All fair but shocked by your sexism at calling your friends "girls"! How terrible you must be!
Seriously, juries are a very important part of our society and must stay BUT the same problem that afflicts our democracy (partisanship, mostly by immigrants) also affects our trials - who would expect a Muslim immigrant charged with rape to be convicted by a mostly Moslem jury (would not even require many prejudiced Moslems to get him off).
The answer to these, and to so many of our country's issues, is the same one - repatriation (not deportation) of millions of recent immigrants starting with the illegals and the criminals. Admittedly we will have to stop 'sponsoring' the workshy amongst the natives as well but big changes are required, and now.
It is depressing that, for the wrong reasons, the National Front might have been right all those years ago.
I keep asking myself the same question, over and over, and I've been asking it for many years now - "Where is all the money going?" We cannot pay to make the NHS work, we cannot fix the potholes in the road, we cannot afford a decent sized military, we couldn't afford the winter fuel allowance, and now we cannot afford to maintain trial by jury, etc., etc. I know, I know, we spend loads' on NHS "managers" and their packages, we spend on HS2, we pay for thousands of illegals, we now are going to pay much more for large familly child benefits, and so on and so forth. But,...... I sense it, I smell it, I somehow know it, much of our wealth is being diverted away from us into some other black hole or some cause we would never have agreed to and so it is kept secret from us. Even after all these "savings", it is not enough to finance the country. No, we even have to borrow massively and so have a national debt of trillions. Where IS all our money going? I mean really,.... where the F---k is it all going? Who is signing off the nation's finances every year? Is this happening at all. Where is the real check on our "spending?" There isn't one is there. They can spend spend spend and rob us all of however much they feel like. There is nothing to prevent them.
“That is not who we are”. Alas, it is a case of that is not who we were. The proportion of people with no memory of or ancestral ties to Britian continues to grow. And the children of the British are taught not to be patriotic. Back in the day, when we were a homogeneous society, Vera Lynn could sing:
There’ll always be an England
And England shall be free
If England means as much to you
As England means to me
And be confident the words resonated with nearly everyone.
My question is whether we can challenge these changes? None of these (euthanasia, abortion, Digital ID, abandoning jury trials, farmers IHT etc.) were in their manifesto (were they in any other party's manifesto?). So nobody voted for or against these and some of the suggested changes will fundamentally transform our society.
So in these cases should we demand referenda?
Should we insist that if changes are not in the manifesto and not essential to the functioning of the State, these need to be deferred to the next general election?
These are just some thoughts, but I know I have not voted for any of this!
Good essay. But let's also look at the underlying reasons for our courtroom logjam....and no it's not 'underfunding'. The truth is that Britain has become a place run by - and in the interests of - its huge lawyering class. And the causes they champion - and the arcane Dickensian Offices of Circumlocution that suits their personal purposes all too well - gum up both criminal justice and litigation court proceedings. And I do not just mean the Lefty law firms...although they are bad enough. I mean the massive law-graduate ranks of the Civil Service, the quangos and pretty much every British institution in 2025.... all the way from the (largely tax-payer-funded) charities to even the higher ranks of the police.
If it wasn't for that class and all its 'human rights' lawfaring, we would still have a criminal justice system that focussed on actually catching criminals and punishing the worst of them the hardest. There would – in other words –still be deterrence. We would have left the ECHR years ago and delivered on the public's overwhelming desire to rein-in immigration. "Contrary to the party political pycho-drama endlessly fed to the British public, real political agency in Britain – whichever political party is supposedly ‘in power’ – is massively and disproportionately in the hands of its huge high caste of lefty lawyers. In the mental universe they inhabit, being all ‘social justicey’ and cleverly subverting the seemingly atavistic concerns of rightist politicians and van-driving, non-graduate types is viewed as a rather fun (and highly lucrative) intellectual chess game. When you - from the vantage point of your well-healed posh suburb - are personally insulated from the adverse consequences of those social justicey ‘causes’ you champion, it may indeed seem all very professionally satisfying. And this lawfare game now goes on not just within government and ‘independent’ judiciary circles but in each and every part of the British institutional establishment". https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/news-from-nowhere-revisite
Lets hope this SS idea gets scrapped along with binning Rachel from Accounts, so that some of the funds can be redirected to streamlining the courts with funds for buildings, courts, and all necessary structures to enable and fix it. Alas that will come, but perhaps not right now.
