CBA Monday Message – 17.07.17
Chair’s Update:
Francis FitzGibbon QC
Lord Chief Justice
We congratulate Sir Ian Burnett on his appointment as Lord Chief Justice and wish him the best of luck.
Flexible Operating Hours
The more I think about it, the more misleading and inaccurate I find the term ‘flexible’. The double-shift hours are not flexible. They are rigid and oppressive. We have repeated our position to HMCTS: that the experiment is unnecessary and disproportionately harmful. We have made strong representations to HMCTS and will continue to argue that the pilot should not happen.
Surveys
You may be one of the 1800 members of the 16,000 strong Bar to have completed the Working Lives survey. If you aren’t, please do so here: When you look at it you’ll see why it’s important.
Hannah Willcocks of Red Lion Chambers is researching the trials of sample counts with juries, under Section 17 of the Domestic Violence Crime & Victims Act 2004 – please help complete the survey here before Tuesday 18th July.
HHJ Kramer QC
There will be a valedictory for HHJ Kramer QC at 10.00 on 20 July at the Old Bailey, to mark his retirement from the bench. All welcome.
Summer Drinks
In my last few weeks as your Chair I realise that the Monday Message has failed – unlike Counsel Magazine – to give readers a Wine Column. (We did provide actual wine at the Summer Ball, carefully chosen by Aaron – there really is no end to his talents). The Daily Mail picked it up and to do them credit they avoided the usual fat-cat clichés, instead reporting almost accurately on the great spread of incomes across different part of the Bar. Counsel’s oenophiles, Sean Jones QC and Prof Dominic Regan, selected many wines for under a tenner, from Lidl and Sainsburys. But lest we forget: ‘The wines were too various. It was neither the quality nor the quantity that was at fault – it was the mixture. Grasp that and you have the very root of the matter’.