under no obligation to read either.
If I regarded myself as partisan, I would say so. Again, you are welcome to your opinion.
I have written “prominent lawyers and parliamentarians” elsewhere. The fact that some of the signatories are not lawyers does not negate the fact that some are.
Thank you,, Joshua: I dare to imagine that, but for your industry, I am far from the only lawyer and NONlawyer having an interest and concern for such issues where these various “clearing of the decks” issues have resonance.
AND this time as to the SO troubling Justin Plummer case I am back in familiar territory.
I looked this case up -and shuddered. Successive governments would all have us believe that with the widely advertised flourish of creating the CCRC all miscarriages had somehow become history- been there, done that; let’s move on. I have despite persistence failed over decades to have any -even- Birmingham MP, let alone Justice Secretary take the slightest interest or pride in the organisation - hence its shameful disregarding as some kind of irritating elephant in the room and hence the unwillingness even to contemplate visiting it.
BUT: please read John Robins’ and Simon Hattenstone’s article in yesterday’s Guardian before assuming that I am exaggerating when I say that progress has never been in a straight line and that the bare facts in this case might cause us all to despair of ANYTHING ever being rectified save in the immediate aftermath of a shocking miscarriage “discovery”.
I had more than a passing acquaintance with the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad and its antics and - let it be said- the over readiness to believe and accept their evidence and their methods, extending- it has to be said- even to some judges. Was this the case with Mr - note the “Mr”- Plummer and his case.
The bare facts: on his original trial now was a supposed expert’s evidence allowed before any jury ?
Good on the CCRC for having quashed that conviction in 2023; but then on his retrial out pops a Serious Crime Squad-esque cellmate confession , by then of a deceased SCHIZOPHRENIC police informant- first emerging after his death and therefore unavailable for cross examination. Finally yesterday the Court of Appeal giving short shrift fo that strand of dubious untested evidence quashed the second conviction.
And so, that’s alright, then. As his solicitor Annalisa Moscardini asserted he is finally vindicated after his twenty eight years of refusing to bow the knee.
His barrister Kay Thorne KC deplores-as do I - the admission in evidence of cell mate Christopher Dunne’s evidence but I part company over her talk of a change in the law. The system judicially handled should have prevented the admission of that evidence. So many species of evidence may pop up, only when the system is working for the police service, cos Halle goes by the defence or rejection by the trial judge to ensure a fair trial.
I do agree with her however that.the support, or lack of it, given to those found to have suffered from such miscarriages makes a sour joke of the notion of equal treatment for all, even for tasty candidates for conviction such as prolific burglar Justin Plummer. We must stop trying fo delude ourselves into thinking that all is -sort of- well. In this my co us is scarcely on juries but rather on investigators, prosecutors and judges, where they are responsible for giving jurors every prospect of reaching a just verdict on reliable evidence rather than allowing more elasticity, perhaps because of the antecedents or perceived worthiness of the suspect, later in this case twice the defendant and twice the appellant. Yes, I am shocked; we must never lose the susceptibility to being shocked.
Should you not be declaring an interest when you write about Israel/Palestine, Joshua?
My interests are well known and publicly declared. Perhaps you would care to tell readers something about yourself, Adam.
I am a reader of your substack and I am one of the many who is horrified by current events in Gaza which I (like many international human rights groups and genocide scholars around the world, including in Israel) would call a genocide.
Where is your partisanship regarding Israel Palestine publicly declared on this blog Joshua? I. notice that you recommend your wife Melanie Phillips as a substack.
do you agree with her recent comment on social media that "“Today’s accomplices to barbarism aren’t dressed in jackboots or the shades and braid of a junta generalissimo. They wear the suit and earnest spectacles of a human rights lawyer. It is today’s banality of evil, and it is frying the western brain." She also writes for The Times which has published the letter you've referred to above
Sadly your partisanship is meaning your readers are not being informed properly. For example you say the letter is "the letter reported in today’s Times from prominent lawyers " Would you call Lord Walney a prominent lawyer? Or Baroness Clare Fox? It's a letter from members of the House of Lords all of whom are sympathetic to Israel and some of whom are prominent lawyers,
Thank you. I note you have still not given your name.
You are right in saying that I recommend my wife’s blog, as she recommends mine. But you are under no obligation to read either.
If I regarded myself as partisan, I would say so. Again, you are welcome to your opinion.
I have written “prominent lawyers and parliamentarians” elsewhere. The fact that some of the signatories are not lawyers does not negate the fact that some are.
Thank you,, Joshua: I dare to imagine that, but for your industry, I am far from the only lawyer and NONlawyer having an interest and concern for such issues where these various “clearing of the decks” issues have resonance.
AND this time as to the SO troubling Justin Plummer case I am back in familiar territory.
I looked this case up -and shuddered. Successive governments would all have us believe that with the widely advertised flourish of creating the CCRC all miscarriages had somehow become history- been there, done that; let’s move on. I have despite persistence failed over decades to have any -even- Birmingham MP, let alone Justice Secretary take the slightest interest or pride in the organisation - hence its shameful disregarding as some kind of irritating elephant in the room and hence the unwillingness even to contemplate visiting it.
BUT: please read John Robins’ and Simon Hattenstone’s article in yesterday’s Guardian before assuming that I am exaggerating when I say that progress has never been in a straight line and that the bare facts in this case might cause us all to despair of ANYTHING ever being rectified save in the immediate aftermath of a shocking miscarriage “discovery”.
I had more than a passing acquaintance with the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad and its antics and - let it be said- the over readiness to believe and accept their evidence and their methods, extending- it has to be said- even to some judges. Was this the case with Mr - note the “Mr”- Plummer and his case.
The bare facts: on his original trial now was a supposed expert’s evidence allowed before any jury ?
Good on the CCRC for having quashed that conviction in 2023; but then on his retrial out pops a Serious Crime Squad-esque cellmate confession , by then of a deceased SCHIZOPHRENIC police informant- first emerging after his death and therefore unavailable for cross examination. Finally yesterday the Court of Appeal giving short shrift fo that strand of dubious untested evidence quashed the second conviction.
And so, that’s alright, then. As his solicitor Annalisa Moscardini asserted he is finally vindicated after his twenty eight years of refusing to bow the knee.
His barrister Kay Thorne KC deplores-as do I - the admission in evidence of cell mate Christopher Dunne’s evidence but I part company over her talk of a change in the law. The system judicially handled should have prevented the admission of that evidence. So many species of evidence may pop up, only when the system is working for the police service, cos Halle goes by the defence or rejection by the trial judge to ensure a fair trial.
I do agree with her however that.the support, or lack of it, given to those found to have suffered from such miscarriages makes a sour joke of the notion of equal treatment for all, even for tasty candidates for conviction such as prolific burglar Justin Plummer. We must stop trying fo delude ourselves into thinking that all is -sort of- well. In this my co us is scarcely on juries but rather on investigators, prosecutors and judges, where they are responsible for giving jurors every prospect of reaching a just verdict on reliable evidence rather than allowing more elasticity, perhaps because of the antecedents or perceived worthiness of the suspect, later in this case twice the defendant and twice the appellant. Yes, I am shocked; we must never lose the susceptibility to being shocked.