I'm a criminal barrister. This is the real reason jury trials must not be scrapped - "With David Lammy’s plan to restrict the right to trial by jury, the Government seems to be settling into what might be called its “ISIS phase”: universally unpopular and facing collapse, the party takes its pleasure where it can – chiefly in the wanton destruction of a country’s ancient architecture. The jury trial is one of Britain’s key pillars – its abolition must be resisted. I’m a criminal barrister, and it is a strange feature of this debate that of all the many benefits of the jury system, the most highly prized is one that cannot be spoken of in court: the common law power to acquit in spite of the evidence – sometimes called “jury equity”."
Meme - David Lammy @DavidLammy Jun 20,2020: "Jury trials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement. Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea. The Government need to pull their finger out and acquire empty public buildings across the country to make sure these can happen in a way that is safe."
"When I am the weaker, I ask you for my freedom, because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle."
Labour’s grasp of British history is woefully inadequate - "the famous clause 39 (one of only four clauses still valid today): namely that “no free man” could be imprisoned “nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land”. So it is strange to hear Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Prime Minister, reach for the Magna Carta when defending Labour’s plans to scrap the majority of jury trials. Yes, Mr Jones is correct to argue that the charter insists on a right to timely justice – but that comes hot on the heels of guaranteeing a right to be tried by one’s peers, something he seems to have conveniently forgotten... You wouldn’t expect Labour ministers to be so blasé when it comes to the legal system – after all, an embarrassing number of them seem to have fallen foul of the law in recent times. And given that public confidence in the judiciary seems to be in freefall, you’d hope the Government would recognise that being tried by one’s peers offers something of a corrective: a democratic process that binds us to our fellow citizens, and those of centuries past."
Dr David Jeffery on X - "It's amazing that Labour can so easily scrap ancient rights like a trial by a jury of your peers, yet the Human Rights Act 1998 is sacrosanct..."
The Free Speech Union on X - "Juries have been the last line of defence against the authoritarian cancel mob. When our members have found themselves charged with criminal offences for speaking out, juries have reliably said no dice to overzealous prosecutors. This has infuriated the CPS and the activists who make malicious complaints. One was Jamie Michael, a decorated Royal Marines veteran, who was charged with inciting racial hatred after a Labour staffer reported him to the police for a video he posted on Facebook. Jamie spent 20 days in prison on remand. A jury took just 17 minutes to clear him. The local Labour Party were said to be furious. Now David Lammy wants to scrap juries and give judges — who are required to follow DEI policies — the sole power to convict and jail Brits for up to 5 years for online posts. This move is about power, not saving costs. Nothing in our present national situation warrants abandoning an 800-year-old right: that in a court of law, your peers decide if you're guilty, not the state. We will fight any such proposal with everything we’ve got. Read more below 👇"
A jury took 17 minutes to find Jamie ‘not guilty’. I hate to think what a Left-wing judge would’ve done - "After the Southport riots, Sir Keir Starmer managed to arrange weekend courts for largely fictitious “far-Right thugs” – why isn’t that same solution possible in this “emergency”? With his patent brand of bumptious pomposity – seldom has a man been so pleased with himself with so little cause – David Lammy brushed aside concerns from know-nothings like the Law Society that he was trampling on the 1,000-year-old rights granted to the British people under Magna Carta... Writing for The Telegraph, he insisted that justice delayed was justice denied. Jury trials may be “the cornerstone of justice”, he conceded, but “a strong justice system is not one that clings to tradition for its own sake. Instead, it delivers for the people it serves. The public deserves a system that protects them.” I couldn’t agree more. The public definitely deserves a justice system that protects them – protects them from an increasingly authoritarian government hellbent on imposing its Marxist student views on a small-c conservative country. Little by way of historical literacy is to be expected from a man who, when he was asked on Mastermind, “Who succeeded Henry