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Please support the London Legal Walk 2012 today!
Today is the big London Legal Walk 2012!
I will be there at the beginning of the walk, doing live tweeting from about 2.30 pm onwards at the Royal Courts of Justice. I hope then to make it somehow to Chancery Lane to witness the finish.
I am looking forward to participating indirectly today. Doing the walk would be physically impossible for me as I am disabled following meningitis in 2007; however I am passionate about legal aid, having volunteered pro bono in a law centre in London, and I am most concerned about legal aid for welfare benefits falling outside of scope. Sadly it is now clear the system for allocating welfare benefits is poor according to my disabled friends. I am deeply concerned that such disabled citizens are having their benefits discontinued with inadequate explanation, and now without any access to legal aid. This is not a society the UK can be proud of.
The London Legal Support Trust are a wonderful group of people. Their description is as follows:
[It] was established in 2004 as an independent charity to raise funds for free legal advice services in London and the South East.
As part of a network of Legal Support Trusts working with the Access to Justice Foundation we support the provision of specialist legal advice through law centres, advice agencies and citizens advice bureaux by providing them with grant funding alongside other forms of support. We raise funds from fundraising events, including the London Legal Walk. We also receive ad hoc donations from law firms and chambers.
In addition to funding we offer our knowledge, contacts and experience of the sector to help agencies become more sustainable and, working with LawWorks and the Bar Pro Bono Unit, we help to partner agencies with law firms and chambers who want to help them to ensure that the law is fair.
Whilst I will be personally fundraising on an ad hoc basis today, and taking lots of photos, I hope that you can officially support by giving money through these pages.
I am very happy to support the BPP team, which is here, their team consisting of: Carl Lygo, Laura Gerrard, Laura Rowland, Saira Iqbal, Christian Metcalfe, Doltice Grey, James Kilby, Jo-Ann Fisher, Jessica Austen, Yllka Hyseni, Andrew Okola, Eva Dvorakova, Victoria Speed, Veme Patel, Mitali Parekh, Swetang Joshi, Olga Tabenko, Sophie Earnshaw, Ayesha Begg, Naomi Clarke, Alice Kim, Sunjay Thakoor, Amy Fenton, Eric Migliaccio, Shezan Hafeez, Shameerah Peerkhan, Danielle Sugarman, Beth Brookner, Mandeep Bassi, Georgina Sharpley, Aashna Musa, Simon Paul, Bhouneswarsingh Askurn, Anna Corrigan, Hannah Fogg, Adam Curphey, Eleanor Brody, Vanessa Acquag, James Adeleke, Ian, Sashan Thompson-Hamilton, Idanesi Immanuel, Sam Lane, Vanina S. Black, Zeynep Turkoglu, Rob Tolomanoski, Tala Teymoori, Nicole Nash, Faiza Hassan, Emmi Hussain, Negin Zakarova ‘Rizzo’, Ranarii Ahmed, Azfar Ahmed, Sara A-sa, Penelope Green, Alice Pettit, Vic Surdhur, Mishal Dattani, Sarah Dabiri, Arlinda Krasniqi, Thomas Edward Christopher Holt, Casselle Roberts, Sameeha Visram, Diana Kirsch, Shaila Pal, and Junior Stewart.
Their mission statement reads as follows:
We are walking with the Lord Chief Justice and thousands of lawyers to raise funds for the London Legal Support Trust which funds Law Centres and pro bono agencies in and around London.
We know that these agencies do a fantastic job in preventing homelessness, resolving debt problems, gaining care for the elderly and disabled and fighting exploitation.
We also know how short they are of the funds to continue that work.
I am also very happy to support the Justice Gap team, which is here, their team consisting of:- Jon Robins, Kim Evans, Amanda Bancroft (organsising, not walking), John Cooper QC, Felicity Gerry, Alice Christian, Joanna Goodman, Kristin Heimark, Louise Restell, Julian Norman, Giles Peaker, Rachel MacLeod, Jon Harman, Richard Buchanan, Rosemary Sheppard, Jeremy Hopkins, Cassie Williams, Merry Neal, Gaia Marcus, Paul Bernal, John Austin, Rachel Austin, Jules Carey, Stef, Rob Richmond, Neil Rose, Sehb Hundal, Priyanka Horeesorun, and Raman Kang.
Their mission statement reads as follows:
We are walking with the Lord Chief Justice and thousands of lawyers to raise funds for the London Legal Support Trust which funds Law Centres and pro bono agencies in and around London.
We know that these agencies do a fantastic job in preventing homelessness, resolving debt problems, gaining care for the elderly and disabled and fighting exploitation and discrimination.
We also know how short they are of the funds to continue that work.
Please donate as generously as you are able. Many thanks for your support
This was the good news 5 hours ago!
Fair access to education, promoted by Prof Les Ebdon, is important for law students
Prof Les Ebdon CBE DL is to become Director of Fair Access to higher education.
It has been remarked that Ebdon, throughout his 44 years in higher education, and in particular his period as a vice chancellor, has developed an impressive record in improving access among lower socio-economic groups, from neighbourhoods with low rates of participation, and from black and minority ethnic groups.
Prof Ebdon is currently the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire. He attended Hemel Hempstead Grammar School (became The Hemel Hempstead School in 1970). Ebdon obtained both his BSc in Chemistry in 1968 and PhD in 1971 at Imperial College London. Ebdon was appointed Vice Chancellor and Chief Executive of the University of Luton in 2003, replacing Dai John. With the merger of the University and De Montfort’s Bedford campus in 2006 he became the Vice Chancellor of the new University of Bedfordshire. In August 2009 Ebdon, via the think tank “Million Plus”, made the controversial suggestion that students from less wealthy families be allowed entrance to universities based on lower grades.
BPP University College offers a unique opportunity for widening access to higher education. Like the new University of Luton and Bedfordshire, students want a high-quality professional education, and I am proud to be a student at a place which encourages excellence which is recognised by a plethora of employers. Recently, the Guardian newspaper observed the following.
With shrewd timing, as Scottish universities prepare to charge £9,000 a year to non-Scottish UK students from 2012, BPP University College – the UK’s only for-profit private provider with degree awarding powers – has announced it will set fees at £5,000 a year for its three-year programmes, and £6,000 a year for two-year programmes.
The announcement wasn’t only significant for the contrast with the Scottish universities, but more pertinently because it has deliberately moved to undercut all English universities with the exception of the Open University, which has set its fees at £5,000 for 120 credits (equivalent to a full year of study in a traditional university).
So with BPP aggressively positioning itself to undercut mainstream provision, and with a confident pitch of career-focused courses to deliver on the employability agenda, the foundations are surely set for an aggressive growth strategy to start snapping up increasing numbers of undergraduate students.
Whatever the official statement of BPP is regarding this appointment, which I have nothing to do with, my fellow students at BPP work very hard, and many of us will support the idea of people succeeding irrespective of whether or not they have gone to a ‘prestige’ university at some time in their life. That Les Ebdon has a proven track record in this impresses me. I am also mindful of fair access to education is vital in the wider context of fair access to the legal profession, which many of us have a vested interest in.
The quotation is from an article which first appeared in the Guardian here written by Aaron Porter on 8 September 2010, entitled “First or fail: BPP University College and Edinburgh University fees”. Shibley, the author, is the President of the BPP Legal Awareness Society, a Society run by BPP students for BPP students, to promote the importance of law and regulation to corporate strategy.
