Did he do anything wrong? And have I?

My attention’s been drawn to this news report: Steve Molyneux, an experienced magistrate of good standing, has resigned from the bench after being seen to post updates to Twitter about cases he was involved in. Why has it caught my attention? Well, because I’m a magistrate, and I use Twitter, and I have posted occasional updates about court business. So I though I ought to look a bit further and see what’s happened.

Here’s the brief summary from BBC news: BBC LINK.
And here’s a bit more detail from the local press in his area: SHROPSHIRE STAR LINK.

My initial thoughts are these: From what I can see, he’s posted nothing that wasn’t already in the public domain. (The Shropshire Star link has details of the actual updates he posted.) And his reason for resigning is not because he posted updates, as he maintains that he’s done nothing wrong. He’d already met with the chair of his bench and agreed to not post any more, but when he realised it was being taken further (he was asked to meet with the local advisory committee) he tended his resignation. But he points out that he resigned because after being “shopped” by a fellow magistrate anonymously he feels he can’t continue knowing that he could be having to work with that individual.  At least, that’s the impression I’ve picked up as I’ve read the reports. I don’t see that he’s done anything wrong; anything that happens in open court is a matter of public record anyway, and he doesn’t appear to have said anything about confidential retiring room discussions or mentioned anything beyond what would have appeared in press reports about the cases in question. My own updates have been even more vague, as I’ve not said anything at all about individual cases. I’ve occasionally posted updates like “Day in court today; I wonder what type of business I’ll have to deal with” or “Broken for lunch, but have long report to read while we eat”, but certainly nothing that could be considered as breaking a confidence or discussing an individual case. 

Even so: how do I respond? Do I decide that, until we’ve had any official guidance, I should never say anything about court online? To be on the safe side, I guess so. I expect I could have a long wait for any official guidance, though.

As I read more about the matter I may revise my views, of course! 

Other links:
Steve Molyneux’s Twitterstream (You don’t need to be a twitter user to see this.)
My Twitterstream (in case I ever say anything about court business again).

Added later: found a couple more interesting links…
A podcast with Steven Molyneux talking about the matter: here. 
An American lawyer writing from a slightly different perspective: here.

Clearing out the CD shelf

For a few years, whenever I downloaded an album – initially from iTunes, then from AllOfMP3 and latterly MP3Sparks – I burned a copy on to CD and even went as far as printing up covers. Call it obsessive, if you like, but I loved the look of a shelf full of CDs and I didn’t want the fact that I was now obtaining most of my music digitally stop the collection from growing. And if we had guests it was easy to ask them to choose some music to put on, because they could just look and see what I had.

 But recently I’ve made a discovery: I should have bought better quality blank CDs. I got home from work and my wife was playing some music and it sounded awful. Crackly like an out-of-tune radio. One of my carefully burned CDs. I tried a couple of others out. The same. They’ve simply worn out with age.

And so I decided it was time to have a sort out, and yesterday I went through the whole collection and weeded out every CD that I’d burned at home. Here they are laid out on the sitting room floor: 

The home burned CDs now being cast out.

The question is: will I miss them? Well, no of course not. Every track on these CDs, along with every other track I own, is on our iMac, on my iPod, and backed up on an external drive. And the chances are the vast majority of it is available on Spotify in any case. So getting rid of the CD copies is hardly going to matter. It’s just another sign of times changing, I guess.

Look out for 70 empty CD cases appearing on a Freecycle list nearby soon!