Cameron Roberts

Well then don't use phrases like "cup of tea".

Another word for "Electioneering impinging" is just "democracy". This should absolutely be an electoral issue.

Actually, basing it on the defendant's choice makes a lot of sense.

Think you can set up a system that is equally fair without using a jury? Fine. Let defendants (and their lawyers) decide if they want to use that system or a traditional jury trial. That's a pretty robust test.

You make this sound like a matter of taste. This is not earl grey vs English breakfast. People's lives are on the line. You can ruin the lives of innocent people, or even facilitate a dictatorship, by getting this question wrong.

Erring on the side of maximum protection for defendants is prudent.

Actually I'll make one concession. If the defendant is given the option of proceeding without a jury (as can happen in some systems), and they make the decision to do so in a free and informed way, then that might be okay.

All

Trials with juries are not necessarily good. They can have all kinds of other problems.

But trials without juries are definitely bad.

That's not evidence of anything. For all we know, those courts are locking up innocent people constantly. We also don't know what will happen if Farage or someone like him gets his hands on those courts.

Just saying something exists is not evidence that it's good.

Yes it is.

No, the links don't back that up.

The first one is a synopsis of a book, which says the book suggests ways to improve jury trials; not that it proposes replacing juries with magistrates.

The second one says right in the title that she opposes removing the right to a jury trial.

Also surely the precautionary principle should apply here? Since we're talking about the idea of removing safeguards, which could be dangerous, the burden of proof should be on the person wanting to remove them.

Do you have evidence that this ISN'T dangerous?

It's all pretty self-evident. You sound like you're asking for evidence that the sky is blue.

Which point exactly do you doubt? That authoritarians can abuse the courts? That conflicts of interest are dangerous? That democracy is good?

Every source you've posted to try and show this nuance you're referring to disagrees with you.

Just saying "nuance", and "complexity" doesn't mean you get to deliberately misread sources and imply they say things they don't.

For all the reasons I've already said.
-It's open to authoritarian abuse
-It removes a key form of democratic accountability from the judicial process
-It creates conflicts of interest between the people deciding trial outcomes and the authorities trying to convict people

It's funny how centrists love to talk about how much they enjoy debate. But in practice they can't defend their ideas against left-wing critics for more than a few minutes without resorting to sneering and derision. They've got no arguments.

Why do you think it's so unacceptable for Palestinians to want to be free in their homeland?

"From the river to the sea" says nothing whatsoever about Israelis, and certainly not about Jewish people in the UK. A secular one-state solution would give Palestinians freedom from the river to the sea.

How so? The principle that it's better to let 1000 guilty people walk free than convict a single innocent person is pretty well respected.

New and emerging? Commercial CCS projects have existed for 30 years. Maybe it's time to cut our losses.

Carbon Capture’s Publicly Funded Failure - Oil Change International Governments have spent over $20 billion – and have approved up to $200 billion more – of public money on carbon capture and storage (CCS), providing a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry. Almost 80%

Capture rates are very low. Often well below 50%.

oilchange.org/publications...

It would be better to drop every single charge than to do this.

I'll be biking home so I'll tell you how it goes.

(Fortunately my route is almost entirely on MUPs, so traffic is not a big concern)

Because it does not deliver on what it promises. For several reasons:
-It's too expensive to be economically viable
-It requires extra energy to run
-Existing projects have under-delivered by orders of magnitude
-The stored carbon almost always used to pressurize wells and extract more oil

Reminds me of the thing where the best plan anyone can come up with for the Commanda Bridge in the winter is to get someone called Groomer Dave to take care of it for free.

Dave sounds great. But can you imagine if that was how we handled car infrastructure in the winter?

Better to go big on promoting the alternatives. Cheap, comfortable, abundant, fast, nationalised trains throughout the country.

And creative arrangements to facilitate low-carbon travel to Europe. Perhaps sleeper trains through the chunnel?

Iron-air batteries, plus some level of demand flexibility. Hydro and geothermal to provide a basic level of supply.

Or, if we're really in a pinch, green hydrogen.

Not to mention going hard on arresting climate activists.

Those other European systems are bad. Just because it's the done thing somewhere else doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Maybe not. But the more obstacles in the path of someone like that, the better.

If nothing else, handpicking 12 political loyalists for every trial would require a lot more work than picking a few magistrates for every court.

Greens are feeling very much the opposite of desperate right now. :-)

Evidence that when you interact with someone regularly in the context of your job, you get to know them? That's self-evident.

Because that's not how jury selection works.