Howard's End: Bewigged Titivation

I'm not surprised that judges in our Courts might look for a bit of titivation (no pun intended) in their lives, because the court day is often hot and stuffy, the evidence boring and repetitive, and barristers long-winded and uninspiring. It's remarkable that they even manage to stay awake. Maree Howard writes.

The Prime Minister, shocked by the public disclosure that some judges were accessing internet sites of dubious quality and the Government had not been told about it, is thinking of establishing a judicial commission, presumably, to monitor future behaviour.

OK, do it if you must, but to my mind it's an overkill.

Some judges give the impression that they know little about the law. Others seem to have no judgment. Occasionally, a judge acts injudiciously.

However, they are all drawn from the general community so obviously they will represent the foibles and failures which exist in that community.

As Virginia Woolf wrote in 1938, the volume and tedium of the work of judges and lawyers explains why they "are hardly worth sitting next to at dinner - they yawn so."

So, all judges should be ordered to drink a double espresso at lunch time and court lawyers must be ordered to tell at least three jokes each hour. That should keep everyone on their toes and take some of the boredom from the judge's job.

I reckon this internet access affair is nothing more than a major media beat-up. And there's one thing I've learnt in life above all else - those who take the moral high-ground had better be squeaky clean themselves.

What about the pot-smokers among the journo's and TV talking heads - have they ever grown the stuff in pots on the windowsills of their newsrooms? Have none of them ever accessed the same internet sites?

Sure they have! So what's all this claptrap about the media representing the public morals.

On the one hand, society often criticises the judges for being ensconced in their ivory towers far removed from life's problems and, on the other, we then criticise when they fall into life's patterns of normal human curiosity.

C'mon be honest!

Hands up all those who have never accessed a porn website - even for a millisecond. I know, I have. I once typed in forestry on a search engine and ended up on a sex website. Bloody good it was, too.

Nah! Leave 'em alone and let the judges get on with their lives.

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