Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Barbara Rich

@barbararich.bsky.social

1.5K followers 650 following 730 posts

Barrister, mediator (England + Wales) https://www.5sblaw.com/our-people/barbara-rich/ law of inheritance, trusts, mental incapacity + interested in legal history, public understanding of law, crowdfunding. Londoner. https://bleakhouserevisited.substack.com

www.5sblaw.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Jan 7

I’m posting a bit more actively in 2025, but my general intention is to write more for my (free) Substack, Bleak House Revisited bleakhouserevisited.substack.com than on social media. I’ve written to date on the Assisted Dying Bill, and on the WASPI campaign. My next post will be on forged wills

Bleak House Revisited | Substack

Barbara Rich English law, legal history, literature, London. Click to read Bleak House Revisited, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.

bleakhouserevisited.substack.com

3 12 36

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · 25d

Worse than ridiculous. This conspiracist obsession with Fabians is rooted in his attack on the impartiality of the Court of Appeal judge who presided over the Bell Hotel ruling. Barrett is not neutral here, but has been involved in urging councils to seek these injunctions to close asylum hotels

1 3

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · 29d

I imagine you must have seen “advice from a random stranger on social mores” before?

1 2

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · 29d

The GLP had just won a case about publishing PPE procurement contract details on a website in good time. Exactly the sort of thing that would prompt passers-by to repeatedly offer their congratulations to our hero

1 2

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · 29d

It just doesn’t have quite the vainglorious improbability of that London park scene. I mean, I’ve spent hours of my life walking in London parks. Have I ever seen anything like the image it conjures up? No

1 1

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · 29d

Honestly, the platitudes which have flowed from this are as rapidly and completely numbing to the mind as dental anaesthetic is to the jaw

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · 29d

One for the Little Book of Maugham. This is one of my perennial favourites

1 9

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · 29d

His organisation has raised £££ millions over the years to pay lawyers to argue cases it supports in the Royal Courts of Justice. But he thinks this graffiti on the walls of that same historic listed building shouldn’t have been removed (as its artist no doubt expected it to be)

1 7

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · 29d

Of course he does. This is performance for his audience. The tragic pettiness and petulance of it, though

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · 29d

Or they could have left Dame Karen Pierce in post

1 1

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 6

I wondered if you were being serious or sarcastic for a moment!

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 3

That lost world. I had a friend, now sadly dead, who went to work as a solicitor at an old-fashioned firm in a small town in Herefordshire. Visiting in the early years of this century I was shown the senior partner’s desk standing on its linoleum floor exactly as it had done since the 1940s

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 3

I’m afraid not. Another feature of that semi-digital era was that large offices had a post room and messengers who delivered letters within and outside the building, and iirc it was mostly the post room messengers who enjoyed this form of lunchtime entertainment

1 1

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 3

Enjoyable read. I’m so old that I can remember working just outside the City in Aldgate in the mid 1980s, in offices now either converted or demolished into apartments. It was the frontier of the expanding City and the old East End, where the local pubs still advertised strippers at lunchtime

1 2

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 3

It’s the latest instalment of a fairly long history where this offender is concerned

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 3

At the very least there should be a code of conduct obligation on all Parliamentarians and their staff to delete and correct social media posts which are straight up misrepresentations like this

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 3

Some people who are aligned with or sympathetic to Jenrick’s “Lawyers for Borders” movement think it would be better if judges were appointed by the Lord Chancellor as they were before 2006. Would you trust this man as Lord Chancellor making those decisions?

1 2 17

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 3

Jenrick’s post on X has now been community noted but has not been corrected or deleted. As in this story about another of his social media posts and a court case, he appears to have put political ambitions ahead of the interests of justice www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Justice secretary suggests Jenrick risked collapse of murder trial with tweet

Judge said shadow justice secretary’s comments during trial of Elias Morgan were ‘ill thought through’

www.theguardian.com

2 1 14

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 2

Perhaps not with those shoes, though

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 2

Not even Kim Jong Un would wear those sunglasses

1 2

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 2

She is the niece of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

1 1

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 2

Compulsive serial offender and a deeply vicious and malicious individual

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 2

This trial exposed the use of aliases, all connected with The View, that I first came across in 2021

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 2

Oh yes. I have no doubt. And will never have anything to do with a CIC unless I know the people behind it or can see its work at first hand

1 2

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 2

Be extremely sceptical of anything from that source or its associated magazine or podcast. I have been vilified by it for exposing her use of it for laundering her reputation and engaging

1 2

Barbara Rich @barbararich.bsky.social · Sep 2

And some more - IPSO complaint against Times article in August 2021 under headline “Fraudster Farah Damji linked to justice campaign” dismissed

www.ipso.co.uk/rulings/0954...

09546-21 Damji v The Times - IPSO

Farah Damji complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that The Times breached Clause 1 (Accuracy), Clause 2 (Privacy), Clause 3 (Harassment) and Clause 12 (Discrimination) of the Edit...