The government certainly got a bashing in Lord Justice Wall’s recent speech to the Association of Lawyers for Children. But he also raised an impressively bushy eyebrow at the media. Wall (pictured) has given his wholehearted backing to president of the family division Mark Potter’s hard-hitting speeches on the problems in the family justice system. ‘This is a trend which I welcome and support,’ he said. ‘We have tried introducing change through judgments. Even though every word uttered in the Court of Appeal and in what is now the Supreme Court is spoken in public, and everything we do is in the public domain… nothing I have said has reached the popular press – except perhaps the citation of a particular poem.’ Wall was referring to a judgment in April this year in which he quoted from This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin to put his point across to two disputing parents. The poem begins: ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad/They may not mean to, but they do/ They fill you with the faults they had/ And add some extra, just for you.’ Given that the only swearing that normally takes place in the courtroom involves a promise not to tell any porky pies, the judgment caused quite a stir at the time. And Wall has now revealed how it is apparently now referred to at the bar: Re F. We can’t think why.