The following are a couple of extracts from The Magistrate's Blog.

Monday January 08, 2007

Which Visitor to London Wrote This?

On Saturday nights, a half-million workers, male and female, together with their children, flood the city like a sea, flocking especially in certain sections and celebrate the Sabbath all night until five in the morning," he notes. "They stuff themselves and drink like animals ... They all race against time to drink themselves insensate. The wives do not lag behind their husbands but get drunk with them; the children run and crawl among them. It is like a biblical picture, something out of Babylon, a prophecy from the Apocalypse coming to pass before your eyes."
The year was 1862 and the visitor was Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.

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Thumbs-Down From The Judges

Last Autumn the Home Office issued a consultation document called Making Sentencing Clearer. I have a copy of it on my desk.

The consultation has nearly finished and the Council of Circuit Judges have blown a judicial raspberry (that's a Bronx Cheer to our American readers) to most of the proposals.

The Times has a leader and this and this in today's paper.

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