Thursday, July 06, 2006
Apparatchiks! Cease to worry!
Unknown to many, yesterday (5th of July 2006) in the High Court an action was brought to determine the legality of parking tickets. The challenge was based upon the view that the parking tickets contravene the Bill of Rights 1689, which says: “That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void”. As the ticket is issued, but there is no conviction before a court, so the ticket, according to the Bill of Rights must be “void”.
Now by way of a bit of background, it always used to be thought that if two acts of Parliament contradicted themselves then the later one would prevail (implied repeal), and this was the defence used by the metric martyrs to justify selling in pounds and ounces. In order to secure a conviction of them, a way around the doctrine of this implied repeal had to be found, the Court of Appeal (always in modern times equal to the task of obliging the government) used a concept (previously reserved for academic discussion) of “constitutional acts”, saying that these could not be impliedly repealed thus enabling them to give primacy to the European Communities Act 1972 and removing the metric martyrs defence. This was the first time that the Court of Appeal ever recognised this “constitutional acts” doctrine.
A corollary of the metric martyrs case is of course that old constitutional acts, which everyone had assumed had been impliedly repealed, now have a new life breathed into them by the Court of Appeal judgment and hence yesterday’s court case.
It appeared as though the apparatchiks had had their day, finally their twisting of the laws to oppress the freeborn English man and woman would end, collapsing under the weight of their convolutions. This was however reckoning without the astounding legal brilliance of Mr Justice Collins in a superb judgement he said that parking tickets weren’t “fines and forfeitures” so by re-designating the pint pot as a “half pint pot” he has found he can now fit a pint measure inside it. See 2 plus 2 equal 5 especially if you re-designate 5 as 4. What an outstanding legal intellect.
I especially like where the learned judge refers to the local authorities: “The only surprise I have is that this argument has been produced on a number of occasions and seems to have worried local authorities and possibly even parking adjudicators.” “All I can say is that they should cease to worry. It is, as I say, a completely baseless argument.”
Yes with people like Mr Justice Collins to defend our ancient laws and traditions apparatchiks everywhere will indeed cease to worry.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
Now by way of a bit of background, it always used to be thought that if two acts of Parliament contradicted themselves then the later one would prevail (implied repeal), and this was the defence used by the metric martyrs to justify selling in pounds and ounces. In order to secure a conviction of them, a way around the doctrine of this implied repeal had to be found, the Court of Appeal (always in modern times equal to the task of obliging the government) used a concept (previously reserved for academic discussion) of “constitutional acts”, saying that these could not be impliedly repealed thus enabling them to give primacy to the European Communities Act 1972 and removing the metric martyrs defence. This was the first time that the Court of Appeal ever recognised this “constitutional acts” doctrine.
A corollary of the metric martyrs case is of course that old constitutional acts, which everyone had assumed had been impliedly repealed, now have a new life breathed into them by the Court of Appeal judgment and hence yesterday’s court case.
It appeared as though the apparatchiks had had their day, finally their twisting of the laws to oppress the freeborn English man and woman would end, collapsing under the weight of their convolutions. This was however reckoning without the astounding legal brilliance of Mr Justice Collins in a superb judgement he said that parking tickets weren’t “fines and forfeitures” so by re-designating the pint pot as a “half pint pot” he has found he can now fit a pint measure inside it. See 2 plus 2 equal 5 especially if you re-designate 5 as 4. What an outstanding legal intellect.
I especially like where the learned judge refers to the local authorities: “The only surprise I have is that this argument has been produced on a number of occasions and seems to have worried local authorities and possibly even parking adjudicators.” “All I can say is that they should cease to worry. It is, as I say, a completely baseless argument.”
Yes with people like Mr Justice Collins to defend our ancient laws and traditions apparatchiks everywhere will indeed cease to worry.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
