We have to give a special mention to Family Law Week’s monthly newsletter, which is extraordinary, not only for interesting and informative content produced in as timely a manner as is humanly possible for a compendium of this nature, but also for its easy to read format and chunky monkey content, as we like to call it. There’s lots to read, and most of it is very thought-provoking.
And the links to stories, cases and events below come largely from this month’s publication , so here we are:
- Sir James Munby, newly appointed President of the Family Division, in what has now become a trademark move for him, uses a case to air his views on the family justice system. This time, Sir Munby tells us that the system needs to be a mixture of inquisitorial and adversarial and that the adversarial element is a needed tool to effect just outcomes. Sounds like The President is, albeit very elegantly, trying to have his cake and offer a piece of the pie to the legal profession, too whilst paying tribute to the notion that scarce resources need to be carefully managed. There’s lots we love about Munby, but you know the old adage, “You can please some of the people some of the time all of the people some of the time some of the people all of the time but you can never please all of the people all of the time.” (If you haven’t seen Lincoln at the cinema, it’s an amazing watch. For anyone who loves debate, beautifully recreated on-screen, a must see, we think). And as for the need to keep adversarial processes in place, on that point, we would respectfully disagree.
- An amazing book has just been published about the journey made by women in Hong Kong who were adopted and have now reached adulthood. The book is essentially a study of what happened to these women. It sounds like a fascinating read to us, and studies of this kind, of course are rare.
- And another sad turn of events, which is overshadowed by the possibility that historical abuse played a part in this fatal shooting, (the revelation of ongoing domestic violence was mentioned on the radio this afternoon), famous athlete Oscar Pistorius has been charged with the murder of his girlfriend. At a time when One Billion Rising are still battling with the issue of violence against women, it is a sad Valentine’s Day for us all as human beings.
There is no such thing as NEWS. All we have is OLDS. I read somewhere “there is nothing new under the sun”. Think. What event of any kind has not occurred before, told in a different way but the event remains the same. Through history, pick any event and see it repeated in our time..To my mind there are only two things that would be NEWS. Spacemen have landed on Earth. I leave the other to your religious belief.
. . . and the one billion men who are victims pf violence ? Why don’t we hear about them ?
Oh yes, that right, there’s no political capital to be made out of them.
But we do hear about them. We’ve mentioned this topic before on our site and the news does talk about them, as well. It just so happens that we chose to talk about this campaign on this occasion.