Nemo the Dolphin

Opinions mine only

[Nemo the Dolphin @NemoDolphin79]

@DanNeidle @mcdermottkc_ There are many online various explainers of WPP by law firms which are consistent with what I have always thought to be the position: eg https://t.co/5ctylKFtzJ Even if they’re all legally wrong, it would be hard for SRA to prove that any lawyer must have known it was wrong

[Nemo the Dolphin @NemoDolphin79]

@mcdermottkc_ @DanNeidle Genuine Q: do you have any authority that supports your view that no confidentiality attaches to WP comms? I agree with the second sentence of your tweet but those features of WP comms not in issue. SRA would have to prove the lawyers asserted a view they knew was legally wrong

[Nemo the Dolphin @NemoDolphin79]

@Joanna__Hardy For rape trials, the main problem is not capacity per se, but the lack of judges who have done the RASSO training. Few judges will agree to do the RASSO training unless they’re assured that they will not then have to do mostly RASSO work

[Nemo the Dolphin @NemoDolphin79]

@CourtsIdle If Keir Starmer had started diligently investing in the probation service, community sentences, and effective tagging services based in prisons, when he first came into office, the prison population and reoffending rates would both have been falling by now

[The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation @thecfhk]

Moving, historically informed @guardian editorial that mourns the Aug. 21 "subversion" convictions of Hong Kong activists Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung for remembering the Tiananmen Square massacre.

"Others should now stand up and speak for them as they pay the price for that solidarity.

"Remembrance and mourning are not crimes. In a message to Andy Burnham, Chow, a barrister who studied law in the U.K., warned that Britain had a 'non-delegable duty to adopt a more robust stance”' on China. She was right."

https://t.co/MWYreGSfhz

[Samuel Bickett @SamuelBickett]

Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan were well known for advocating for the *peaceful* end to one party rule and democratic elections in China, which subjected them to significant criticism from more radical activists. Even China's constitution and Hong Kong's National Security Law explicitly authorize advocacy to amend laws, as the defendants repeatedly pointed out in court.

But even that moderate position was too much for the Hong Kong judiciary. The judges' Reasons for Verdict is an exercise in stretching law and facts to absurdity in order to achieve Beijing's desired result: conviction and a long imprisonment. It reads like a Maoist political treatise: The judges had no choice but to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence of Chow and Lee's peaceful activism in their verdict, then nonetheless marched headfirst towards verdict against law and logic.

Read for yourself: A law degree isn't needed to recognize the dishonesty in every line.
-Reasons for Verdict (Chinese): https://t.co/5aPDwL8cHP
-Press Summary (English): https://t.co/8g0PetGfFb

[Benedict Rogers 羅傑斯 @benedictrogers]

Predictable but ridiculous. There’s no longer any concept of fair trial, judicial independence or the rule of law in Hong Kong.

Tiananmen Square vigil organisers found guilty in Hong Kong of ‘inciting subversion’ | Hong Kong | The Guardian https://t.co/DqlJgRIvF2

[Kevin Yam 任建峰 @kevinkfyam]

The Hong Kong judiciary has now acquiesced to the CCP’s assertion that using the slogan “End One Party Dictatorship” is a crime. It is a slogan that has been used in Hong Kong for decades without the CCP actually being threatened, but a dictator brooks no dissent.

[The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation @thecfhk]

Political prisoner Chow Hang-tung has posted on the torture she is suffering at the hands of Hong Kong's Correctional Services Department (CSD).

Tomorrow morning, the CSD will transport the peaceful activist from the Tai Lam Centre for Women to to face the verdict in her national security "subversion" trial at the West Kowloon Law Courts.

But the CSD “has changed its method of transport," she writes. "It’s no longer just simple handcuffs; now they use a full set of handcuffs, leg irons, waist chains, and ankle chains and then lead the prisoners like dogs on a chain.”

She describes being forced to hunch her shoulders to avoid the cuffs cutting into her wrist bones while being transported: “One can only ‘choose’ which part of the body shall suffer in turn — when the shoulders are too tired, let the bones ache; when the hands are numb with pain, tighten the shoulders further.

“Locking a person’s joints in certain relative positions can create a kind of ‘interlocking’ effect between body parts. But to the untrained eye, it’s invisible.”

Read more here: https://t.co/crGhEc3JHM

[The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation @thecfhk]

Tomorrow in Hong Kong, three national security judges will deliver their verdict on whether it is a crime to publicly remember the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The Hong Kong Alliance and its leaders, Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung, are on trial for organizing annual vigils in Victoria Park at which tens of thousands of Hong Kongers lit candles in memory of the dead.

Chow and Lee have been detained since 2021 because the regime fears their power to inspire Hong Kongers and because the Chinese Communist Party cannot face the truth of its atrocity crimes.

