Ian Hamilton QC

What will Scotland get from investing its share of UK money in the billions required for the high speed link between London and Birmingham?

How many Scots travel regularly between London and Birmingham?

May Mrs Thatcher have a long life and a State Funeral just a little before our vote on independence.

I am taking a day or two off to read these.

Perhaps Haggis and Chips and company can …………………..Oh! Well! It’s a season of goodwill.

Ian

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Reply to Dougie.

Can’t manage it. A bit too long.

Anyway I want to get Ulysses in as well.

After the First War money was short. The heroes who fought came from places that had never heard of the Somme. Alt na Beulluch  and the Somme have only water in common.Their women never knew where their husbands died. They were paid ten shillings for being a widow. Ten shillings is fifty pence.

Their children didn’t know why or where their fathers died either. Enough to know they were called and went and died. I saw their children. They scuffled on the sides of their feet. Their bones were fused from lack of milk. They had rickets. They starved.

Back to the withered poppy. Do you think every BBC broadcaster has paid for his poppy? Do you think that every politician who wears one has paid for those who served and died?

But it’s a charity, they say. It keeps Erskine. It looks after the permanently hurt.

This may have been true in days of poverty when Poppy Day was founded.

This year he Chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland got a bonus of ten million pounds.

How much did the Royal Regiment of Scotland get for its wounded in the service of us all?

On this day of Remembrance of OUR WAR dead I wear no Red poppy. War dead belong to all humanity.

I wear the tie of the RAFVR, the badge of aircrew. The dead in  Bomber Command Europe alone was 55,575. Their average age was 22. I was 19 when war finished. I was one of the waiting. I don’t suffer from ‘war guilt.’ I carry on. But I remember them. 

It is a long time since we two brother countries of Scotland and England had a bloody history. It must never happen again.

Shortly the Scottish Government is to hold a referendum. This is to measure what we Scots think of a rearrangement of our closest loyalties. It’s no big deal.

But a great many Scots think it is.

Now there is talk that Westminster will hold its own referendum.

About Us.

Please don’t.

To lose Scotland will be England’s grievous loss. Yet to stay or go is our business. The Atlantic Charter guaranteed the right of self determination for small nations. That is why I joined the RAFVR, as a schoolboy. (All pilots were volunteers.)

On a minor grievance I once called for Minutemen and Minute-women who would lie down on the street on a minute’s call. The minutemen in America shed our blood. We would never shed yours. We would just lie down.

Thousand upon thousand of us. The Minute People. Each unrecognisable except perhaps for a little badge in our lapel, as I wore a little badge to show I was one of the elite. I was RAFVR. Think of the great concourses of our two nations with all traffic stopped.

Us Scots. Lying on the streets. Your streets. Our streets.

Don’t do it.

Let us work out our own destiny.

By Ian Hamilton

The graduates of Lazarus College are asking the First Minister for his plans for defence after independence. What happens after independence is scarcely their business.

However I assert that after independence Scotland will have no army. We may need a few aeroplanes and a ship or two to protect our oil and fishing interests but not an army.

If a small country is over-run it lies on its back and strikes up at the underbelly of its conqueror until it goes away. Vietnam? Afghanistan? (What are we doing there?)

A Scottish army would only be used in England’s foreign wars.  England could keep a Scottish regiment for Scots who want to go for a sojer. They can’t fight without us. If they want war they can pay for it.

Reading Trollope.

Anthony. (Not the trollops’ Trollope.)

Ian

By Ian Hamilton QC

(This piece first appeared in The Firm, the on line legal magazine.)

Whoever wrote the Lord President’s speech is to be congratulated. He, she, it  (It? Maybe it was a computer) done good. Hardly anybody was left out. When you start off:-

                 “:My lords and my ladies, Lord Advocate, Dean of Faculty, Advocate General, Solicitor General,    distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,”

you have a pretty comprehensive audience in mind. Except for the general public whom you are there to serve.

To lighten the whole solemn occasion the speech-writer ends with a jokey passage on drunkenness at which everyone present chuckled. We advocates are trained to laugh at judge’s jokes. It’s the way they tell them.

Any speech on our law raises some questions which are never answered. Here are some of them.

Why can’t we afford it? Why can the RBS get away with my money without the law calling them to account? All I want is an accounting. I tried and the law failed me. I can’t afford it. They can.

Why have we refurbished court-rooms in the centre of a medieval town awash with tourists? Even if we could afford to go to the Court of Session how could we afford the travel and the hotel bills while we’re litigating?

Why do we have local sheriff courts with the same civil  function  as the Court of Session in Edinburgh? This was necessary when communication was difficult but things have changed. Even judges can learn email. They can take a bus. If judges can come on circuit to hear criminal cases why not to hear civil cases? No business could be run on the basis if you want us you must come to us. Justice is a business. It should be brought to us. A court in a fixed place was necessary in 1531 but communications have moved on since then. Has the Lord President’s speech writer not noticed the busses in Edinburgh’s High Street? Can’t he use an email?

What are sheriff principals for? Once they administered their sheriffdoms but no longer. They are single judges of appeal who can themselves be appealed to the Court of Session. Mind you! We lawyers prefer a three course meal when two would do.

Why do we pay sheriffs £120,000 a year to hear petty crime which could be done for nothing by magistrates elected by ourselves? That was the way it was once done. Since we don’t need two concurrent civil jurisdictions could we not send our sheriffs back to their sandpits to play in?

For that matter isn’t it time that we separated civil judges from criminal ones both in the High Court and at lower levels? Each requires different skills.

Do we need all the judges we have managed to cram into our system? We have:- magistrates, sheriffs, sheriffs principal, Outer House Judges……(note how the capital letters creep in), Inner House Judges, Lords Commissioner of Justiciary and Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. (The latter’s kids go all swanky and call themselves ‘HONS.) Have I missed some? Judges multiply themselves like royalty and if you don’t watch you’ll tread on one.

Why hasn’t the speech-writer been given a knighthood? His chuckle about ‘churn’ was quite masterly. The laughter rolled round the ancient walls of the Parliament House like thunder.

Churn?

In Benderloch we talk about little else.
  

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I was hoping this ironic piece might provoke some comment on our legal system and the folly of puting a lawyer in charge of it. It is outdated. unsuitable for its purpose and a vast waste of money. This government adds to its folly under the impression that it can change public behaviour by act of parliament.

We need a new view. Lord Hamilton’s silly speech illustrates the trouble. It was addressed to the nice little nest of lawyers centred in the Parliament House for which the law at present exists.

MY LORDS AND My LADIES ETC it does not exist for you. It exists for us all. Alas we don’t have access to it except as accused taken there by the scruff of our necks. 

Lord Hamilton! Have you no word for the like of me?