VIII?”, confidently answered “Henry VII” (yes, he really did). Ignorance of why tradition matters – indeed, of how tradition acts as a bulwark against idiot novelty and tyranny – is a defining characteristic of this lowdown, lying Labour Government. Observing the Justice Secretary’s weaselly sophistry as he tried to justify an attack on the foundations of democracy and fair trials had me thinking of other options. Surely it would be better to just scrap David Lammy?... If this were a normal government, the trials-without-juries proposal would be plain wrong. However, because this is a government with a track record of singling out for punishment anyone who threatens its preferred ideology, and calling their criticism “hate speech”, it is not just wrong, it’s sinister. No matter how flawed human beings are, nor how imperfect a jury, they have to be better than some smug Lefty judge who was a barrister in the same chambers as Keir Starmer when he was taking his hols behind the Iron Curtain. Judges, like police officers, are now promoted for showing commitment to diversity and they are likely to bow to pressure from their sanctimonious fellows; two-tier justice will only get worse – and we all know who the convicted will be... he posted a passionate 12-minute video on Facebook in which he lamented the “scumbags” coming ashore illegally in the UK and called for people to come together peacefully to protest the threat to children’s safety and to raise the issue politely with their councillors and MPs. (Jamie had served in Afghanistan and Iraq so he had knowledge of the kind of men who were breaking into our country – none of it good)... At the police station, despite incentives such as a lighter sentence, Jamie refused to plead guilty. “I’d done nothing wrong. I’d put my life on the line for my country many times and I wasn’t going to let them do that to me.” Finally, the lawyer persuaded Jamie to go “no plea”, something he deeply regrets but he was made to feel there was no alternative. Like Northampton childminder Lucy Connolly (who did plead guilty having been promised she’d be out of jail in time to spend Christmas with her daughter), Jamie was denied bail for no good reason. He was then remanded in a cell for an outrageous 17 days, during which time his resolve to plead “not guilty” hardened. Friends advised Jamie to apply to the Free Speech Union (FSU) and, overnight, his fortunes changed. Luke Gittos, the FSU solicitor (also my marvellous lawyer in my encounter with Essex Police) got Jamie’s tag removed and his curfew lifted straight away. His defence team believed his comments were protected under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the former Marine had every right to express his anger and distress, and his views on immigration. And he had certainly not incited hatred. The jury at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court agreed – within 17 minutes. I can’t tell you how much I love that 17-minute verdict. What a slap across the chops for the pious Starmer cabal, the identity-politics zealots who hate the white, working class and their vulgar freedom of expression. Those Merthyr jurors were the common sense of the British people in excelsis. It’s a point made with fervour in a video released today by Lammy’s ministerial shadow, Robert Jenrick. Praising the ordinary men and women “pooling their combined wisdom and experiences”, Jenrick asks: “Would Lucy Connolly really have been given 31 months if she too had appeared before a jury?”... normal people don’t agree with Labour’s warped progressive values so juries must be scrapped and replaced with judges who can be trusted to reach a guilty verdict. It’s political, and it stinks. Jamie Michael’s barrister, Adam King, sums it up in his best KC manner: “Jamie’s case largely depended on whether his video was ‘likely to stir up racial hatred’. His political views – critical of illegal immigration and the Labour Government – are commonplace amongst ordinary citizens but objectionable to a large proportion of the educated classes. “He would have been much more likely to have been (wrongly) convicted if tried by magistrates or a judge sitting alone. His trial is a prime example of why we need juries – and, perhaps, why this Government wants to remove them for cases like his.”"
Labour MPs rebel over David Lammy’s ‘mad’ jury plans - "“This problem was not caused by jurors, nor will it be fixed by their eradication from public duty. Every day during the Second World War, juries continued to sit, reverting from 12 to 7 jurors. We are not at war!"... “This is not the usual suspects. There are people on that letter who have never voted against the party in the entire time they have been [in Parliament]. I have never voted against the Labour whip in 15 years I have been here."
