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Playing with ideas, left and right, toying with the constitutional dynamic; this in reality is now largely a past-time for the dwellers of ivory towers, champagne socialists, dinner party chit chat and North London vegans. To the ground swell of effectively disenfranchised, debt ridden,rent a room nomads descending through sofa surfing to homelessness the finer points of judicial leanings could not be further from mind. And yet it is this growing class of the population who are most likely to engage with the courts.

The article presents the impact of the great and good through perceived tectonic shifts brought about by land-mark cases. It is true that many senior judges have spoken out about the withdrawal of legal aid in so many areas for so many people, yet these utterances underline their impotence in the face of this neo-liberal sociopathy. Judicial positions must also be viewed in an highly iterative manner through the decisions in a multitude of cases each day in hundreds of magistrates and crown courts in England and Wales. Here, the neo-liberal agenda is driven with the efficiency of lambs to slaughter. Large numbers of the population are criminalised and routinely betrayed by the justice system. This is where speed and thrift are presented as virtues and objection and requests for time are viewed with suspicion and condemned. Yet no one could imagine that this neo-liberal conspiracy at mass psychological lobotomisation is sustainable and a solution must lie a long way beyond hollow political platitudes or the tea and sympathy of benevolent but financially cushioned members of the judiciary. Aspirational liberal democracy offers freedom and equality as comfortable bed-fellows and when in doubt the rule of law will always preserve the equilibrium. Not so. The law is most effective when it is used as an instrument of the wealthy and privileged. All the rest is a mere sticking plaster. What is in issue is not the relative urbanity,largesse and insight of individual members of judiciary, but rather a fundamentally ineffective, underfunded and broken system.