badboybarrister: election special

I believe lawyers generally shouldn't meddle in politics. That is of course unless the result of the election is potentially going to cost me several bottles of decent wine a week and lead to a substantially downgraded car and thus, in all likelihood, a substantially downgraded wife and mistress.

However as every other bugger will be commenting on it I thought I'd make a token effort for the sake of relevant blogging.

Essentially the choice for the Criminal Bar in particular is this:

Do we want to be buggered by the bloke we know or the new bloke?

Either way we are going to have to bend over and take one for the team in the name of austerity in public spending.

The proposed changes to the Criminal Justice System and to Legal Aid will inevitably be Civil Service led. To some extent it matters not who is in No.10.

As ever it is the well paid, faceless and grey-suited monkeys who will drive Criminal Justice policy. That is to say those fine men and women who never have seen, and never will see, the inside of a courtroom. That is unless and until they are charged with gross indecency or voyeurism.

Quite simply most Criminal Barristers will either have to buy a smaller house or sell their least promising child.

In passing, the total Legal Aid budget is around £2 billion a year. Government public spending is currently about £650 billion annually.

The MoJ (aka 'The Machine of Jihad') seeks to save the princely sum of £50 million a year from Barristers' fees via fresh cuts by way of what are termed efficiency savings. Sigh.

Just to put all that in context the UK's current national debt is about £900 billion with the interest on that sum in 2010 alone of about £40 billion. The NHS budget for 2010-11 is about £110 billion. The MoD budget for 2010-11 is about £37 billion.

So at least that sorts all that debt out then.

I'm off to join the circus. Or the CPS.