The pair face maximum sentences of 10 years in prison under the National Security Law.

https://t.co/ogTZ4W4f3c

[Nick Harrison @NickHarrison73]

Talent is spread evenly across the country. Top A-level grades are not.

This year, an A or A* was 42% more common in London than in the North East or East Midlands.

In London, 32.7% of A-level grades were A or A*. In the North East, where I grew up, and the East Midlands, it was just 23.1%.

And when you look across England, an even clearer pattern emerges: London and the South East sit well ahead, with top-grade rates of 32.7% and 31.5%.

Then there’s a sharp drop to 27.9% in the East of England. Every other region falls between 23.1% and 27.9%, with results generally weaker in the North.

This obviously isn’t a map of where the most talented young people live. It’s a map of how differently that talent is being converted into attainment.

There’s no single explanation of course:

Poverty matters. Prior attainment matters. Access to schools and subjects matters. So does the support available outside school and the economic opportunities young people see around them.

Demography matters too. Our recent @suttontrust Crossing Paths research found that London’s strong performance is partly driven by high attainment among ethnic-minority pupils, including disadvantaged ethnic-minority pupils. Whereas other regions have larger white working-class populations, currently the lowest-attaining major group.

London's success should be celebrated, and it's worth remembering that London schools weren’t always the success story they are today. A generation ago, educational outcomes in the capital were poor. They're now transformed.

Which means the huge regional differences we see today are neither inevitable nor immutable. The question now is why we haven’t managed to reproduce that progress for young people in the North and other parts of the country that continue to fall behind.

There isn't one easy answer of course. Closing these gaps means action on child poverty, early years education and teacher recruitment. But it also means being much more curious about why our education system works less well for particular communities, including white working-class young people.

A-level grades help determine who gets through the doors of our most selective universities, and from there into many of our most competitive careers.

A young person with the same underlying potential should not have dramatically different chances of accessing those opportunities because of where they happen to grow up.

Results day celebrates individual achievement. This map shows how much work remains to ensure that what a young person can achieve is not limited by where they grow up

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Before her execution, she recorded a message for her mother:

"I want the world to know what is being done to me."

Reyhaneh Jabbari was 19 when a former intelligence officer tried to sexually assault her. She fought back. He died. She spent seven years in Evin Prison. The world signed petitions. Iran sharpened the rope. She was 26. Iran hanged her anyway.
Rs
Under Sharia law in Iran, to prove rape, a woman must produce four male witnesses to the act itself.

Four. Male. Witnesses.

If she cannot, her accusation becomes a confession. She is no longer the victim. She is the criminal and faces flogging. Or prison. Or death.

This is not ancient history. This is the law that is still on the books today. The law that Abdul El-Sayed is asking Americans not to fear.

Women in Iran don't have a #MeToo movement. They have a noose.

[Neo @Realneo101]

🚨 The Islamic regime is preparing to hang 18-year-old Shervin Bagherian for participating in the January 2026 protests.

His family has just been called for a final visit. He has been moved into solitary confinement.

This kid is only 18.

DO NOT LOOK AWAY.

[Nicole Lampert @nicolelampert]

If I was the Mayor of Haifa, a city which houses the vulnerable Bahai community as well as tens of thousands of Arab Israelis, I think my response to this letter from Hackney Mayor Zoe Garbett would comprise of a string of four letter words.
She has the absolute chutzpah to claim Hackney’s performative politics is about ‘anti-racism’.
Chef’s kiss is that she is demanding a response by October 7 - was that date plucked out of thin air? Gaslighting nasty pricks.

[Nemo the Dolphin @NemoDolphin79]

@RyanShorthouse @WeAreBrightBlue For many professions and jobs, a caution for an offence of dishonesty would forever have to be declared (however old) and would probably be preclusive of employment / appointment

[John Rentoul @JohnRentoul]

This doesn’t seem a good sign

[Nemo the Dolphin @NemoDolphin79]

@familylaw It’s hardly consistent with the open justice principle that the Cafcass reporter and manager are not named in the judgment. And in another case you reported, a QLR who entirely let down the court and parties was not named. In other parts of the court system, they would have been

[Nemo the Dolphin @NemoDolphin79]

@DXW_KC @joe_rich This raises an interesting Q re: whether Bar Council right to suggest the decision to bring contempt proceedings against Rajiv Menon KC should have been for the AG, not judges. Can the AG be relied upon to be an impartial defender of the justice system, setting politics aside?

[Rt Hon Nigel Evans @nigelmp]

This is nothing short of Brilliant by Ann……. Sit back and follow the straightness of the compass that will always land you on solid ground. Thank you Ann and rest in Peace whilst your legacy lives on. X