Category Archives: lord irvine

Judical Appointments to fast-track Tick Box "DIVERSITY"!

I wrote a letter recently to the Law Society Gazette, which is the in-house magazine of the Solicitor’s profession. 

It was published under the heading of:- 

“Ticking Boxes”. 

Here is my letter:-

Dear Sir

Re: Judical fast-track would boost diversity – 31st October 2016


I viewed your above story with great disquiet as it seems that this proposal from Mr Justice Hickinbottom seems somewhat symptomatic of the various questionable, not to say flaky “Reform” former initiatives launched by various members of the Judiciary of the England and Wales jurisdiction.

I suspect that most other practitioners, who have a court based practice, will have noticed that, whilst many of the Judges that we experience are still of excellent quality that there is nevertheless an increasing proportion who are not of that quality. They are being appointed by the Judicial appointments system, which was politicised by Lord Irvine when he was Tony Blair’s Lord Chancellor to ensure that “no-one with reactionary views” could be appointed or promoted.

With the utmost respect to the learned Mr Justice Hickinbottom, the focus of any public service ought to be on actually delivering a service to the public rather than tick-boxing “Diversity” quotas in a fashion reminiscent of the appointment system in the Soviet Union.

Yours faithfully
etc

What do you think?