Further media access to family courts will be scrapped by Tories

THURS 25/02/2010 - The Government has been forced to make concessions to its plans to further expand media access in the family courts. In the House of Commons on Tuesday night, Justice Minister Bridget Prentice accepted a new clause to the Children, Schools and Families Bill that requires a full independent review to media access in the family courts. As a result of the accepted amendments, before Schedule 2 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill may be brought into effect, there now must be a full independent review and evaluation of the operation of the provisions and the impact of the media being granted access to family courts for the first time in April. The conclusions of the independent review must then be set out in a report laid before Parliament. The independent review cannot commence before a full review has been completed of the findings from the pilot allowing for the publication of anonymised judgments. However, speaking to Newswatch today the Shadow Justice Minister Henry Bellingham said that "although [the Government] have accepted our new clause 2, and although they have come up with some amendments, we are keen to scrap it and start again". The Government had wanted to expand the April reforms to allow journalists a right to view documents filed in the proceedings. However the House of Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights Committee's report on the Bill questioned whether the measures conflict with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). In addition to UNCRC issues, the reforms were also strongly opposed by family lawyers over concerns about the diminished protection provided to the welfare and privacy of the child, the undermining of key ethical principles underscoring the work of professionals such as doctors and social workers, and the delay and cost which the system would have to bear. Mr Bellingham said it would have been far better to include the provisions by means of a separate family proceedings Bill, especially given that the Government have already announced that they are going to carry out a major review of the family justice system. Speaking at the debate in the House of Commons on Tuesday night, Mr Bellingham said: "We always assumed that the Government would allow the new arrangements to settle in before moving on to the next stage, which would be to amend the primary legislation on reporting restrictions and look into media attendance at placement and adoption proceedings. "We never dreamt that the Ministry of Justice would amend primary legislation by tacking on various clauses to another Bill, right at the fag-end of this Parliament, when the Government knew that there would be no time to debate these important proposals properly," Mr Bellingham added. The Bill has now gone to the House of Lords.

Canadian Fathers For Justice, protest at Olympics

http://parentalalienationcanada.blogspot.com/2010/02/report-on-fathers-4-justice-bc-members.html

Video of arrest

Greetings liberators from a very tired Batman.

This morning at 5:00 am the Burnaby Batman and Robin QC scaled the Lions Gate Bridge (Olympic Route) in West Vancouver BC in support of not only the cause we hold dear but in support of our Olympic athletes as well. 

The BC Hulk also was on scene and chained himself to the bridge deck while our superheroes placed their banner and Canadian flags high upon the structure. Within minutes of our superheroes being aloft the authorities converged upon the bridge in great numbers.

The challenges facing The Northern Ireland Assembly in meeting its target of ending child poverty.

LINK
"A recent report for OFMDFM (2008) highlighted the levels of fuel poverty faced by lone
parents, revealing that lone parents on average spent 56 per cent of their income on fuel compared with 26 per cent in Britain (Hillyard and Patsios, 2009)."

Fragmented and separated families is leading to wide spread child poverty in N.Ireland, the removal of good loving fathers through Secret Family Dip Loc Courts is attributing to child poverty. The lack of childcare is highlighted in this report and one remedy is to stop socially excluding fathers and the child's extended family from the child. When a father is removed from a child's life, then to is half of that's child's family who could aid and support in childcare.

Social engineering since the implementation of the Children's Order 1995 has created and attributed to child poverty in N.Ireland and must be reversed by allowing children the right to enjoy the freedom and liberty of residence with both its parents.