Lessons from a Private Prosecution 2(b) The Evidence Required

This is possibly the hardest section to write because it could so easily descend into a re-trial of the case or a moan about the result.  That is not the intention.  It may however be helpful to indicate what evidence I had.  It is central to the considerations as to whether I could or should have acted differently.  Some have suggested I never really stood a chance and I will in a future post consider whether that should have been obvious and affected the charges.


The evidence has to be strong, very strong and then if you can stronger still.
I think in hindsight my evidence was simply strong.
My own perception at the time (unaided by the film which I only saw subsequently) was that the car was going very fast and was very close.  Sufficiently so to report it at once to a fortuitously present Surrey police officer.
Obviously I needed corroboration from the film.  In hindsight the camera is too wide angle because first impressions are hard to shift even with logical analysis.
Thirdly I had my Garmin data which gave a very accurate reading of my speed and against which a comparison of the car's speed could be made.  Strava link , this and all the underlying data was disclosed.
I had solid identification evidence from the Surrey PC, though the Defendant persistently refused to accept his evidence.
Subsequently I got expert evidence but that will be the subject of a future post.  I have mentioned it below in [ ] to put the factual evidence in context.  In the interests of costs I did not get the expert evidence until it became inevitable that a trial was needed.
I was and remain of the view that the prosecution should be strong on the factual evidence.  The expert evidence was the icing on the cake obtained after the case had passed the tests set both by the CPS and the Judge.

What's required for a charge to reach a jury?
Historically charges would be left to a jury where there was a case to answer i.e. a reasonable jury could convict on the prosecution evidence.  This is still the test applied by a Judge who must stop the case if this threshold is not met.
After the creation of the CPS in about 1986 the test applied by them was two-fold, an evidential and public interest test.  The CPS evidential test requires "that an objective, impartial and reasonable jury, properly directed and acting in accordance with the law, is more likely than not to convict the defendant of the charge".   Note this is a significantly more restrictive test than that applied by a Judge in considering whether to dismiss a charge.
For a time private prosecutions that satisfied the case to answer test could proceed to a jury even if the CPS evidential test was not met.  However this all changed with the landmark and somewhat controversial decision of the Supreme Court in Gujra v DPP in 2012 when the Court endorsed new CPS guidelines which meant that they would take over and discontinue any private prosecution that did not pass their more restrictive test.
So there is no point starting a case where your evidence is not such that an objective impartial and reasonable jury is not more likely to convict than to acquit.  The test does not, however, require you to anticipate any lack of objectively or impartiality that may be encountered.


Anything missing?
All the prosecution evidence has to be disclosed in advance before the Defendant commits himself to any account of himself.  In a public prosecution it is part of the police job to interview a suspect under caution.  He will usually give an account and this may very well be demonstrably false but, even if not, will probably rather limit what alternative accounts he can give at trial.  Even if he says nothing in interview then comments can be made about a failure to mention something later relied upon in his defence.  Of course if the police have not interviewed the private prosecutor is in a significantly weaker position.  (There had been some limited correspondence between Mr Kayardi and the Metropolitan Police but neither side was willing to reveal this to me).  Mr Kayardi said in his evidence that the police had told him "Don’t worry about it, there’s nothing there".  Strictly the opinion of the police on the matter is not admissible evidence at all but it was relied upon very heavily by the Defendant to an extent I had not foreseen.  I have noticed shades of this in other cases where the police decided against prosecution even if a public prosecution nevertheless took place thereafter.
There is a requirement now for a Defendant to file a 'Defence Statement' but in my prosecution this said absolutely nothing that 'Not Guilty' did not already say.
Furthermore nobody seems to worry too much about a Defendant not putting his case to prosecution witnesses who might be in a position to contradict what the Defendant proposes to say.
Thus having carefully ascertained (as he was entitled to do) that I had no further evidence (or film evidence in particular) the Defendant gave in his evidence an account that having spoken to the police I filtered through some cars to 'cut him up'.  He also gave an account that he was being tailgated by a queue of traffic behind and that one driver was impatiently hooting so that he felt he had to pass me for my own protection.
He then added, again for the first time, that he had straddled the centre line with half his car either side.  his car presumably jumped half a car width sideway before the first frame where his headlamps come into view.
None of that mentioned before or put to me or the PC or put to the expert.
So the lesson is if you stop the camera at one point, it is quite likely to be alleged that you were doing something wrong immediately thereafter.  Alternatively if you only have a forward looking camera it is likely to be alleged that something significant was happening behind.  You as a prosecutor/witness will not get any opportunity at any stage to comment or have your witness or expert comment upon what is said.
Accordingly I now commute with a rear facing as well as forward facing camera and if reporting an offender again will keep a back up copy of a much longer stretch of my ride.  You can expect any gaps to be exploited.

