Monday, April 03, 2006

Peter Cherbi & the Justice 1 Committee of the Scottish Parliament duel for rights of audience & transparency ...

With all the recent items in the media about "Public Inquiries" - I would have thought people would have noticed something about the outcomes of such investigations by supposed 'independent' people .... they never really get to the truth, critisise who they should, and at the end of it, no real action or improvement ever comes from them .....

Take for instance, the Deepcut Inquiry into the deaths of soldiers in the British Army at a Training Base. Are the parents of the dead recruits happy at the outcome of the inquiry ? no. With tales of recruits bullied, sexually assauted, possibly murdered, etc ..., I'm not surprised that recruitment to the army is down, and the parents of the dead are still campaigning for a full inquiry - but they won't get, or at least if they do, nothing will ever come of it, and whatever happened to those who died will remain unanswered just the same as what happened in many other such inquirues'

We have many to compare, such as Lord Cullen's 'inquiry' into the Dunblane Massacre, which examined why a close friend of senior political figures and policemen went out with an array of firearms allowed to him by his Police & political friends, and murdered a class of young children along with their teacher. This 'inquiry' kept much of the documentation secret for 100 years, finally with the Crown Office fiddling plenty of it for early release just to please some and grab some headlines ...

... or, just the same as when the Government stuffed the entire top brass of the intelligence services in Northern Ireland into a Chinook Helicopter which crashed on the Mull of Kintyre in 1994 (Government had to blame pilot error to take the heat off the idiot decision to slap everyone into one unreliable helicopter meant for troop & materiel transport, on a foggy day) more here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_crash_on_Mull_of_Kintyre....

... there's more - McKie fingerprint scandal, The Lockerbie Case, Sky Bridge Tolls, Scottish Haemophiliacs poisoned by tainted blood everyone knew about, My own mum's death, and hundreds of others .... will I name more such failed "inquiries" ? better not, I will be here all week writing one article ...

Okay, back to my case - and surprise surprise - the Scottish Parliamentary Inquiry into "Reform of the legal profession" by the Justice 1 Committee, which Phil Gallie had struggled to get for us clients of crooked lawyers, had started to run into the severe difficulties I always thought it would - after Phil Gallie was replaced on the Committee by Lord James Douglas Hamilton ... (never a one to dodge transparency .. was he now)

At the outset of the Inquiry - I had thought that members of the public would get the chance to go to the Justice 1 Committee and give testimony on their cases of how they had been treated by crooked lawyers and the Law Society of Scotland - to show how brutal, evil and corrupt the Scottish legal profession really were ....

.... but I was WAY off on that one .... because there had been a flurry of secret meetings between Justice 1 Committee members, Scottish Parliamentary staff, lawyers, and officials of the Law Society of Scotland - to prevent such hearings - because "it is felt a trail of members of the public giving oral testimony on their cases could be most damaging to the Scottish legal profession, the credibility of Scot's Law, and also raise questions about why their politicians had not done anything on their cases in the past" ..... ahhh ... you are going to ask where I got that quote, yes ? .. well, for now, that's a secret ....

So, no members of the public, like me (the one who had probably campaigned the most for the inquiry) would be allowed to attend - quite convenient, yes ? shut up the most prominent campaigners so they can't speak .... makes you wonder how the new inquiry will go by the Justice 2 Committee .... doesn't it ...

Meanwhile of course, the top staff (crooks) from the Law Society of Scotland and the Scottish legal profession were appearing before the Justice 1 Committee, seemingly, at-will - and giving glowing testimonials as to how great they were, etc .... (which begs the question why now has the Scottish Executive decided to replace them with an independent regulatory body, as I, and many others, had always asked for) ....

There were many more 'adjustments' to the nature of the inquiry too .. for instance, the Sheriffs Association, had actually written a secret letter [leaked to me when it was received] to the Justice 1 Committee - telling them that if they tried to consider the actions & positions of Sheriffs in Scotland, the Sheriffs Association would sue the Parliament and take legal action to remove themselves from such an Inquiry ! - how about that ! ... (it gave me an idea though ...)

The Justice 1 Committee then had yet another secret meeting, and secretly removed the Sheriffs from their "Regulation of the legal profession" inquiry ... without anyone really noticing - except me and a few campaigners - seems the Press were conned out of the story though by Parliamentary Briefings ...

Anyway, since the Sheriffs were [secretly] threatening the Justice 1 Committee of the Scottish Parliament with legal action to remove themselves from the inquiry - I thought I'd try the same .. but of course, when Peter Cherbi tries to find a legal agent to represent him - it's tough, to say the least ... because of the discrimination against me of course ... and not one advocate would take on the case - because of pressure from their colleagues in the Faculty of Advocates and the Law Society of Scotland - and also their political pals of course ....

Anyway ... I asked Christine Grahame - the Convener of the Justice 1 Committee, an MSP for the Scottish Borders, and member of the Scottish National Party, nicely, to reconsider the position so that members of the public could come in and speak about what happened to them at the hands of crooked lawyers - but, being a member of the Law Society of Scotland herself, she told me to get lost and she could do what she wanted ..... (which, she certainly did)

And, when a friend of mine, Krystyna Ost, went to her own Scottish paliamentarian, (Lord James Douglas Hamilton) to discuss matters, he said any case Peter Cherbi brought against the Scottish Parliament WOULD fail ... which I kind of suspected anyway .. but I had to try of course, because I was fighting for not only myself, but for all those other campaigners and clients of crooked lawyers who had fought so hard to get this inquiry in the first place ...

In the article you are about to read, Christine Grahame's response was this "Christine Grahame who chairs Justice 1, said she did not believe Mr Cherbi’s action would succeed and the committee could call the witnesses it wanted to hear."

Yes, Ms Grahame .. you were right, your committee certainly did only call the witnesses it only wanted to hear, and you shut out transparency and the many victims of the legal profession in Scotland such as me, to give the Law Society and it's crooked membership a few more years of life & robbing their clients ....

Anyway, read on for the story .. and the link to it of course ... and I will update this item again later this week with the second part to this .... good old Scottish Parliament ... likes to sweep things under the carpet, doesn't it .... and it has done the same with plenty of it's so-called Committee inquiries in the past .. and will do so again .. probably with the McKie inquiry too, which so many people are getting themselves worked up for ... but which now, I am told, the McKie case is being used more as a diversion than anything else .... no surprises there then ....

Link at : http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1620662001

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

no need to wonder why your Scot Nats didn't do anything about crooked lawyers then - i picked up this from one of your blog links :

http://sacl.info/heroin_dealing_solicitor.htm

a connection ?

Josie said...

Since The Inquiries Act 2005 piece of legislation that was railroaded through parliament, there definately will not be any such true public enquiry which will reach a conclusion that the executive will not want reached. In England, at least....

Is the act in operation in Scotland?