Not doing things by halves

A Twitter exhange with fellow bloggers Boak and Bailey has revealed the existence of something I've never heard of before, pubs that don't serve beer in half-pint measures.

Not only have I never been in a pub which didn't serve halves as well as pints, at least in thic country, I can only think of one place I've been that serves the new two-thirds of a pint schooner, Alberts Schloss in Manchester which dispenses their Pilsner Urquell "tankovna" in them (they sell other beer in half-pints).

I know what the legal measures for draught beer and cider are, but didn't know until someone just kindly pointed it out to me that since 2014 it's been a mandatory licensing condition for pubs to sell beer and cider in half-pints. It's probably because you just sort of assume that they will that it never crossed my mind that there might be some kind of regulation that actually requires them to.

Smoking and drinking

I'm pretty familiar with the history of laws regarding young people and alcohol, but the introduction this weekend of new rules supposedly stopping them from starting smoking, by making twenty the mininum number of cigarettes you can now buy, legislating for plain packets and further restricting the sale of rolling tobacco, amongst other illiberal and no doubt ineffective measures, got me wondering what the equivalent history of the laws around children and tobacco is.

It turns out that the Children's Act 1908 which introduced a minimum age of 5 for drinking at home and banned those under 14 from drinking in pubs (raised to 16 in 1910 and, unless it's beer, cider of wine, not spirits, consumed with a meal and purchased by an adult, 18 in 1923), also made it an offence to sell tobacco to those under 16 (raised to 18 in 2007). Not that I remember the law being enforced when I was a teenager in the 1980's and purchased cigarettes for neighbours from local shops; some of my classmates at secondary school also popped out most morning break times to buy them for their own consumption.

It seems that my generation will be the last to have experienced the once ubiquitous sight of someone enjoying a fag with their pint. Although as a non-smoker I personally endured rather than enjoyed smoky pubs before 2007, it's hard to argue that the ban hasn't had an impact on already struggling businesses and that it was entirely a question of political ideology that a compromise, such as separate smoking rooms and exemptions for private members' clubs, wasn't found.

Young Bones Groan

A 14 year-old boy from Sheffield has died in hospital in Leeds after he collapsed at the end of an unlicensed kickboxing bout in the city on Saturday night (unlicensed because the "sport"'s governing body bars those under 16 from the fights it promotes) and the private medical team hired by the event's organisers were unable to save him.

I'm not a fan of boxing, as I wrote here, but there's a world of difference between the law allowing adult men to engage in violence which if it took place anywhere else would see them prosecuted and young people with still developing brains and muscles, no doubt heavily influenced by older family members, being exposed to the dangers of the ring, especially one in which they can legally be kicked as well as punched to the head and upper body.

I've seen comments along the lines of "he died doing what he loved" and " all sports have risks", and West Yorkshire Police have said that they are not treating his death as suspicious, but surely his parents should face some sort of criminal liability.

I'm not saying that they should go to prison - punishment beyond the ridiculously premature and entirely avoidable loss of their son is hardly appropriate here - but a conviction for manslaughter on the grounds that they recklessly put his life in danger, or under one of the child protection laws requiring adults to ensure the safety and welfare of young people in their care, and a suspended sentence would at least send a message to others about society's attitude to such behaviour.

Pre-boarding boozing

I'm surprised that there hasn't been more media comment at the news that the Government minister Lord Ahmad is to look at the sale of alcohol at airports, apparently with a view to restricting or even banning pre-flight pints, in response to an alleged surge in alcohol-related violence on board planes.

I might end up being wrong here, but I'd be very surprised if the review leads to a ban, not least because of the amount of money alcohol sales generate for airports. And even if a ban were to be introduced, I very much doubt that it would apply to those dining in first class lounges as opposed to us plebs slumming it in the terminal bars, just as when you go to a football match and buy a pint at a bar under the stand you can't take it to your seat, or even stand with it near an entrance in sight of the pitch, but people having a meal in executive boxes while watching the game can order alcohol to go with it.