Woman woke up in mortuary after being declared dead - "A woman woke up in a mortuary after wrongly being declared dead at her home, a coroner’s court heard. Police, paramedics and family all attended Olive Martin’s address after she suffered a seizure. Instead of being taken to the emergency department to receive care, the 54-year-old was transferred to Darlington Hospital Mortuary, where staff discovered she was still alive. Coroner Jeremy Chipperfield told Crook Coroners Court in County Durham that brain damage was the cause of Ms Martin’s death, “albeit some time later”."
Woman found alive, moving in coffin after she was taken to Buddhist temple for cremation - "A woman in Thailand who was found alive in her coffin at a Buddhist temple was saved from organ donation and cremation because her brother didn't have a death certificate... the woman's brother said she had been bedridden for about two years and had become unresponsive, appearing to stop breathing two days ago. The brother placed her in a coffin and journeyed about 300 miles to a hospital in Bangkok, to which the woman had previously expressed a wish to donate her organs. Pairat said the hospital refused to accept the woman's body because her brother didn't have an official death certificate. When the brother approached the temple for a cremation, he was also refused due to the missing document... Similar instances of a person being found alive at funeral homes or morgues have been reported in the past. In June 2024, a 74-year-old Nebraska woman declared dead at a nursing home was found breathing at a funeral home two hours later. In January 2023, a 66-year-old woman was pronounced dead at an Iowa care facility after an employee said she "did not feel a pulse" and that the woman was not breathing. After she was taken to a funeral home, the woman woke up "gasping for air." That same year, a New York funeral home found an 82-year-old woman alive and breathing shortly after she was declared dead at a nursing home. In 2002, five officials in Shanghai, China, were punished, and a doctor had their license revoked after a video showed funeral parlor workers returning a body bag containing a live person to a retirement home."
Japan Has Heated Roads to Deal With Snow - The Atlantic
Some documentation for the meme. But this is hardly ubiquitous there"
Meme - Rock solid @ShitpostRock: "This just further proves that most developers are too lazy to properly optimise their games"
Wario64: "Helldivers 2 on PC has reduced installation size from 154GB to 23GB thanks to support from Nixxes"
🤍𝕁𝕆🤍 on X - "This couple travelled to Pakistan & they say it was the worst experience they've ever had.... groups of men following and touching"
Zoomer on X - "The Pakistani community in Britain had zero whistleblowers whilst their men engaged in one of the biggest mass-rapes in history. They were all collectively involved in it directly or covered it up. Did this woman honestly think she would have a positive experience as a young White woman visiting a country FULL of these people? They’re as creepy as Indians but they actually act upon it. Imagine a country of 250,000,000 of them. That’s Pakistan."
Jachin Mascall: Man who raped 12-year-old girl he met on Tinder has 'unduly lenient' sentence increased - "Jachin Mascall, now aged 20, pleaded guilty to three counts of rape of a child under 13 at Inner London Crown Court in June 2021. He was given a three-year community order which required 200 hours of unpaid work, 40 hours rehabilitation activity and 48 sessions of "choices and change" programme. In a ruling on Monday, three judges quashed the original sentence, replacing it with a custodial term of 36 months in a young offender institution and a further licence period of one year... Mascall was later arrested and admitted to the sexual activity but said he believed the girl to be over 16. The victim had joined Tinder despite the app having a minimum age requirement of 18. When she and Mascall met, she told him that she was aged 20 and had a car and her own accommodation."
Dan Burmawi on X - "The Muslim Brotherhood are hated by Muslim rulers because they challenge their authority as illegitimate, but they are loved by the masses. Yesterday, after President Trump designated some chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as FTOs, I went through the comments on posts by Arab media. The result was exactly what I have been telling you: 99% of people are defending the Muslim Brotherhood and consider them the rightful representatives of oppressed Muslims everywhere. The Muslim Brotherhood didn’t invent anything new. It is Islam in its original form, the same Islam Muhammad and his companions preached and practiced when they conquered half the old world. Muslims know this intuitively. Only Muslim rulers threatened by the Brotherhood and their loyalists oppose it. Hamas is the military wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and 99% of Muslims worldwide support Hamas, not because of “occupation,” as I’ve been telling you for two years, but for religious reasons. Fighting the Muslim Brotherhood in the West without addressing Islam itself is a waste of time."
