Jury trials now scrapped for cases under 3 years.

Fucking appalling decision; yes there is a huge case backlog, no, removing some of the fundamental rights of a democracy is not the way to get it back down, the case backlog is largely in cases where there is no jury trial recourse already and it's not even a temporary decision.

Do they just let Lammy do what he wants in his office ffs?

I'm not totally against limiting the right to a jury trial. An obvious example is for complicated fraud cases. The defence can bamboozle a jury into voting for acquittal for the simple reason that they don't understand the case. These cases can also last for months which is inconvenient for jurors and their employers.

My biggest reservation is with the freedom of a jury to acquit a defendant on the grounds that they are being prosecuted under a bad law. When a government introduces legislation that affects our freedom of expression or the right to protest, there are always people coming up with suggestions that people could be prosecuted for technical breaches of the law which are pretty trivial. I have generally taken the view that a jury would deliver a Not Guilty verdict on the grounds that the law is a ass, a idiot. In other words, they would exercise common sense. The belief that a jury would do that would generally mean that a prosecution wouldn't proceed. I would be worried that a jury-less court would follow the letter of the law and convict in these cases.

Regardless of the argument as to whether scraping juries for sentences of less than three years is good or not (I’m on the “bad thing” side of the spectrum) it’s pretty poor timing to do so in a week where one of your MPs has literally just sentenced to two years in prison following a jury-less trial, and technically speaking is a fugitive from the law.

BBC News

Tulip Siddiq MP says Bangladesh jail sentence is 'deeply...

The MP, and niece of Bangladesh's ousted former leader, received a two-year sentence in her absence over corruption allegations.

In a sense, quite, as regardless of what's actually gone on with Siddiq and her connections to her ousted Bangladeshi political family, she was tried and convicted in absentia and quite rightly the Labour Party isn't going to recognise such sham conclusions of a foreign court that we have no extradition treaty with, sets a bad precedent.

Definitely underscores why juries are such an important thing to have in a democracy.

The language Lammy has used, 'putting victims first' is all well and good and probably plays well, but it hides a rather worrying approach to justice and kind of shows that he is not good at his brief. Pretty much the point of courts is that they are not pre-judged, and while most cases certainly do have victims, it's very important that guilt is not presumed just because of an accusation.

One long serving Labour MP has already called for David Lammy to resign over this -

In other Labour news, they’ve suspended the whip from their poshest-named MP for voting against the government -

I ain’t got a problem with digital ID. I got nothing to hide and it’s good for people who don’t own a passport or a driving license

Pretty annoying that Emma Reynolds has amended this policy to farms worth above 2.5m, it’ll make the protestors feel they are winning. Always enjoyed seeing people like Jeremy Clarkson being outraged by this!