Surely the relatively few incidents that do take place on board planes as a result of people drinking too much before boarding can be dealt with by refusing to board them in the first place rather than a sweeping ban which some, no doubt for other motives entirely, seem to want.

Silks on strike

Today's walk out by barristers over the Government's proposals to cut the amount of legal aid available in complex criminal cases has produced predictable responses.

To be honest, I've no idea whether barristers are hideously underpaid as they claim or outrageously overpaid as the Ministry of Justice contends. Probably somewhere in the middle I'd guess. My only real experience of the legal aid system is from when I worked as an employment adviser in a law centre in one of the most impoverished parts of South Manchester and saw how the cuts to it by the then Labour government reduced access to advice and representation on housing and benefits (the centre has now closed as a result of cuts in local government).

One thing that did strike me about some of the comments from barristers on the picket line is how high their concept of "low pay" is. One of them asked "Would you be happy to be represented in court by someone only earning £35,000?" and another claimed that such pay levels would deter young people from entering the profession.

The walk out also reminded me of the episode of Rumpole of the Bailey where the head of chambers Guthrie Featherstone QC MP played by Peter Bowles leads a strike of judges and arriving home early is met by his appalled wife who asks him if he now intends to go down the working men's club in a flat cap and order a pint of wallop.

What to do with Abu

The Islamist miltant Abu Qatada who was released from a high security prison earlier this week has spent much of the last decade either in custody awaiting deportation or under house arrest, as he is again now.

Qatada apparently cannot be put on trial as it would jepordise the safety of MI5 officers who gave evidence, although why they can't do so from behind a screen ot by video link with their voices disguised I'm not sure.  It may also be that the evidence against him would if presented in open court endanger ongoing MI5 operations.

The Government's preferred option of deporting him to his native Jordan, where he has been found guilty in his absence of terrorist offences, has so far been blocked on the grounds that the Jordanian government might torture him or reconvict him with evidence obtained from others by torture. Similarly, his extradition to the United States where he is also wanted on terrorist charges is unlikely to go ahead unless a guarantee is given that he won't be executed or given a whole life sentence.

Given that he cannot remain indefinitely on bail conditions that amount to house arrest and allowing him to operate freely in Britain is out of the question, a deal whereby he is deported to Jordan with an assurance that he isn't tortured seems the most likely outcome.  Failing that, perhaps the Government could go for the Napoleon on St Helena option and send him and his family to a remote British territory under armed guard.  I hear the Falklands are lovely this time of year.

Football, racism and the law

The idea that football operates outside and above the law has received a boost in the past month.

Liverpool player Luis Suarez has been banned for eight matches for racially abusing Manchester United defender Patrice Evra. He has not however been charged with racial harassment, unlike England captain John Terry who is to stand trial for allegedly racially abusing QPR centre-half Anton Ferdinand, or indeed the Liverpool fan on the Kop - ironically wearing a Justice for Suarez T-shirt - arrested after a black Oldham player was subjected to racial abuse.

Over at the City of Manchester Stadium, Mario Balotelli is to be banned for four matches after he stamped on the head of Spurs midfielder Scott Parker in last weekend's Premier League match and Carlos Tevez has been fined six weeks wages for his one-man strike in Buenos Aires.

These actions - racial abuse, assault, refusal to carry out your job - would in any other workplace lead to dismissal and/or arrest. It seems though that in the parallel world of football it's OK to deal with them internally unless someone makes a complaint to the police.

Prisoners of Poundland

I wish Cait Reilly well in her legal challenge about unemployed people being forced to work for free.  As someone who's been involved in a high profile legal case against my employer, I also sympathise with her over the way she's been attacked in the tabloid press by uninformed and overpaid right-wing journalists.

Reilly is an unemployed graduate from Birmingham who volunteers in a museum.  The jobcentre told her she had to accept a two week "training placement" at Poundland or lose her meagre unemployment benefit of £53 a week.  The "training placement" was unsurprisingly nothing of the sort, consisting of stacking shelves and cleaning floors.