TheRealMrBench on X - "Guess which X accounts are based in Canada?
• The Conservative Party of Canada
• Quebec Bloc Party.
Guess which are based in the USA.
• Liberal Party
• NDP
• BC NDP
• CBC News
• Globe and Mail
• CTV
• City TV"
"Elbows up" is such a sham
Trump will designate Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization : r/NewsWorthPayingFor - "The MB’s motto is "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.""
"Saying "jihad just means struggle, it doesn't imply terrorist violence" is kind of like saying "final solution just means solving a problem permanently, it doesn't imply genocide". Technically true if you just look at the word in a vacuum, but you're ignoring the context of how it's actually been used."
"Or like saying "when I called them gay, I meant to call them happy""
"It's the mark of an intellectual to be able to fastidiously look at a word in a vacuum. That, and to use "other" as a verb."
Insurrection Barbie on X - "Clinton judge makes a decision that has never been made before in modern criminal history to save the disgraced former FBI director and the disgraced attorney general of New York. The idea that these cases had to be thrown out because the prosecutor was “improperly appointed” is nonsense. Interim U.S. Attorneys are appointed this way all the time across Republican and Democratic administrations, and courts have consistently upheld their authority under the de facto officer doctrine. Even if someone’s paperwork isn’t perfect, their official acts remain valid. That’s why no other indictments Halligan touched were tossed. This judge ignored a century of precedent, bypassed the normal standard, and used the most technical, least-substantive loophole possible—because ruling on the actual evidence would have been far more damaging to Comey and Letitia James. If the prosecutor truly lacked authority, then all her cases should collapse. They didn’t. Only these two did. That tells you everything. What makes the ruling even more outrageous is that the judge didn’t dispute a single piece of evidence. Not Comey’s admitted memo leaks. Not the IG’s criminal referral. Not the documented contradictions in James’s filings. She didn’t touch the facts because the facts were solid. Instead, she sidestepped them entirely to declare that the prosecutor’s internal DOJ appointment wasn’t tidy enough. That’s not justice. That’s a judicial escape hatch designed to protect two powerful political actors without having to publicly address what they actually did. No citizen in America would get their charges wiped out over a paperwork technicality. But for Comey and Letitia James, suddenly the rules change. What is the remedy for this elected Republicans?"
Frank Vaughan on X - "If you are demanding Canadians buy Canadian, why aren't you demanding Canadian companies hire Canadians? Or demanding Canadian pensions invest in Canada more heavily? Or that Canadian tax dollars stay in Canada, and aren't shipped overseas? Hypocrisy drips from lifted elbows."
Bernie on X - "criminal records of ministers can stay secret because disclosing their convictions would be a breach of their privacy, the Government's watchdog has ruled. So a tax payer funded Quango will prevent citizens from knowing if their MPs have criminal records. Not at all dodgy 🤡"
Raccoon found passed out in liquor store after ransacking shelves overnight
Men not welcome at Wyoming’s pig wrestling - "As a concession to animal rights activists, they have eliminated the men’s category and will require female and child participants to join a programme on caring for animals... Mr Newcomb said they had agreed that women and children would be less likely to harm the pigs, although he raised concerns about trans competitors."
Jury acquits teen who claimed self-defence in fatal Toronto school shooting, saying he carried gun because his neighbourhood was ‘like Iraq’ : r/Ontario_Sub - "So let me get this straight. You shoot a guy who breaks into your house, you go to jail. You carry a gun with you to school and shoot a guy there who attacks you and that's okay? So does this mean we can all carry guns now, even the kids going to school?"
