29th August - Law News

Edition 5359: LawNewsIndex is a UK based daily legal news archive on Law, Lawyers, Law Firms, Jurisprudence, Legislation, Litigation, Legal Ethics, Human Rights and Social Justice related issues since 2011.

Today's Highlighted Video: Ravi Balgobin Maharaj (Appellant) v The Minister of Finance (Respondent) (Trinidad and Tobago) Case ID: JCPC/2024/0015

A selection of important developments in the world of law and justice (for a comprehensive look at the news and events, please visit @theLawMap Twitter/X feed):

Saturday Conversations on Law

• Ministry of Justice gives rape support charity £8.7m to continue confidential helpline | Law Gazette
• An #Israeli court has acquitted a Jewish man who attacked a nun in Jerusalem, in an incident caught on CCTV which drew widespread condemnation. The biased Jerusalem Magistrates Court said Yona Schreiber was experiencing a psychotic episode
• Solicitor struck off by SDT for lying to law firm boss about paid second job with US advice website | Law Gazette
• US issues sanctions against UK-based direct action group Palestine Action
• Uefa is pursuing criminal legal proceedings against Fifa and its president Gianni Infantino over the now scrapped plan to sell off stakes in the World Cup and its other competitions to private investors
• Convicted Bosnian #Serb war criminal Ratko Mladić has died in a UN prison at The Hague aged 84. He was jailed for life in 2017 for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in 1992-95

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The Previous Sunday's Editorial: 

LawNewsIndex was founded as a way of cataloguing the ongoing changes in the UK justice system as well as documenting social justice related conversations as observed through the Twitter/X account @thelawmap. In the decade and half since 2011, LawNewsIndex has collated thousands of articles documenting how the justice system in Britain had responded to local and international events. The ongoing archive on justice, law and societal changes covers each day since December 2011. Since July 2026, a new weekend feature comprising essays, comments and original creative writing on an eclectic range of subjects is being published as The Sunday Editorial from a range of writers:  

 

Before our private green paradises become casualties of a climate we can no longer pretend is someone else’s problem, it is time to look beyond the hedge:  I'm old enough to remember the droughts of the 1970s. The Australian touring cricket team felt very at home in the heat, but that was alleviated by sudden thunderstorms and even snow in June. Now there has been no rain for months.

On the other hand, I've never known such a crop of tomatoes or peppers or aubergines, either. And in gardened-nature (what we like to call the British countryside) elderberries are ripening weeks ahead of schedule on the tough-as-boots fairy tree. Here in Mid-Wales, we expect rain and lots of it. But this summer, my sprinkler has been waving back and forth like a slow, aqueous metronome as I check Dwr Cymru website each day to ensure my postcode has no hosepipe ban. Might as well use it if I can have it.

This was a bad year for me to plan a new bed in the driest part of the garden, but after a wet winter and spring, when plants drowned and died, the odds seemed good. Now even the weeds have given up as the desiccation continues and it's tough to smell the roses.

That's the problem with odds: sometimes they're for you and sometimes against and we've been gambling with the climate for a couple of hundred years now, first through ignorance and greed and now contrariness and greed.

Well-funded conservative politicians question the merits of climate science and some on the Left feel that the cost of emission reductions and carbon tax swaps is too much to pay for working-class customers. Everywhere, pollution has become shiftable and commodified.

This is nothing new. Capitalism was bitter and bloody even in The Great Depression, the slag heaps getting higher and here we are again, with the UK off-shoring our waste and pollution to the slums of Asia and the coasts of Africa: out of sight and out of mind, a new colonialism of plastic waste and toxic bonfires.  

That's the trouble with gardeners also. It is essentially inward-looking, a construction of a private paradise, high walled against reality by lap fencing or hedges. Gardening is therapeutic but also at root selfish. Prep for a flower show, open garden or seed swap is often more about showing off than altruism.

As the hillsides burn and reservoirs shrink, there seems to be little we can do besides redesigning our garden, adding drought resistant plants of Mediterranean and Australian education and mulching well. There's nothing like a refresh to get the creative waters flowing. 

The late Beth Chatto was ahead of the game and with her husband's knowledge of the ecology of plants, she put together gardens in dry Essex that were self-sustaining, requiring little intervention and no additional watering. She gave us a lesson in floral sociology, plants that operate as a team rather than individuals.

This is surely a way forward for gardeners and also perhaps farmers. It’s no surprise that now there is the Beth Chatto Eco Garden Award. I say that is a fine gesture.

But what happens in the following decade and the decade following that?

Plastic turf has become a garden normality; maybe plastic flowers will be next. Or will we all be inside with windows shut against the ash and smoke from the countless wildfires?

I wouldn't count on gardeners to rise to the challenge. We aren’t big on social obligations.

The whole point of gardening is to get away from a world of worries, not embrace or solve problems. A wilting dahlia is enough of a crisis to be getting on with: promise, purpose, and dominance within one tight acre.

All is beige and there is tension in the air. The best we can do is to get off our screens, put on a sunhat, and go outside to scream at a petunia or maybe our neighbours.

The odds are looking worse; this could be our last roll of the dice, I hope we have the gumption to lift our heads from our patch of soil, look over those high hedges.

Gareth Writer-Davies

Read last week's Editorial 

Gareth Writer-Davies is a poet and a retired gardener and landscaper from Pencelli, Powys, Wales. He has written six books of poetry, his latest being Memento Mori (Yaffle Press). He was Longlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2025, Shortlisted for the Bridport Prize (2014, 2017, 2024), Prole Laureate (2017), Winner of the Wirral Festival Poetry Competition, and Runner Up, Spelt Poetry Competition (both 2023).

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gareth.writerdavies, Bluesky: @garethwd.bsky.social, Instagram: writerdaviesgaret

(Photo credit: Natasha Gauthier) 

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