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September 23, 2024 – Rob Pilatus
There are a small number of friends who stay in one’s life from teenage years to the end. There may be times when contact is slight, or even absent, and the odd year when Christmas cards are missed, but the hallmark of these stalwarts is that whenever you meet you both take up the reins of the friendship as if you last met just days before – no apologies for lost contact or unanswered texts. One of these people is Giles Filkin. We had met at school and were both at the same university. I read Law and he read History. It could just have easily been the other way round. The one advantage of reading Law was that it saved all those hours with the careers advisory service. Giles too did not have to decide whether to be a teacher, accountant or careers advisory officer but had instead sailed through the Civil Service test and spent the best years of his life trying to save government ministers from themselves.
During the year of the three Prime Ministers, he decided that enough was enough and that he would return to his first love and write a historical series about the later Stuarts, inspired by The First Churchills which we had both watched weekly with cheap Burgundy and plates of Boeuf Bourguignon, as it had coincided with our starting to study at A-level the seventeenth century, in a blissful era when it wasn’t all Henry VIII and Hitler. By the time we had reached Queen Anne that December, my waistline was starting to expand.
As a consequence of his new career and my ‘resting’ following a rather busy summer, we ended up having lunch twice a week at our local Italian. Giles still has friends in Whitehall and this was how I learned that there was now to be a recycling of the wretched scheme that the previous lot had introduced before COVID to reduce sitting days in the courts. Giles never worked in the Ministry of Justice but has a very low opinion of it. As he says, at least the old Lord Chancellor’s Department had real cachet and was headed by a very senior judge who defied Montesquieu’s separation of powers by being simultaneously a member of the judiciary, the executive and the legislature. In fact, those Lord Chancellors were hugely significant lawyers, usually beyond party politics and people to whom any wise Prime Minister would listen.
That lunchtime, Giles’ words had a depressing effect, although it was without an iota of malice on his part. ‘I’m afraid the signs are terrible,’ he said. ‘It’s about the only thing on which all the political parties agree – the justice system is on a par with potholes. It and they will only be temporarily fixed as and when an actual accident occurs.’ ‘Can you imagine,’ I asked, ‘a government saying that the way to cope with the crisis in the health service, with its appalling backlogs, was to cut the number of hospital staff and use operating theatres less?’ Then, letting the ravioli go cold on my plate, I said I could not imagine how politicians could even contemplate doing this when all of them, from one end of the political spectrum to the other, placed such a strong emphasis on law and order.
‘My dear William,’ said Giles, ‘It is a skin-deep concern. They pretend to solve the problem by simply passing laws. It’s a modern panacea. Many of these laws replicate existing law, usually less well, or create pie-in-the sky legislation that will never be enforced or only in a piecemeal way.’ I decided that cold ravioli was not a pleasant dish and turned back to my crusty bread and butter. ‘And,’ said Giles, ‘not only does that fail to solve the problem in question, but unenforced laws bring the system into disrepute and encourage an ever more casual attitude to law-breaking.’ ‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘like all these swathes of 20mph speed restrictions, mostly unenforced and unenforceable, instead of being selective and properly implemented.’
We talked of other things and I indulged myself with a Zabaglione and double espresso. I could sense Giles was staring at me. ‘I suppose that means they won’t need Recorders again.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘after all the usual pep talks since COVID for Recorders to have a sense of duty, hands to the pumps, do the decent thing and help out the struggling system. Now, we are surplus to requirements again.’ ‘Perhaps,’ said Giles, ‘I had better ask the maitre d’ to reserve our table on a daily basis.’
William Byfield is the pseudonym of a senior member of the Bar. Gutteridge Chambers, and the events that happen there, are entirely fictitious.
September 23, 2024 – Rob Pilatus
There are a small number of friends who stay in one’s life from teenage years to the end. There may be times when contact is slight, or even absent, and the odd year when Christmas cards are missed, but the hallmark of these stalwarts is that whenever you meet you both take up the reins of the friendship as if you last met just days before – no apologies for lost contact or unanswered texts. One of these people is Giles Filkin. We had met at school and were both at the same university. I read Law and he read History. It could just have easily been the other way round. The one advantage of reading Law was that it saved all those hours with the careers advisory service. Giles too did not have to decide whether to be a teacher, accountant or careers advisory officer but had instead sailed through the Civil Service test and spent the best years of his life trying to save government ministers from themselves.
During the year of the three Prime Ministers, he decided that enough was enough and that he would return to his first love and write a historical series about the later Stuarts, inspired by The First Churchills which we had both watched weekly with cheap Burgundy and plates of Boeuf Bourguignon, as it had coincided with our starting to study at A-level the seventeenth century, in a blissful era when it wasn’t all Henry VIII and Hitler. By the time we had reached Queen Anne that December, my waistline was starting to expand.
As a consequence of his new career and my ‘resting’ following a rather busy summer, we ended up having lunch twice a week at our local Italian. Giles still has friends in Whitehall and this was how I learned that there was now to be a recycling of the wretched scheme that the previous lot had introduced before COVID to reduce sitting days in the courts. Giles never worked in the Ministry of Justice but has a very low opinion of it. As he says, at least the old Lord Chancellor’s Department had real cachet and was headed by a very senior judge who defied Montesquieu’s separation of powers by being simultaneously a member of the judiciary, the executive and the legislature. In fact, those Lord Chancellors were hugely significant lawyers, usually beyond party politics and people to whom any wise Prime Minister would listen.
That lunchtime, Giles’ words had a depressing effect, although it was without an iota of malice on his part. ‘I’m afraid the signs are terrible,’ he said. ‘It’s about the only thing on which all the political parties agree – the justice system is on a par with potholes. It and they will only be temporarily fixed as and when an actual accident occurs.’ ‘Can you imagine,’ I asked, ‘a government saying that the way to cope with the crisis in the health service, with its appalling backlogs, was to cut the number of hospital staff and use operating theatres less?’ Then, letting the ravioli go cold on my plate, I said I could not imagine how politicians could even contemplate doing this when all of them, from one end of the political spectrum to the other, placed such a strong emphasis on law and order.
‘My dear William,’ said Giles, ‘It is a skin-deep concern. They pretend to solve the problem by simply passing laws. It’s a modern panacea. Many of these laws replicate existing law, usually less well, or create pie-in-the sky legislation that will never be enforced or only in a piecemeal way.’ I decided that cold ravioli was not a pleasant dish and turned back to my crusty bread and butter. ‘And,’ said Giles, ‘not only does that fail to solve the problem in question, but unenforced laws bring the system into disrepute and encourage an ever more casual attitude to law-breaking.’ ‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘like all these swathes of 20mph speed restrictions, mostly unenforced and unenforceable, instead of being selective and properly implemented.’
We talked of other things and I indulged myself with a Zabaglione and double espresso. I could sense Giles was staring at me. ‘I suppose that means they won’t need Recorders again.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘after all the usual pep talks since COVID for Recorders to have a sense of duty, hands to the pumps, do the decent thing and help out the struggling system. Now, we are surplus to requirements again.’ ‘Perhaps,’ said Giles, ‘I had better ask the maitre d’ to reserve our table on a daily basis.’
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