"Only if you're a criminal since they lead a more dangerous life than the average citizen. Therefore there is reasonable grounds for them to need to be able to protect themselves from other criminals. That's why firearms charges often get removed and the LPC lowered the punishments for them."
If Toronto is like Iraq, asylum seekers shouldn't be allowed to live there to protect them
Poll suggests most Canadians want federal bureaucracy reduced - "A new poll shows that most Canadians believe the federal government has grown too large and expensive, and that services haven’t improved to match. The survey, conducted by Leger for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, found that 54% of Canadians think the size and cost of the federal bureaucracy should be reduced. Only 4% want it increased, while 24% say it should stay the same. When looking only at those with a clear opinion, two-thirds support cuts... Despite this growth, many Canadians don’t believe services have improved, according to the poll. Half of respondents say federal services have gotten worse since 2016. Just 11% think they’ve improved, while 23% say they’re about the same."
Clearly they need to hire even more people to improve service
Meme - "I told my girlfriend she had the beauty of an elf. She dumped me: apparently, I'm a Lord of the Rings fan and she's a Harry Potter fan"
Meme - Bushra Shaikh: "Despite what gets spun, Sharia law isn't this evil, misogynistic, medieval system that oppresses women. In its full, ethical understanding, Sharia law upholds social justice, human rights, equality, gender equity and robust crime deterrents. In many elements, Sharia would be far more effective than current civil law."
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "Sharia law imposes a hierarchy of rights. Muslim men have the most rights, Muslim women fewer, and non-Muslims and non-believers even less - contradicting Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees equality regardless of race, sex or religion."
Pavarotti statue frozen knee-deep in ice rink strikes wrong note in Italy - "An Italian mayor has apologised to the family of opera star Luciano Pavarotti after the town of Pesaro encased a statue honouring the late singer within a Christmas ice rink. The singer's widow, Nicoletta Mantovani, told local media that she was "angry and upset" at what she called the decision to "ridicule" her late husband. The temporary ice rink was constructed in the centre of the town's piazza, leaving Pavrotti's statue knee-deep in ice and surrounded by perspex walls... Before it was opened on 29 November, Biancani posted a doctored image of Pavarotti's statue playing ice hockey with the hashtag #DaiUnCinqueAPavarotti, which translates to "Give a high-five to Pavarotti"."
Ryan Saavedra on X - "🚨 BREAKING: The New York Times reports that the story from The Washington Post that alleged that @PeteHegseth ordered narcoterrorists who survived an attack to be killed is *false* From the article: "The Post article did not provide context on when Mr. Hegseth gave what its sources described as a spoken order to kill everyone.""
zerohedge on X - "Hegseth Ordered a Lethal Attack but Not the Killing of Survivors: NYT"
Mike Coté on X - "If the NYT reporting is correct, this whole thing feels like a nothingburger. Sinking a disabled enemy ship isn't a problem at all, regardless if there are survivors from an initial strike that die in subsequent ones. If the intention is to sink the ship, that's what matters."
Mike Coté on X - "The attack on the ship was not over & the threat posed remained. If enemy personnel die in the process of the attack happening, whether that's on the first shot or the fifth, thems the breaks."
John Ʌ Konrad V on X - "You know you’ve lost the plot when the NYTimes steps in to correct fake news. I don’t have any anonymous sources from my day in the Pentagon but I can say nobody is letting this “blow over”. I’m a ship captain. I’ve dealt with pirates and smugglers. I’ve reported on at least three deaths of servicemen who lost their lives trying to apprehended boats at sea. It’s extremely dangerous. I think deploying so many high value warships to check and recheck targeting is overkill, there are several hotspots in the world where we need those ships. I want more protection at sea, more smugglers eliminated, more authority for COs to take kinetic action, fewer dangerous stop and arrests. I seemed to be in the minority. They take rules of engagement seriously."
