March 2011 Archives

A report by former civil servant and businessman David Norgrove is to be published today outlining reforms that should be made to the law in order to recognise and protect the rights of grandparents.

Under current family law, the right of grandparents to maintain contact with their grandchildren after a divorce or family breakdown is not acknowledged or protected. Norgrove's report aims to redress this issue, as it has become a serious and prevalent one.

Grandparents have been found by various studies to play an important role in a child's life. Parents are becoming increasingly reliant on their parents for help, as the cost of child care increases and the average household income decreases. In addition, grandparents can offer advice and support to their grandchildren as they get older.

The BBC's Top Gear programme has landed itself in trouble again over comments and footage featured on the show in December 2008.

Californian-based company Tesla, which manufactures the world's fastest electric car, is suing the BBC for defamation and malicious falsehood.

Tesla is taking action over an episode that tested its Tesla Roadster against a petrol-fuelled car, the Lotus Elise. The drag race between the two was hailed as the "ultimate test for an electric car."

Labour has claimed that the coalition government's cuts to public spending mean more than 2,000 experienced and valuable police officers will be forced to retire by 2015.

Police budgets in England and Wales are to face a 20% budget cut over the next four years. The overall budget will be slashed by 4% for the first two years to £9.3 billion, and by 5% thereafter, reducing central funding to £8.8 billion.

Individual forces across the country have to find ways of reducing their costs in order to comply with the budget cuts. The Home Office has said that it believes the savings can be made by reducing bureaucracy and increasing efficiency.

Ask most people in the street and they will be able to tell you who Michael Jackson was. They will know him either for his seminal music, his headline grabbing antics (such as dangling his baby over a hotel balcony in London), or for his time in court facing allegations of child abuse. Therefore a court in Los Angeles has the near-impossible task of finding twelve individuals who know nothing or very little about the undisputed king of pop in order to make up the jury when his doctor is charged with his death.

Conrad Murray, who was employed to take care of Michael Jackson's health in the run up to his final tour 'This Is It', is charged with involuntary manslaughter.

The prosecution is alleging that Murray gave Michael Jackson a lethal dose of the surgical anaesthetic propofol. Murray has admitted giving Michael Jackson the drug in order to help him sleep as the star was suffering from chronic insomnia.

Apple has removed a controversial 'gay conversion' app from their App Store after thousands of people signed a petition calling for its removal. The app, which was available to download for free, claimed to be able to "cure" homosexuality.

The app was developed and named by Exodus International, a religious organisation based in Florida, which teaches homosexuality can be reversed through "prayer and practicing conversion therapy."

Apple, which supposedly vets all the apps available to download to its devices, only blocked the app after 150,000 people signed a petition at Change.org.

Lily Allen has successfully sued the Mail Online's publisher, Associated Newspapers, for posting pictures of her house online to accompany an article titled 'Pregnant Lily spends £3m on stunning Cotswold home'.

Allen argued that the pictures published in September 2010 were an invasion of her privacy. She also argued that the Mail Online had infringed copyright by printing the pictures without her permission.

The publisher has agreed to pay Allen an undisclosed amount of damages in order to settle the claim and cover all of her legal costs.

Motorists who are marginally over the legal limit of alcohol in a road side test are to lose their right to demand a blood test under the government's plans to tighten the laws against drink driving.

Under the current law, drink drivers who have been breathalysed at the roadside and are a fraction over the limit can use a legal loophole to cause a long enough delay to allow the alcohol to disappear from their system. Motorists can demand a blood test and while the police find a nurse or doctor to take the blood sample, they can sober up.

The Transport Minister, Philip Hammond, has announced that the government intends to close this loophole by removing the right to demand a blood test. The change will mean that the breath test taken on arrival at the police station will count as evidence in court.

The parents of a young girl killed when she was struck by a cyclist are campaigning for cyclists to be treated in the same way as motorists when they cause a death on the road.

Rhiannon Bennett, who was 17-years old when she died, was on the footpath when Jason Howard, from Buckingham, crashed into her. She struck her head on the pavement and died six days later from her injuries.

Rhiannon's parents Michael and Dianna were horrified when Mr Howard only received a fine of £2,200 for dangerous cycling. They have been campaigning for a change in the law that would see cyclists punished in the same way as motorists and motorcyclists for injuries and deaths caused whilst cycling.

The government has announced that it is to review its proposals to cut legal aid after the responses it received in reply to its consultation paper. The Ministry of Justice reported that it had received over 5,000 responses to the legal aid consultation, which closed on 14 February 2011.

The government's proposals introduced the plan to cut legal aid for most family law cases and replace it with compulsory mediation sessions. Many commentators and family lawyers criticised these plans, especially in relation to the use of mediation in cases involving domestic violence.

As a response to the heavy criticism, the legal aid minister Jonathan Djanogly confirmed that the Ministry of Justice is revisiting the proposals, in particular the definition of 'domestic violence' and when legal aid would be available to a person in a domestic violence situation.

The Cumberland sausage is the latest British speciality food to be granted Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status by the EU.

Under EU law, only sausages that are produced, processed and prepared in Cumbria and meet specific standards can be marketed and sold as Cumberland sausages under the PGI mark.

In order to be a Cumberland sausage, a sausage must have an 80% meat content and be sold in a long coil. It must also contain seasoning.

BBC Sport has reported that it understands that one of the cricketers accused of corruption after the News of World exposed a no-ball plot in August 2010 has applied for legal aid to fund his defence.

Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif, and Mohammad Amir are facing charges of conspiracy to cheat and conspiracy to obtain and accept corruption payments, and are due to be tried in the Crown Court later this spring.

As the three cricketers are foreign nationals, they are entitled to request legal aid to fund their defence.

