That was the narrative, yes.
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My understanding was that Cameron called for the referendum as a way to shut Farage up, and neither wanted nor expected the referendum to pass. I would have thought he would have set the parameters to maximize the chance of failure, not “fixed it up” in this way.
I don’t think it occurred to Cameron that he might lose the EU ref and so he thought he was being clever by letting the hardline brexiteers — in his party and out of it — dictate terms like the franchise.
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The North West Evening Mail article (linked in the post) says that she was called to the bar (i.e. qualified as a barrister) in 1989.
English barristers don’t hold a JD degree. The usual route is a LLB (Bachelor of Laws) degree – three years, undergraduate - followed by the BPTC (Bar Professional Training Course), which lasts a year. That’s four years of education, generally starting at 18 (though it’s not uncommon for someone to complete Scottish* secondary education at 17); if she’s 49 now, she could have been 22 in the later parts of 1989.
After successful completion of the BPTC, you’re technically a barrister, but you don’t get to actually practise until you’ve served a pupillage (more or less an apprenticeship) for a year under a practising barrister.
* Note that although she’s Scottish, she is trained and practices in the English legal system. Scotland, as always, is different, having advocates rather than barristers, and (I believe) a mixed common and civil law system.
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I think that’s attributing a greater level of thought to it than was actually put in place. The Referendum franchise seems to have been cribbed directly from the definition of eligible voters for UK general elections. Nobody thought it would be close enough for this sort of thing to matter.
That’s absolutely right:
These days it’s common for Scottish universities to offer joint degrees in Scots law and English law to enable graduates to practice in both jurisdictions without having to take extra accreditation exams.
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IIRC normally those who leave Scottish secondary schools at 17 (after completing Highers but not Advanced Highers) and go to university will do a four-year bachelor’s degree at a Scottish university, so will graduate at the same age as someone who did A-levels then a three-year degree in England.
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It’s possible to still be 17 after completing Advanced Highers in S6, if you enter P1 at four and a half.
I don’t know for sure whether English universities would take such a student before they turned eighteen, but I can’t see any reason they wouldn’t.
That I did not know. I’ve been in a situation recently where having such a lawyer would have been an absolute godsend (and also saved me several thousand quid).
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There were certainly students at my (English) university who were 17 at the start of first year. Normally they’d taken A-levels but been moved up a year at some point- as had one of my friends who had gone to school in Scotland and taken Advanced Highers but was still 17 when she started.
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I assumed this was to prevent all the ex-pats in the Costa Del Sol from voting to leave the EU.
On a related note, while EU residents in the UK weren’t allowed to vote (on something which arguably affected them more than a Brit who’s made their home elsewhere), Irish people living in the UK were allowed to vote in the referendum.
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Those ex-pats in Spain that I know went ballistic over leaving the EU. Their pensions and UK investments dropped 10%. Some of them are now trying to come back and finding that although their Euro funds are worth 10% more, house prices in desirable areas (mostly Remain) have gone up faster - house prices in our Remain-voting town near Bath have gone up over 17% since June. That mini-estate in Spain with swimming pool and smallholding won’t buy a three bed semi in Torquay, Poole or Christchurch. They are also extremely worried that once GB has left the EU, they will receive no GB pensions at all if they live abroad - the trade balance crisis will make it completely unaffordable.
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However, if you don’t have a rich mummy and daddy, or a parent already in the business, and want a paid pupillage, it helps a lot to have an MA (Oxon or Cantab) and/or an LLM. My kid did two LLMs at different mainland universities and collected a lot of vacation work before getting a paid pupillage. Three quarters of those who pass the BPTC never practice. Although the people at the top get a lot of money (Lord Sumption was said to be able to command millions of pounds a year because he could confuse the Law Lords as to what the law meant) it is very, very far from a gravy train.
All of which is to say that Dhir is obviously someone of extremely high ability.
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Again, that’s the rules for the franchise for general elections. People with citizenship of Ireland or a Commonwealth country get to vote.
It does seem odd, and and there is probably some element of Imperial hangover in those rules, but there they are. I think there are some reciprocal agreements in place as well.
My Google-fu is failing me. What is a LIM?
Your comments on the class imbalance in the profession chime with what I’ve heard elsewhere. Respect to your daughter/son on making it.
Irish citizens and Commonwealth citizens are not considered foreigners under British law. Hence they have most of the civic rights of British citizens, if resident in the UK: they can vote, sit in Parliament, hold public office, etc.
However, those rights do not necessarily include the right of abode, or even leave to remain, without which much of the remaining rights are moot.
And just to mix things up a little, “Commonwealth citizen” does not necessarily mean “citizen of a Commonwealth country”: for example, citizens of Zimbabwe are still Commonwealth citizens, even though Zimbabwe left the Commonwealth in 2003.
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Before the referendum, Channel 4 News interviewed some Irish people living in the UK who were pro-Leave. Some elderly Irishmen who had been over here since the 1950s or 1960s complained about migrants from eastern Europe coming over here to work simply because they were EU citizens.
They had forgotten that they had come to the UK on much the same basis, taking advantage of the right of Irish citizens to live and work here, and seemed to imagine that they had earned UK residence through some kind of selective work permit system.
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Master of laws.(I know nowadays it tends to get written LLM but I am old fashioned and stick to the same convention as PhD). [fixed to suit Arial]
I don’t really approve of the system, though. The fact that such highly educated and expensive people are needed to make cases shows how badly English law is written. After WW2 the UK did a fantastic job helping Germany draft their new legal system, as a result of which pursuing cases in Germany is much cheaper. But then we also got VW going, with consequences that we all know about, while letting our own car industry sink into decay.
EU law tends to be much, much better drafted than English law. We’re going to go back to the time of Dickens.
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A thousand curses on Arial. I read that as ell - aye - em.
And your kid did two of them? Blimey.
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If kids today knew what the opportunities were like 20 years ago they would be incredibly angry. Beginning with burning down the National Liberal Club. Tuition fees have pretty much made sure that there won’t be any more Dhir Js.
Germans and Scandinavians tend to spend up to 7 years at university, and it’s when they reach their 30s and 40s that it really shows.
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since Bologna not true anymore, 3 years to reach the bachelor’s degree (and maybe 2 more for a master) are the norm since ~ 2010.
it’s kind of sad, Humboldt’s ideas on how a university should work were deprecated but the predicted positive effects (like comparable degrees and much easier chances to have a semester abroad) did mostly not happen.
employers’ associations and connected lobby groups were the loudest proponents for a streamlined and faster higher education. “the graduates are too old. we need a school-like university system now!”
at the moment said associations and lobbyists lament that post-Bologna graduates are immature…
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I found it particularly disgusting that the people who introduced tuition fees benefited not only from free tuition but also maintenance grants, a concept almost inconceivable now.
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