Opinion

Opinion

What Mr Bates and the Post Office can teach us about climate change

“You might think you’re thinking your own thoughts. You’re not. You’re thinking your culture’s thoughts.” Jiddu Krishnamurti We need to talk about our culture’s thoughts. These have been called different things: the dominant world view; our metanarrative; the hegemonic paradigm. Whatever the terminology, it comes down to the prevailing way of thinking, the story we […]

Climate education

Scale up and speed up: what we need to do about environmental governance

In the UK, as elsewhere, the environment is in a parlous state. Deeply concerning adverse environmental trends continue. Urgent action is needed to tackle the climate and biodiversity crises. Businesses often want to do the right thing and NGOs are active in the sector. Even so, the environment often lacks a ‘voice’, with few economic […]

The Post Office scandal must not undermine the vital role of private prosecutions in securing justice for victims

The Post Office Horizon scandal has led to a renewed scrutiny of private prosecutions and growing calls for a reform of the system, first put forward by the Justice Committee, and which the Justice Secretary is apparently considering. However, it would be entirely wrong to extrapolate errors that occurred in the Post Office prosecutions to […]

Tom Goodhead

In defence of lawyers: why we need to protect group litigation

“All the meetings with MPs, letters to the Minister, more Ministers than you can shake a stick at, years and years – still no one in power hears a word we say”. These were the words of Alan Bates on 31 December 2018, as he watched the former CEO of the Post Office honoured with […]

How to blow up a (talent) pipeline

Given we are in the midst of the festive season, it is worth calling to mind a heart-warming Christmas movie that lawyers can no doubt all relate to. Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy In Bruges is a film in which two hitmen end up stuck in the eponymous Belgian town awaiting orders from their boss. As […]

COP28: Advised emissions – will lawyers be heroes or villains?

A scene from the westerns and cartoons of my childhood keeps playing in my mind. A trail of gunpowder leads to kegs of dynamite. The fuse is lit. Will the hero put the fuse out before the whole thing blows sky high? It’s a race against time.   What are advised emissions anyway? Advised emissions […]

Black History Month: Let’s salute our sisters

It was Blair Underwood’s character Jonathan Rollins in LA Law who first inspired me to become a lawyer, cliched as this sounds. As a child aged 7, I had never seen a black man in a professional role before, and I was in awe – representation really does matter. My initial steps into the legal […]

The one bad apple: here’s what leaders can do

There’s always one isn’t there? As our careers develop, we will all have had plenty of experience working in, or with, various teams. Some of these experiences will have had a very positive impact, others less so. There will be multiple reasons for this, however, one that I have noticed time and again is that it […]