British bureaucracy

Today's news that we're setting up a Supreme Court fills me with gloom. The 12 Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, 11 of whom are coming from the House of Lords, will be working there from 1 October. The House of Lords has been operating as a court since 1399 and separated its judicial and legislative powers in 1876. To say that the physical moving of the judiciary function away from the legislative function is "a nice symbol of modernity" (to quote Murray Rosen of Herbert Smith) is trite, in my opiinon. Ronnie Fox, an employment lawyer at Fox Lawyers sums up my view succinctly: "Calling the Law Lords the Supreme Court is like using the phrase 'quantitative easing' instead of 'printing money'."