BUT I do think there is too much going on for them to even spin the watered down version that you so beautifully described, Laura.
At this point there is too much outrage between this and the fact that miss Rachel lied to the entire UK.
Laura, great article, and it gives us hope that some women, including your circle of girl friends (we guess), don't cave to collectivism and agreeableness. The only part, and maybe the most important part - is that it sounds like you are okay with women having casual sex, not aware/not caring of the very real consequence of getting pregnant, and then carelessly performing murder by taking a toxic pill that kills the newly conceived human being. Please, do not give women excuses to commit murder of the most innocent. It is an act that haunts many women their whole life.
I had to use a VPN in order to read an 'age restricted' comment. Didn't seem that contentious to me. Such things seem to be happening more frequently now.
I guess when you clog up the courts with ‘hate speech ‘ violations and vexatious complaints about words that are hurty, then real crime takes ages to filter through the court system if indeed police still investigate real crime. My observation is that real crime is only investigated in crime fiction in Britain.
If there is a shortage of money for jury trials then it is being spent on illegal immigrant benefits and the welfare system in general. You have a lot of cake on the table over there.
"This is a well-known behavioural tactic. Threaten an extreme measure, then offer back a softened version. The foot in the door. The boiling frog. The shifting Overton window. People breathe a sigh of relief — and then accept a compromise they never would have tolerated at the outset."
Laura, even the notion of stopping jury trials for most offenses, to be settled by judges is the same tactic. Because their REAL goal is trial by AI. They'll claim that because even judges have biases, and there's not enough of them they'll migrate to "scientific jurisprudence." It's happening in China and India today. And both the EU and US are setting the stage for it:
I first found you as a result of your work, State of Fear, about the abusive application of Behavioural Science during the plandemic. In my own investigation of behaviourism during plandemic also introduced me to the notion of "scientific jurisprudence" as cautioned about over sixty years ago in this paper, Law and Behavioral Science by the legal philosopher and professor Walter Berns:
The first 14 pages are a sort of game theory presentation of cases a judge may hear, apply behavioural science reasoning, strategies for using individual cases to build a body of law to achieve a future "greater good." The final 14 pages are more of a philosophical discussion of the benefits declared by advocates of experimental/scientific (we know as AI today) jurisprudence and the hazards of turning over issues of law to it. The impossibility of finding wisdom in science. Wisdom being the requisite of good governance.
The proposals to eliminate juries and replace them with judges is only a stepping stone to achieving the dreams and goals of the social engineers for decades, centuries. Probably ever since obstacles like the Magna Carta and US Constitution, rights of man got in the way of the absolute monarchs and dictators. In fact, similar debates going back to times of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates.
No doubt the algorithms found in any AI jurisprudence will have scoring that will reflect achieving "greater good" agendas of those in control. Anglo: unfavorable points. Non-Anglo: favorable points. Political affiliation: unfavorable/favorable points. Private club membership: favorable points.
Cases not determined on just the facts and merit of the case. Rather, on how it can be used to socially engineer behaviours in a population. No wisdom. No judge to blame, remove from the bench. Just the bailiffs (and bots?) who will dutifully carry out the ruling of the AI judge with an impersonal shrug of their shoulders saying they are just following orders as they lead you to your punishment.
THAT's where the elimination of juries is intended to take society. That is the shift of the Overton window intended to have us accept, tolerate and abide by rule by algorithm. And breath a sigh of relief for getting rid of the biased judges we already are growing tired of. It is diabolically genius - if we allow it.
