Bar none – the fraud behind the BSB’s “equality and diversity” drive
The one characteristic that the Bar actually does lack is a diversity of political opinion. And this really does matter since without it the Bar will lose public respect, a problem already apparent with the vernacular of “lefty lawyers”. Yet by seeking to require barristers to promote “equality, diversity and inclusion” the Bar Standards Board will ensure that the Bar becomes even more politically monotone.
Bar’s regulator requires barristers to be woke?
The Bar Standards Board (BSB) is taking sides in a politically controversial issue by proposing to require barristers to advance EDI. In fact, the Bar is already a place where ethnic minorities and women can thrive. So why the push for more ‘diversity’? Because EDI is the beast that needs constant feeding – even when it does untold harm to a profession and the public.
Free speech for professionals?
In a boost for free speech the barristers’ regulator has redrafted its social media guidance to recognise that free speech must prevail over the urge of the easily offended to cancel.
Maya Forstater triumphs over cancel culture
Maya Forstater’s workplace victory shows how the law can defend free speech against the wokesters who practise cancel culture.
Speaking freely just got a bit easier
In August my professional regulator, the Bar Standards Board, sanctioned me for a tweet. An appeal panel has now overturned the BSB’s decision and confirmed the importance of political speech under human rights law. The panel concluded that a tweet that may cause offence, or which could promote hostility towards others as a group, provides no basis for interfering with the right of a barrister, or any other member of a regulated profession, to speak politically.
Cancelled, cleared, then fined
For expressing my political opinions, in circumstances entirely unrelated to my professional work, I was expelled from my chambers; and though now exonerated, I have been fined £500 by the bar’s regulator on a newly minted charge. I reflect on the latest decision of the Bar Standards Board, which has at least exonerated me for the tweet that brought about my expulsion from Chambers.
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Jon Holbrook 