David Gauke, a Treasury minister, revealed that nearly 10,000 people have had their tax debts wiped out after they were sent a tax demand from HMRC in September 2010.

HMRC experienced severe problems with the PAYE system which meant it got millions of tax bills wrong. It then sent tax demands to around 1.4 million people asking for a total of £3.8 billion in unpaid tax.

Accountants at the time advised those who had received a demand to apply to have the debt cancelled under the extra-statutory concession A19.

The Justice Minister Kenneth Clarke is to publish a draft Defamation Bill today aimed at protecting freedom of expression and curbing 'libel tourism' in England and Wales.

'Libel tourism' refers to wealthy foreign individuals suing for libel in the English courts under tenuous links, as the law here more 'claimant friendly' than that in other parts of the world. However, it has the effect of restricting freedom of expression in the UK.

The Bill aims to restrict libel tourism by only allowing foreign individuals to sue for libel in England and Wales if they can show the defamatory publication has 'substantially harmed' their reputation in England and Wales.

The residents of the UK's largest illegal traveller site have promised to launch a war on the local authority if they go ahead with their plan to evict over 1,000 travellers from Dale Farm, Essex. Much of the TV show 'My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding' has been filmed there.

Basildon Council has finally won a ten-year planning battle against the travellers after the High Court ruled they can evict them from the site. The council is due to have a final meeting on Tuesday 14 March in order to give the go ahead to serve the travellers with a 28-day eviction notice.

There have been travellers at Dale Farm since the seventies and 600 of them live there legally. A number of families later moved onto an extension of the property and covered it in tarmac before moving there caravans and prefab homes in. They later brought the land legally; however, planning permission was never obtained for the initial work.

A group of protesters calling themselves Topple The Tyrants have broken into Saif Gaddafi's home in Hampstead, London, and are settling in for a stay.

The group have fixed banners to the roof that say "revolution" and "out of Libya, out of London".

Topple The Tyrant's spokesperson, Montgomery Jones, told the Guardian that the group contains people from the Middle East but no-one from Libya yet. Asked if they would consider future occupations of property, he said yes, if "they were owned by dictators, absolutely".

Facebook is fast becoming the other women in a number of marriages in the US and the UK. Divorce lawyers in both countries report that it is cited as evidence in the majority of divorce cases.

In the US, most divorce lawyers now ask to see their client's Facebook page as a matter of course. Dr Steven Kimmons, a clinical psychologist and marriage counsellor at Loyola University Medical Centre near Chicago, said: "We're seeing it more and more."

Facebook and other social media sites are used by people to contact old flames or meet new acquaintances and strike up a friendship that can lead to an affair. A person's spouse can be left feeling suspicious of the relationship or the amount of time their partner spends on the social media site.

Warner Brothers Television has fired Charlie Sheen from their show Two and a Half Men following his public rants against the network and the show's creator, Chuck Lorre.

The dismissal could cost Sheen up to $1.5 - $2 million per episode, depending on syndication and repeat fees. If the network decides to cancel the whole show, it could miss out on $250 million in revenue.

The show, one of the most popular on TV in America, has already had the remainder of its eighth season cancelled by the network after the behaviour of its star got out of control. Sheen has repeatedly refused to go to rehab as requested by the network, claiming he has cured himself of his addictions through sheer will power.

Emdadur Choudhury, 26, from Spitalfields, East London, has been charged with burning poppies on 11 November 2010 during a protest in Kensington.

He was fined £50 by Woolwich Crown Court for breaching section 5 of the Public Order Act. The court found that his actions were capable of causing "harassment, harm or distress" to witnesses.

Another man, Mohammed Haque from Bethnal Green, was also originally accused of the offence but he was subsequently cleared of the charge.

A senior banker has been granted an injunction by the High Court that allows his identity and the nature of an affair he has been having with a married colleague to be kept out of the media.

The injunction was granted by the court on Tuesday March 1 against the Sun newspaper. The injunction, also known as a 'gagging order', means the tabloid will not be able to reveal the banker's identity or the details of the affair.

Injunctions of this nature are usually sought by famous sportsmen or celebrities trying to save their public reputation. Damaging stories reported in the papers can have a serious effect on their public image and earning capacity, and therefore injunctions are frantically applied for by their lawyers.

More than 100,000 migrants from Eastern Europe will be able to claim benefits in the UK after safeguards put in place seven years ago must be scrapped in May 2011.

The Labour government introduced the safeguards when it opened its doors to citizens of the then new EU member states seven years ago. They were intended to protect the benefits system from possible abuse. The government feared an influx of migrants from the poorest countries who would take advantage of the welfare system in the UK.

The safeguards meant migrants from eight Easter European countries could not claim jobseekers' allowance, housing benefit, or council tax benefit unless they had worked continuously for twelve months.

Francisco de Sousa is claiming unfair dismissal in an Employment Tribunal after he was fired by a property tycoon for serving his roast chicken dinner one hour too early.

Kevin Cash, who is worth an estimated £500million, allegedly stormed into the kitchen at his home, North Aston Hall in Oxfordshire, and fired de Sousa and his wife on the spot. De Sousa told the Tribunal that Cash yelled at them, saying "get out now! You're fired!"

The couple were living on the estate and were given one day to move out. They also claim that Cash owes them £15,000 for bills.

When they met Cash to discuss the payment of this sum, he reportedly flew into another rage and warned that they would fail at a Tribunal as he has "the best lawyers in England".

A British bodyguard is taking his former employer, an Arab princess, to an Employment Tribunal over claims of sexual harassment.

The princess, who can only be identified as 'B' for legal reasons, was a heavy drinker and drug user, the Employment Tribunal was told.

The bodyguard, who can only be identified as 'A', was paid £100,000 for his 24-hour protection services. He now fears for his safety, as the princess has a reputation of making threats against those who have crossed her.