There is of course nothing wrong with unemployed people being offered training or volunteering.  When I was unemployed in the mid-90's, I took a computer course arranged by the jobcentre.  After I was made redundant a few years ago, I volunteered as an advisor in a law centre (now closed due to Government cuts).  These "training" schemes however have nothing to do with training and everything to do with Poundland and other employers in the already low-paid retail sector exploiting the expanding pool of unemployed young people when they need extra staff.

If I was forced to work in Poundland for nothing or lose my benefits, I think I'd turn up every day on time and then work as slowly as possible, "accidentally" dropping or knocking over stock on a regular basis.  Somehow, I don't think I'd be there two weeks.

Another blow for Murdoch?

I was pleased that Karen Murphy, the landlady of a pub in Portsmouth who chose to show a Greek broadcaster's coverage of Premier League football rather than Sky's, won her case in the European Court of Justice yesterday.

I've watched live football in pubs broadcast from Greece, Scandinavia and North Africa.  With Sky charging pubs £700 a month and overseas broadcasters around £60 you can see why. And like me, a lot of the people watching live foreign broadcasts of a match at 3 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon - games which Sky itself can't show - are people who have been priced out of actually going to the ground by the Premier League clubs.

The idea that you should be able to buy stuff cheaper from elsewhere in the EU seems pretty fundamental to a free trade organisation and the judge hearing the case was quick to side with Ms Murphy on that point. Whether the Premier League manages to reassert its control by witholding copyright permissions and whether many domestic Sky customers switch to other channels remains to be seen but the mere possibilty of the Murdoch empire losing some more money as a result of her bringing the case should make any decent person raise a glass to her.

With liberty and justice for all?

The news that Amanda Knox, the American student convicted of murdering her British flatmate in Perugia, Italy in 2007, has been freed on appeal has been met with popular acclaim across the Atlantic.  This is unsurprising as the US media assumed from the start that the Italian justice system was so flawed and the Italian police so incompetent that a fair trial was impossible.

Even if it's true that Italy's justice system is flawed, it does not follow that the US one is superior. Those who think so might want to consider the case of Troy Davis, the 42 year old African-American man executed last month in Georgia for the 1989 shooting of an off-duty police officer, who was convicted on similarly shaky evidence and protested his innocence up to the door of the execution chamber.

That the US media assumes an eduicated, middle-class white woman is innocent and a poor Southern black man is guilty says a lot about the racism that still runs through much of American society.

Trial on TV

I've watched bits of the trial of Conrad Murray, the doctor accused of the involuntary manslaughter of Michael Jackson, live from Los Angeles on the BBC and Sky News.  As Tony Hancock said in Twelve Angry Men, it's just like they do it on TV, although the way American lawyers question witnesses seems a bit laborious to English eyes. Sky News have got a English barrister who's also a member of the California Bar to give expert analysis which is useful but they do keep going to a commercial break every five minutes.

Inevitably, watching the trial you come to your own conclusions about the case. Even at this early stage of the trial, I think it's pretty clear Dr. Murray is guilty as charged.  Having said that, given Jackson himself got away with sexual offences against a child, I hope Murray gets away with his crime too, or failing that receives the shortest sentence possible.

Adios Carlos?

The reaction of most Manchester City fans to the apparent refusal of Argentinean striker Carlos Tevez to come off the bench for the last half hour of their 2-0 defeat to Bayern Munich the other night has been simple: "Sack him". The club's lawyers are also reportedly looking at whether City can dismiss him for gross misconduct, i.e. without notice, and thereby save themselves a couple of million or so.

On the face of it you would think a disciplinary charge of gross misconduct would be hard to prove given it's normally something so serious or criminal that it immediately voids the employment contract but we're in the parallel world of Premier League football here so who knows. 

City would of course prefer to cash in Tevez's transfer value so him sitting at home in Buenos Aires on a quarter of a million a week until they can sell him in January seems the more likely option.  That has happened in cases which are clearly gross misconduct like stubbing out a cigar in a youth player's eye at a Christmas party, being arrested for assaulting a team mate on the training pitch or being sent to prison for beating a teenager unconscious in the street (step forward Joey Barton for all three) so I will be amazed if the Gulf sheiks who own City sanction him being sent down the road without a penny.