Lammy is showing his true authoritarian fascist viewpoint and problem is, he's got the authority to do it because of the soon to be abuse of his position. When Socialists/ Communists get the reigns of power, oppression always , always eventuates. History has proven this time and time again....
The legal system is overwhelmed so what are we going to do about it? .
Question is why is the legal system overwhelmed? Would it be because we import so many criminals?
And keep importing them, I’d like to see a graph showing when the systems worked relatively correctly and when this mass immigration started, I would suspect they would show quite clearly what the real problem is .
Hi Laura, interesting article. I coming at this from a different angle, so please bear with me and forgive me!
In the UK we are broke, we all might not know that yet but if you understand GSE Economics, you will know we are at a tipping point and we are about to not be able to return.
With this economic backdrop, we need to cut our cloth and as nice as it is to have jury trials, they are really really expensive, not guaranteed to get to the 'right' conclusion and unfortunately most jurors are not really competent to understand what they are being told. Perhaps now is the time to get away with expensive jury trials for minor offences and beef up how good and unbiased the Judges are or should be?
I understand what you are saying. Just worried that this change would not improve justice. For example the one person who pleaded 'not guilty' to charges after the Southport murders was acquitted by a jury. The rest were trialled without a jury (as far as I know) and were found guilty with long prison sentences. In cases where the law is an ass, a jury may provide the common sense.
A compromise may be to make this temporary (let's say for a year and monitor if this actually speeds up the system) and that accused can still demand a jury trial.
But didn't the people who were trialled without a jury plead guilty, on the basis that they thought they would be let out sooner? If you plead guilty then it's like being found guilty (although you are supposed to get the fact that you pleaded guilty taken into account in your favour). Personally, I think some of the duty solicitors have a lot to answer for.
You are right. What I was trying to say is that the one person who pleaded not guilty was acquitted by a jury and I am not sure if a judge (without a jury) would have ruled the same way, especially as the other people (who had pleaded guilty) were handed very heavy sentences.
Several judges certainly don't seem to be unbiased - similarly with tribunals such as those which allow incomers to stay here. That started with Blair's requirements that judges have to have a specialisation in one or more fields that are heavily tainted with wokeness. Blair took a hatchet to our legal system. The fact that the Tories didn't revoke his damage is unforgiveable. Nothing they can say now will change that - they had their chance.
I totally agree, without a proper decent judge the whole system fails (as it often is now). Also you need AB proper jury for the serious trials. I think the current jury selection process needs overhauling as many many people (30-50 %?) are not competent to be jurors. But my original statement still stands ie we can’t afford the current system economically.
1- The example you are suggesting is a 'serious' crime ie murder and I believe this should be still tried by jury although I would like to get jurors pre-qualified with some sort of test for competence / openness to being able to not go along with the normal woke bias we see today etc
2- "...Just worried that this change would not improve justice.." It is up to how the changes are made, if they are well thought through and designed well, why can't we have a fair system but at lower cost/ greater speed than today's model. I believe this can be achieved with careful thought.
I'm not sure jury's today do provide common sense and I think that we could improve this if so pre-qualification of juries went on.
Sorry for the confusion. These were the people arrested after the murders, who were on trial for social media posts, so would not be deemed 'serious'.
I am also not entirely certain that the judges are completely unbiased and you should not underestimate the common sense of a group of people (jury). They may have more sense than the judges...
All fair but shocked by your sexism at calling your friends "girls"! How terrible you must be!
Seriously, juries are a very important part of our society and must stay BUT the same problem that afflicts our democracy (partisanship, mostly by immigrants) also affects our trials - who would expect a Muslim immigrant charged with rape to be convicted by a mostly Moslem jury (would not even require many prejudiced Moslems to get him off).
The answer to these, and to so many of our country's issues, is the same one - repatriation (not deportation) of millions of recent immigrants starting with the illegals and the criminals. Admittedly we will have to stop 'sponsoring' the workshy amongst the natives as well but big changes are required, and now.
