Tom Scotney

I haven’t been very good at blogging recently, thanks to a combination of laziness and too much other work to take care of. I’m also finding my twitter stream has been taking care of a lot of the little things I want to let people know about.

But here’s something that’s moved me to write, after nearly six months of frustration. A story I’m trying to pin down that is being held back from publication by - who knows, it wouldn’t be fair of me to speculate.

I’m not trying to big myself up here - this isn’t the Thalidomide scandal or sexing up dodgy dossiers, but this is a tale where innocent people at their most vulnerable point have been messed around. And still the news can’t come out properly, not because of secrecy of anything malign, just because the system doesn’t work very well. It’s almost perverse.

Here’s the nub of it. Two directors of the Birmingham Legal Partnership in Small Heath, were punished by the Law Society. The BLP largely deals with issues in Birmingham’s immigrant community. Things like marriage affairs, immigration and the like. So important things to often vulnerable people, often people who might not for example speak English or have anyone else to rely on in this country.

Mr Noor-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi is a Muslim spiritual leader and vice-principal at the successful Hijaz College in Warwickshire - a top Islamic college in Warwickshire. He was suspended from practice for nine months and ordered to pay a share of the costs for his trial.

His co-director, Ms Gursharanjit Virk, was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay the remainder of the costs. These punishments were given out by the Law Society on October 3 last year.

Now why is there a problem? The thing is, due to this country’s stringent - and punitive - libel laws, one has to be very careful what one says in a story.

Now the first thing you probably thought if you read through the little tale above is: what did these guys actually do? And here’s the answer: I know but I’m not going to tell you.

I know exactly what they did, through journalistic methods that I’m not going to go into here. And it’s a matter of public record that they were punished for something.

But unfortunately, the Law Society has still not published its findings from the case – yes the one that finished more than five months ago. And so while I can legally say that these people were punished, I can’t officially say why or what for. Making it useless as a proper news story.

Now they say the wheels of justice grind slow, but this is ridiculous. A very helpful man who deals with information released from the Law Society agrees, but can’t do anything. meanwhile, the BLP continues to operate, Ms Virk continues to work there and Mr Siddiqi gets closer to the end of his practice ban without anyone in the general public being any the wiser about what happened.

The Law Society is an ass. (allegedly, joking, i didn’t mean it, please don’t sue me….)

Hurry up and publish!