The Very Model of a Dodgy Human Rights Lawyer
Sometimes a mundane event can carry an important symbolic moral and political meaning. The headline in today’s Law Society Gazette, “Dishonest Shiner Struck Off”, at one level refers to just one more case of a grubby little ambulance-chasing shyster lawyer being banned from practising because he had dishonestly touted for business.
But Phil Shiner was no ordinary crooked lawyer. He was a left-wing icon. He was one of Britain’s leading “heroic” human rights lawyers, a committed socialist who had devoted his career to exposing and inventing the “wrongdoings” of British soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The liberal Left establishment stood up for him almost to the very end, saying that he was the victim of a conspiracy between the army, the Ministry of Defence and the right-wing press. What will they say now that he has been utterly discredited by an impartial solicitors’ disciplinary tribunal after a thorough investigation by the Solicitors’ Regulation…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins