9th August - Law News

Edition 5339: 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: The Kingdom of Spain and another (Respondents) v The London Steam-Ship Owners' Mutual Insurance Association Limited (Appellant) No 2 Case ID: UKSC/2025/0034

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

• A consumer organisation has hit back at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for encouraging motor finance compensation claimants to steer clear of law firms and claims management companies | New Law Journal
• Junior lawyer formerly with Blackpool law firm struck off by SDT after asking colleague to hide file | Law Gazette
• Black barrister was told ‘it’s not for defendants’ at London court car park. Stephen Akinsanya says being mistaken for defendant shows lack of progress on racism within legal system
• Simon Levy murders: has anything changed in policing since Sarah Everard’s killing? Experts say the attackers’ behaviour, and the handling of their cases, have striking similarities
• Why council tenants often wait longest for disrepair to be fixed - Legal Futures
• A mood of cautious optimism has enveloped the criminal law sector following indications the prime minister may abandon planned jury reforms | New Law Journal

 

The Sunday 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:  

A Lyric Essay on the European Eel: Art, storytelling, even relating a dream can bring shared values into focus and instigate change. Some transfigurations are unseen in every stage - as in the case of the European eel.

Consider the Eel 
       Anguilla anguilla

I found myself imagining eels returning upriver, as the Rhinogs were burning this summer.  
As I was wishing for water, I could see eels.
I could see eels writhing up braids of bracken ladders, on the pathless mountains, never getting lost, propelled by a wave.
Protecting their home. Silvery. 

Every plant they touched with their bodies gained a crystal, shimmering crust and was saved.

Llysywen. Arian, ariannaidd. 

Eels see so much of the world, I envy the eel.
The wedge-head of an eel, impossible to refuse.
The smell of an eel, like the pale purple open slip of a fingertip, night-scented stock. 

From the Sargasso Sea as transparent larvae, then glass-gliding back to Europe.
This year, sand on the beach burned the soles of my bare feet as it was melting, making glass on the spot in Cardigan Bay.

Up the glass slithers through the estuaries and into the rivers of Eryri then, to grow as elvers. For as long as it takes, the eels prey. Eels hunt by their sense of smell. 
Can eels smell smoke? Can they?

(Jellied, smoked, the delicacies...)

Perhaps because of the warmth of the river, its unsaturated levels of dissolved air, or a taking a break from firefighting; the elvers venture down and hang around by the pier. There, a young boy who has saved a barbequed-to-a-crisp sausage cuts it up, and lowers it in a net for crabbing. Dead meat.
Irresistible to crabs, but also to eels.... 

I caught an eel!

The eel waves alive in a transparent bucket. Magnified and keeping a level head above a chorus of claws.

The boy tries to grab the eel by the body, by what he thinks of as the tail. He knows not to squeeze the ray, the fan-ridge, and the eel slips away. The boys tries to catch the eel with his own hands.

What are you doing dude? You are so cool, my eel!

The boys tries to pick up the eel in his hand. He fails. The eel whips through his palm. There is a pulse.
The boy tries. What are you doing, my eel?
The eel is moving less, subdued in the bucket. 

There is an explanation to the boy that each time the eel is touched, its skin can be damaged.
The slime is the USP to the eel. The saving grace. 

But the boy needs to hold it once before letting the animal go into the ocean, so he can know it, feel a mastery.
Or is it a connection? Ownership? Or affection?
A memory throughout his life now, the different stages.
How young the boy is!
He obtains the eel.

How dry the land is, this summer.
Swimming in an undulation over the sand, into deeper water.
My eels!

- by Suzanne Iuppa

Read last week's Editorial 

Suzanne Iuppa is an award-winning poet, conservationist  and social entrepreneur living in the Dyfi Valley, mid Wales. In 2026 Suzanne founded ETA (Empathy Through Art) CIC to support climate adaptation through cultural exchange. 

If you would like to discuss and support the work of ETA, Suzanne Iuppa's contact details are as follows -
Email: suzanneiuppa.eta@gmail.com
Instagram: @wildernesspoetsuzanne
Facebook: @empathythroughartCIC

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