A Spectator's Notebook

It is distressing to see that the organ of the mettlesome right, the Sunday Telegraph, has utterly predictably backed the recommendations of the Criminal Law Revision Committee Which said, inter alia, that the right to silence, enshrined for decades in English justice, should be changed to the advantage of the police and that the traditional caution, drawing the attention of the accused to his rights, should be abandoned. Slowly the intellectual debate is eroding the liberties won over the centuries, and the rough official justice of continental Practice is eating away both at that fundamental right to a presumption of innocence and the doubtless troublesome necessity on the part of the prosecution to prove guilt.

Lawyers' profits

The report of the Phillimore Committee on the 'Law of Contempt of Court is no doubt overdue. And what is also in no doubt is the ability of the legal profession to overcharge with little chance for the layman to appeal against arbitrary legal profits described as 'costs.' Until recently it was commonly believed that costs might be 'taxed,' which usually meant some small but perceptible reduction in the bill. Now lawyers — solicitors especially — are dispensing with this nod towards impartiality by only agreeing to out-of-court settlements on behalf of their clients if they are on a full indemnity basis, which means that they will not agree to recommend a settlement to their clients unless the other party pays whatever outrageous amount they care to set down.

The ability of those of the legal profession to feather their own nests, mainly from public funds, is remarkable, as is also their ability to keep out of the press when it suits them. Colonel John Brooks was the solicitor who Paid girls to let him whip them. Last month he sued the paper that said he was a menace to Young girls and won his case and 1/2p damages. What was more remarkable than the result was the ease with which his _ previous firm, Theodore Goddard & Co., probably the most vvell-knovvn name in the divorce business and Past solicitors to the Royal family, kept their name out of the newspapers.

BBC standards

In the columns of the Times, Bernard Levin has been campaigning, as only Bernard Levin can, against the mispronunciation of the definite article before a consonant, an abuse especially favoured by broadcasters. His complaint is a Particular one but nonetheless important, since it has drawn attention to the rapidly declining level of intelligence and literacy in nearly all radio and television current affairs programs – particularly in news programmes.

There is only one hope, and that is the BBC World Service; it still manages to produce bulletins of such grace, comprehensiveness and elegance that Lord Reith himself would be Proud of them. A transfusion of staff from Bush t.9 Broadcasting House should be high on the list of the BBC's priorities.

Arts and pensions

Mr Hugh Jenkins, speaking shortly before the recent election as titular Minister for the Arts, gave in a speech at Wandsworth School in his constituency what he described as the simple freason why works of art could not be excluded rom the wealth tax. This was that the retreat

from what he described as other forms of investment, including equities, would be headlong. In the debate on the arts on December 13 Mr Andrew Faulds asked Mr Jenkins whether he really _ believed this, pointing out that it "had not occurred in any single country where a wealth tax is already in operation and where works of art are excluded from its scope." No reply was, however, forthcoming from the Minister.

Mr Faulds could have added that when equities are as low as at present few are courageous enough to sell them, and, as Mr Jenkins must have heard, liquidity is a major problem throughout our economy. Pension funds must, however, be one of the very few exceptions, and (lo and behold!) only in the past few days that of British Rail has coyly revealed thatitis flying headlong from equities and plunging

tohrenmotorass of the art market, whether

As Mr Jenkins's implication was that he disapproved of so-called investment in works of art and favoured taxing it, one wonders whether he is protesting to Mr Richard Marsh that BR is driving a coach and horses through his argument, especially as its pension fund will be exempted from the very form of taxation advocated by Mr Jenkins on behalf of the Treasury.

Overruled

Despite this and other notably silly remarks (the most notorious being his belief that the longer the book the more it is worth), Mr Jenkins has made the right decision in refusing the British Museum's request to build the proposed British Library opposite its gates. The Museum staff had, in the naturally blinkered way of bureaucrats and administrators, put their own convenience before that of the community, and it was typical of the philistinism of the last Conservative government that it was prepared to see the historic streets of Bloomsbury razed and forgotten.

Now Mr Jenkins has over-ruled their objections, and decided that the new Library should be built on a derelict site beside the Euston Road. But,

given the likely economic climate of the next few years, we may be permitted to doubt whether the building will ever get on the ground. It

may well be a case of bread coming before books.