It is depressing that, for the wrong reasons, the National Front might have been right all those years ago.
I keep asking myself the same question, over and over, and I've been asking it for many years now - "Where is all the money going?" We cannot pay to make the NHS work, we cannot fix the potholes in the road, we cannot afford a decent sized military, we couldn't afford the winter fuel allowance, and now we cannot afford to maintain trial by jury, etc., etc. I know, I know, we spend loads' on NHS "managers" and their packages, we spend on HS2, we pay for thousands of illegals, we now are going to pay much more for large familly child benefits, and so on and so forth. But,...... I sense it, I smell it, I somehow know it, much of our wealth is being diverted away from us into some other black hole or some cause we would never have agreed to and so it is kept secret from us. Even after all these "savings", it is not enough to finance the country. No, we even have to borrow massively and so have a national debt of trillions. Where IS all our money going? I mean really,.... where the F---k is it all going? Who is signing off the nation's finances every year? Is this happening at all. Where is the real check on our "spending?" There isn't one is there. They can spend spend spend and rob us all of however much they feel like. There is nothing to prevent them.
For a start, at least £5 billion is earmarked for Ukraine every year.
“That is not who we are”. Alas, it is a case of that is not who we were. The proportion of people with no memory of or ancestral ties to Britian continues to grow. And the children of the British are taught not to be patriotic. Back in the day, when we were a homogeneous society, Vera Lynn could sing:
There’ll always be an England
And England shall be free
If England means as much to you
As England means to me
And be confident the words resonated with nearly everyone.
These days revised lyrics apply:
If England no longer means as much to you
As England means to me
Then England shall not be free
And England will soon not be
Truly outrageous and terrifying
Couldn't agree more.
My question is whether we can challenge these changes? None of these (euthanasia, abortion, Digital ID, abandoning jury trials, farmers IHT etc.) were in their manifesto (were they in any other party's manifesto?). So nobody voted for or against these and some of the suggested changes will fundamentally transform our society.
So in these cases should we demand referenda?
Should we insist that if changes are not in the manifesto and not essential to the functioning of the State, these need to be deferred to the next general election?
These are just some thoughts, but I know I have not voted for any of this!
Good essay. But let's also look at the underlying reasons for our courtroom logjam....and no it's not 'underfunding'. The truth is that Britain has become a place run by - and in the interests of - its huge lawyering class. And the causes they champion - and the arcane Dickensian Offices of Circumlocution that suits their personal purposes all too well - gum up both criminal justice and litigation court proceedings. And I do not just mean the Lefty law firms...although they are bad enough. I mean the massive law-graduate ranks of the Civil Service, the quangos and pretty much every British institution in 2025.... all the way from the (largely tax-payer-funded) charities to even the higher ranks of the police.
If it wasn't for that class and all its 'human rights' lawfaring, we would still have a criminal justice system that focussed on actually catching criminals and punishing the worst of them the hardest. There would – in other words –still be deterrence. We would have left the ECHR years ago and delivered on the public's overwhelming desire to rein-in immigration. "Contrary to the party political pycho-drama endlessly fed to the British public, real political agency in Britain – whichever political party is supposedly ‘in power’ – is massively and disproportionately in the hands of its huge high caste of lefty lawyers. In the mental universe they inhabit, being all ‘social justicey’ and cleverly subverting the seemingly atavistic concerns of rightist politicians and van-driving, non-graduate types is viewed as a rather fun (and highly lucrative) intellectual chess game. When you - from the vantage point of your well-healed posh suburb - are personally insulated from the adverse consequences of those social justicey ‘causes’ you champion, it may indeed seem all very professionally satisfying. And this lawfare game now goes on not just within government and ‘independent’ judiciary circles but in each and every part of the British institutional establishment". https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/news-from-nowhere-revisite
Lets hope this SS idea gets scrapped along with binning Rachel from Accounts, so that some of the funds can be redirected to streamlining the courts with funds for buildings, courts, and all necessary structures to enable and fix it. Alas that will come, but perhaps not right now.
