The Law Society Gazette, 13 July 2006

Fears of ‘spectator sport’ if family cases are opened

The media could be admitted to all family hearings by the end of the year under government proposals to make the process more open and accountable, but solicitors have warned

the measures could turn hearings into a ‘spectator sport’.

10 July 1996

Possible test for complaints system

The UK government may be forced to defend itself in the European Court of Human Rights against claims that solicitors’ complaints procedures are inadequate and deny people justice.

Action for Individual Rights in Europe, a voluntary organisation that supports people taking cases to the European Court of Human Rights, is applying to Strasbourg this week over the case of 80-year-old Peggy Wood. Ms Wood, whose house was repossessed, settled a negligence claim against her solicitors in 1987.

9 July 1986

Cheaper air fares in Europe

The European Court for once caught the imagination of the popular press with its recent decision in Nouvelles Frontières. The court has managed to push the airlines towards free competition, stopping short of the chaos of instant deregulation. Nouvelles Frontières, a travel agency in Paris, found itself the subject of criminal proceedings in the Tribunal de Police, charged with selling tickets at unapproved cheap fares.

July 1966

Fingerprints

Dear Sir,

May one, through your columns, express the hope that the council will in the strongest terms object to the proposed plan to fingerprint the whole population compulsorily. Apart from this being a fundamental breach of one’s civil rights, it appears that it is not even proposed to issue an identity card showing duplicate prints to protect against errors and abuses.

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