Suella Braverman
But it gets her favourable copy and appeases the right-wing press, so that’s all right, then.
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Saturday, 8 January 2022
Suella Braverman IS AN IDIOT
The four on trial in Bristol for depositing the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in the Floating Harbour in June 2020, so our free and fearless press anticipated, would be found guilty as it was widely known that They Done It. But a jury of their peers decided that they were not, precipitating howls of outrage and pages of why-oh-why copy.
Demonstrating their lack of comprehension and research, the hacks at the Murdoch Sun declared “After statue acquittals … JUDGES MUST END JURY ‘WOKENESS’ … Ministers may use a little-known power to stop ‘woke jurors’ blocking justice after the so-called Colston Four were cleared”. But justice was not blocked - acquittal is justice. What the Murdoch goons mean is that it isn’t the kind of justice that they want to see.
Moreover, once again we see “Woke” used as a pejorative, a term of sneering abuse: the word means “Alert to injustice in society, especially racism”. So one should hope that every last juror is Woke. After all, the press wouldn’t want to see injustice prevail. Would they? Well, maybe the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker wouldn’t object.
Not from a glance at yesterday’s Daily Mail, they wouldn’t, provided it got the result they wanted. “Amid growing outcry over acquittal of Colston statue wreckers … PM: VANDALS CAN’T CHANGE OUR HISTORY” they thundered. But no-one has changed history, or even attempted to do so. And then the Attorney General decided to intervene.
Suella Braverman (for it was she) Tweeted “Trial by jury is an important guardian of liberty & must not be undermined. However, the decision in the Colston statue case is causing confusion”. It sodding well isn’t. It’s just got the right-wing press frothing with rage because they didn’t like the jurors’ decision. Her next Tweet effectively confirmed this.
“Without affecting the result of this case, as Attorney General, I am able to refer matters to the Court of Appeal so that senior judges have the opportunity to clarify the law for future cases. I am carefully considering whether to do so”. But the law does not require clarification. No precedent has been set, even though some pundits claim it has.
Her intervention did not meet with universal approval from other lawyers, although her fellow Tory MPs lapped it up. Human rights lawyer Adam Wagner had a warning for her: “there is a basic issue which will be becoming clear to ministers - a jury verdict sets no precedent, so the law is as it was, but a Court of Appeal decision would set an important precedent, which may not be the one the govt want”. Be careful what you wish for.
The Secret Barrister, meanwhile, was scathing. “Not a single high profile criminal case can now pass without the Attorney General - a person with no experience of criminal law - exploiting it for political gain. It is difficult to think of an AG who has more enthusiastically abused their office”. And Jolyon Maugham was on the same page.
“By attacking the jury verdict in the Colston case Braverman tells a simple truth about how much Government really cares … about ‘British traditions’ … Theirs is a government without principles, without substance, of empty nationalistic signalling”. Ouch!
But it gets her favourable copy and appeases the right-wing press, so that’s all right, then.
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But it gets her favourable copy and appeases the right-wing press, so that’s all right, then.
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11 comments:
Considering Bravermann's predecessor was Geoffrey “A smile, a song, an all-expenses trip to the West Indies” Cox, she must be truly craptacular to have aroused the ire of the likes of The Secret Barrister.
Interesting. Suddenly it's alright to complain about the result of something becuase it didn't go the way you wanted (see also the Sir Tone petition).
This is the will of the jury, get over it etc.
What do Bravemen, Patel, Raab, Michael Howard, and many other Tory ministers have in common?
They're all the children of immigrants all trying to be more British than the British
There's something distinctly unpleasant, if not outright racist, about the Tory Party in that the children of immigrants who join the party and want to get on in it have to become nasty, spiteful, nationalistic shit-stirring gobshites (the same goes for the white working class people who join up) who seek to bash those who come from the same or similar background, and then play the victim when other people from the same background stand up and defend themselves so they (the offended tories) claim others are playing the race card (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/11/bame-mps-accuse-priti-patel-of-gaslighting-in-racism-debate) because only THEIR experiences are valid
'Jury nullification' - to give it its technical name - has a long and honourable place in English Common Law (and in the codes of other countries - such as the US - which derive from it).
Perhaps someone should point out to the frothing obscure twits on the Tory back banches and their megaphones in the media that juries refusing to countenance an injustice by acquiting people who otherwise would end up potentially imprisoned or otherwise ruined is a key defence against over-reach by the Police, by the prosecuting authorities or by the government of the day (remember Clive Ponting?).
It should also be pointed out to them that, despite their wet dreams of a Hundred-Year Reich, their mob will not always be in power, and that the removal of the safeguards which they rail against now will mean that they won't be there to protect them when they need it.
When I want to learn about history I use the Internet. I don't travel hundreds of miles to look at statues.
As be died some 170 years before the statue was created, is it even an accurate image of him?
She’s there to do as she’s told. Another vastly overpromoted inincompoop with her snout in the trough
Stella braveman I'd NOT an idiot.
She isn't clever enough to be one
Doesn't give you much hope for us does it? Who saw it being this bad?
I writ a play wot was about this.
It got the Ernie Wise Award For Ded Serious Plays.
It wasn't about Jeremy Corbyn.
Did I mention it was me wot writ it?
A quote from Stewart Lee’s article in The Observer (9 January 2022) :
"In 2012, cowardly, woke council officials removed from the Scotstoun leisure centre in Glasgow a wooden effigy of Jimmy Saville, the predatory paedophile sex offender. New government policy surely means the Saville statue must be subject to the same “retain and explain” policy that Johnson has endorsed.
The Saville sculpture must be retained and returned to its original position in the foyer of the leisure centre with a small plaque appended to its foot detailing Saville’s horrendous sex crimes.
And if, as it is thought, it transpires that the council destroyed the Saville effigy, then those responsible must be tried for criminal damage. And if they aren’t, then it appears there is one law for those who destroy effigies of predatory paedophiles and quite another for those who topple slavers into a dock."
This was not a nullification. In acquitting the Colston Four, the jury at Bristol Crown upheld the rule of law. It accepted that the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue had been a prevention of crime since the statue itself had been a breach of Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, and since that statue had been an indecent display under Section 1 of the Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981. Cold, hard law.
Braverman and her ilk demand that the Four be “held accountable”, but how much more accountable can you be than to have stood trial in the Crown Court? The real cause of their soreness is that their AltRight tribute act is demonstrably not in any way the Voice of the People. It is not populist, because it is not popular. The combined forces of the “populist” Right, two of them very well-publicised, failed to take five per cent of the vote at North Shropshire, which had merrily elected Owen Paterson for decades.
The Conservatives’ potential losses are not to Richard Tice or to Laurence Fox, but to the Liberal Democrats, as has already happened twice in this Parliament. To offset those losses, their potential gains are of seats that voted for Jeremy Corbyn both times, as has already happened at least once, with another result due to be decided in court.
Also in court, 10 out of 12 good persons and true have acquitted the Colston Four, as any such 10 or more out of 12 would have done in any city, town or village in the land. Not perversely, but because Colston’s statue was as a breach of Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, and an indecent display under Section 1 of the Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981, such that pulling it down constituted a prevention of crime, and in fact greatly increased its value as an item. The People have spoken. Whether the “populists” like it or not.
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