Hay festival

Judge not Sir: The claim by Ross Clark (‘Keir’s law’, 22 June) that the left can achieve what it wants by relying, in part, on ‘judicial activism’ is uninformed and misleading. I can assure Mr Clark and those who might share his sentiments that the courts are, in general, at pains to respect the separation of powers and the will of parliament. A cursory consideration of recent decisions from the Supreme Court would have revealed this. For example, in a judgment handed down in April, Lord Sales (delivering the unanimous judgment of that court) reaffirmed the already well-established principle that ‘in the field of social welfare policy, courts should normally be

I blame Thierry Henry and I never blame Thierry for anything. He’s funny, charming and was a majestic footballer. But it was his outrageous handball assist for a France goal against the Republic of Ireland in 2009 that ushered in VAR – Video Assistant Referee – technology to rescue on-field refs from ‘clear and obvious’ errors. VAR was meant to end debates over refereeing decisions. Yet this form of VAR, usually a man in a ref’s outfit sitting behind a bank of screens in an industrial unit near Heathrow, has caused carnage in the Premier League. Some decisions take five minutes while fans chant obscenities. Football’s many Luddites blame the

One victim of police brutality is police decency. Our son has a tutor, J., who works with autistic kids in our corner of West Cork. After lockdown began, she was no longer able to work with her students, one of whom had a birthday coming up in March. The boy lives in Bandon, 15 miles away, so J. phoned our local garda station to ask for permission to drive beyond the lockdown radius to deliver a small gift and card. The garda on duty gave her a polite no, as birthdays weren’t on the list of exemptions. Fair enough. Twenty minutes later, the sergeant called J. back. He had to