Priorities

The following proposition is due to be debated at this year's AGM of the Magistrates' Association:-

This Annual General Meeting believes that the work Magistrates undertake should be recognised more widely as a valuable contribution to the justice system in England and Wales and calls upon the Association to establish an Honours and Recognition Group to highlight this.

So as summary justice is given to the police and the dog catcher to administer, courts are to be closed, Legal Aid squeezed almost out of existence, and local justice abandoned, the best the MA can manage is a bit of mutual backslapping and a request for a few gongs to be dished out. We'll probably get them too, rather as explorers handed out trinkets to keep the natives quiet while the visitors worked out what was worth plundering.