Criminal Negligence

Thanks to the assault on legal aid by Chris Graybeing, Minister for Justice and Heterosexual Hostelry, the first of many trials has run into a few tribulations. There are eight defendants, and ordinarily there would be two barristers for each of them; but Graybeing's cuts have provoked a bit of a strike among the lawyers. A spokesbeing proclaimed that even under the new rules the barristers would be "paid generously", which obviously ought to settle the matter; nevertheless, seventeen chamber sets have already refused the cases, despite a mere 45,000 pages of evidence and the golden opportunity to build a reputation with Serco before the whole system is privatised. On the bright side, the charge is only fraud, and therefore hardly a matter of concern to the party of Michael Green, Iain Duncan Smith and the Deputy Conservatives.