BUT I do think there is too much going on for them to even spin the watered down version that you so beautifully described, Laura.
At this point there is too much outrage between this and the fact that miss Rachel lied to the entire UK.
Surprised by only 45 likes…
Share it?
Will do…
Cui bono ?
Not me. Not my wife. Not our four kids. Not our six grandchildren...
...and not our cat, which should be micro-chipped. But ain't. He's hanging out for cat liberty.
Laura, great article, and it gives us hope that some women, including your circle of girl friends (we guess), don't cave to collectivism and agreeableness. The only part, and maybe the most important part - is that it sounds like you are okay with women having casual sex, not aware/not caring of the very real consequence of getting pregnant, and then carelessly performing murder by taking a toxic pill that kills the newly conceived human being. Please, do not give women excuses to commit murder of the most innocent. It is an act that haunts many women their whole life.
I had to use a VPN in order to read an 'age restricted' comment. Didn't seem that contentious to me. Such things seem to be happening more frequently now.
Or take the Northern Line, Edgware Branch to Hampstead like the rest of us proles?
I guess when you clog up the courts with ‘hate speech ‘ violations and vexatious complaints about words that are hurty, then real crime takes ages to filter through the court system if indeed police still investigate real crime. My observation is that real crime is only investigated in crime fiction in Britain.
If there is a shortage of money for jury trials then it is being spent on illegal immigrant benefits and the welfare system in general. You have a lot of cake on the table over there.
"This is a well-known behavioural tactic. Threaten an extreme measure, then offer back a softened version. The foot in the door. The boiling frog. The shifting Overton window. People breathe a sigh of relief — and then accept a compromise they never would have tolerated at the outset."
Laura, even the notion of stopping jury trials for most offenses, to be settled by judges is the same tactic. Because their REAL goal is trial by AI. They'll claim that because even judges have biases, and there's not enough of them they'll migrate to "scientific jurisprudence." It's happening in China and India today. And both the EU and US are setting the stage for it:
https://www.unesco.org/en/artificial-intelligence/rule-law/mooc-judges
https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/ai-and-judiciary-balancing-innovation-integrity
https://www.coe.int/en/web/cepej/artificial-intelligence-in-justice-systems
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/law_practice/resources/law-technology-today/2023/the-real-future-of-ai-in-law-ai-judges/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/376297565_Prospects_for_the_use_of_artificial_intelligence_in_jurisprudence_from_the_educational_process_to_legal_practice_The_experience_of_China
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/publications/awp/awp220
I first found you as a result of your work, State of Fear, about the abusive application of Behavioural Science during the plandemic. In my own investigation of behaviourism during plandemic also introduced me to the notion of "scientific jurisprudence" as cautioned about over sixty years ago in this paper, Law and Behavioral Science by the legal philosopher and professor Walter Berns:
https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2953&context=lcp
The first 14 pages are a sort of game theory presentation of cases a judge may hear, apply behavioural science reasoning, strategies for using individual cases to build a body of law to achieve a future "greater good." The final 14 pages are more of a philosophical discussion of the benefits declared by advocates of experimental/scientific (we know as AI today) jurisprudence and the hazards of turning over issues of law to it. The impossibility of finding wisdom in science. Wisdom being the requisite of good governance.
The proposals to eliminate juries and replace them with judges is only a stepping stone to achieving the dreams and goals of the social engineers for decades, centuries. Probably ever since obstacles like the Magna Carta and US Constitution, rights of man got in the way of the absolute monarchs and dictators. In fact, similar debates going back to times of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates.
No doubt the algorithms found in any AI jurisprudence will have scoring that will reflect achieving "greater good" agendas of those in control. Anglo: unfavorable points. Non-Anglo: favorable points. Political affiliation: unfavorable/favorable points. Private club membership: favorable points.
Cases not determined on just the facts and merit of the case. Rather, on how it can be used to socially engineer behaviours in a population. No wisdom. No judge to blame, remove from the bench. Just the bailiffs (and bots?) who will dutifully carry out the ruling of the AI judge with an impersonal shrug of their shoulders saying they are just following orders as they lead you to your punishment.
THAT's where the elimination of juries is intended to take society. That is the shift of the Overton window intended to have us accept, tolerate and abide by rule by algorithm. And breath a sigh of relief for getting rid of the biased judges we already are growing tired of. It is diabolically genius - if we allow it.
Lammy is showing his true authoritarian fascist viewpoint and problem is, he's got the authority to do it because of the soon to be abuse of his position. When Socialists/ Communists get the reigns of power, oppression always , always eventuates. History has proven this time and time again....
Let’s look at what the real problem is.
The legal system is overwhelmed so what are we going to do about it? .
Question is why is the legal system overwhelmed? Would it be because we import so many criminals?
And keep importing them, I’d like to see a graph showing when the systems worked relatively correctly and when this mass immigration started, I would suspect they would show quite clearly what the real problem is .
Hi Laura, interesting article. I coming at this from a different angle, so please bear with me and forgive me!
In the UK we are broke, we all might not know that yet but if you understand GSE Economics, you will know we are at a tipping point and we are about to not be able to return.
With this economic backdrop, we need to cut our cloth and as nice as it is to have jury trials, they are really really expensive, not guaranteed to get to the 'right' conclusion and unfortunately most jurors are not really competent to understand what they are being told. Perhaps now is the time to get away with expensive jury trials for minor offences and beef up how good and unbiased the Judges are or should be?
Just a different thought!
Julian
I understand what you are saying. Just worried that this change would not improve justice. For example the one person who pleaded 'not guilty' to charges after the Southport murders was acquitted by a jury. The rest were trialled without a jury (as far as I know) and were found guilty with long prison sentences. In cases where the law is an ass, a jury may provide the common sense.
A compromise may be to make this temporary (let's say for a year and monitor if this actually speeds up the system) and that accused can still demand a jury trial.
But didn't the people who were trialled without a jury plead guilty, on the basis that they thought they would be let out sooner? If you plead guilty then it's like being found guilty (although you are supposed to get the fact that you pleaded guilty taken into account in your favour). Personally, I think some of the duty solicitors have a lot to answer for.
You are right. What I was trying to say is that the one person who pleaded not guilty was acquitted by a jury and I am not sure if a judge (without a jury) would have ruled the same way, especially as the other people (who had pleaded guilty) were handed very heavy sentences.
Several judges certainly don't seem to be unbiased - similarly with tribunals such as those which allow incomers to stay here. That started with Blair's requirements that judges have to have a specialisation in one or more fields that are heavily tainted with wokeness. Blair took a hatchet to our legal system. The fact that the Tories didn't revoke his damage is unforgiveable. Nothing they can say now will change that - they had their chance.
I totally agree, without a proper decent judge the whole system fails (as it often is now). Also you need AB proper jury for the serious trials. I think the current jury selection process needs overhauling as many many people (30-50 %?) are not competent to be jurors. But my original statement still stands ie we can’t afford the current system economically.
Hi Myra,
Two things:
1- The example you are suggesting is a 'serious' crime ie murder and I believe this should be still tried by jury although I would like to get jurors pre-qualified with some sort of test for competence / openness to being able to not go along with the normal woke bias we see today etc
2- "...Just worried that this change would not improve justice.." It is up to how the changes are made, if they are well thought through and designed well, why can't we have a fair system but at lower cost/ greater speed than today's model. I believe this can be achieved with careful thought.
I'm not sure jury's today do provide common sense and I think that we could improve this if so pre-qualification of juries went on.
Julian
Sorry for the confusion. These were the people arrested after the murders, who were on trial for social media posts, so would not be deemed 'serious'.
I am also not entirely certain that the judges are completely unbiased and you should not underestimate the common sense of a group of people (jury). They may have more sense than the judges...
But no system is perfect.