The film
Taken with a Contour HD camera fixed to my handlebars.  My own analysis of this film by reference to the centre lines and to my own speed (19mph) was that the car was travelling 3 x my distance in any given number of frames (thus 57mph).  [A careful analysis in due course by an expert making every assumption in the Defendant's favour (as he should) was 51- 57 mph.]
I knew he had passed within a metre or I would not have regarded it at the time as so out of the ordinary.  However the film does not on casual inspection demonstrate how close and I initially reported to the police within a metre as the best I could do.  [Again careful analysis by the expert concluded 60 - 80 cm clearance excluding the car's mirror.  Given the consequences of being whacked by a wing mirror at 50-something miles an hour it seems reasonable to say the clearance was approximately 0.5m.].

Here it is.  Please respect my copyright, though I have no problem with links back to this site.

(c) Martin Porter

The next post will look at reporting the incident.



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Lessons from a Private Prosecution (2) (a) Why this type of incident?

I dislike dangerous overtakes and I dislike the Metropolitan Police's indifference to dangerous overtakes.  An overtake is, or should be, a planned manoeuvre and passing a cyclist too fast and close is done deliberately.  Whether it is done deliberately to intimidate or just because a driver is callously indifferent to a cyclist's safety seems to me to be secondary.  Discussing this topic with a Met Police Sergeant on the Cycle Task Force back in 2010 I was told these were 'too subjective' to take action.

That though is very hard to accept.  Back in 2012 the Surrey Police charged this HGV driver with dangerous driving and the CPS then accepted a plea to careless driving (a decision keeping the case away from a jury and with which I have greater sympathy now that I did at the time).

Contrast the Metropolitan Police who declined to take any action in respect of this HGV:

I believe close passes to be particularly unnerving both for an experienced cyclist (though we have no option but to get used to them) and for the very many people who would cycle if their perception was not that it was too dangerous.

So why a close pass and not a case where I have actually been injured?  I have exchanged details with drivers on 4 occasions as a consequence of damage to myself or my bike.  Each involved momentary inattention at junctions rather than deliberate bad driving.  The two drivers inside the Met Police area suffered no consequences and the two outside (one Surrey, one Thames Valley) were both sent on courses.  I think the driving in all 4 cases could fairly be categorised as careless driving and none, in my view, justified a private prosecution.

Far more serious was the close overtake gone wrong during a club run just months before my February 2015 incident.  An elderly driver collided with the front offside rider in my group and 4 riders went down with the driver failing to stop.  He was dealt with, albeit rather leniently, by Thames Valley Police and we were told lost his licence permanently on medical grounds.  It is a reminder if any is needed that close overtakes do not all end happily.

Further relevant background is that I had just failed to make any headway at all in relation to the disgraceful decision of the Metropolitan Police not to refer the case of Michael Mason to the CPS.  Mr Mason had sustained fatal injuries when run down from behind on Regent Street and I was instructed on behalf of the family to invite the Met to reconsider.  I got nowhere beyond a confused and then retracted announcement that they would consult the CPS..

Perhaps for practical reasons a prosecution actually involving injury might have been more promising in terms of likelihood of conviction than a 'near miss'.  However I did wish to try to make the point that dangerous driving that did not result in a collision should not be ignored.  Quite fortuitously I got the driver's address, something that is not likely to happen again in any near miss case.

This was not of course the first piece of dangerous driving I have encountered but nor was the driver (as he claimed at his trial) a 'scapegoat'.  It goes without saying that had he not endangered me I would not have prosecuted him.  The fact that similar overtakes are fairly common-place makes it more important that they are tackled.  Progress is being made with the Transport Select Committee just reporting that:

I have no regrets over prosecuting a case which (to my mind) involved a classic near miss from a close pass at manifestly excessive speed.  In the right circumstances I would encourage another attempt.

The next post on this subject will look at my factual evidence, how strong it was and how it might have been stronger.

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Donald Trump Is The GOP, The GOP Is Donald Trump

It gets exhausting writing about Donald J. Trump. Almost as exhausting as watching “the shows” spout conventional wisdom about why he is doing well and what the Republican party plans on doing to stop him. Were he what the inside the Beltway crowd has convinced themselves he is - some sort of sui generis mash up of Huey Long, George Wallace, and Benito Mussolini, it would be easy to dismiss his popularity as a one-off. A perfect storm of personality and moment, that point at which the dying gasp of (mostly) disaffected white voters railed against a system and party it thinks has abandoned it to free trade and multiculturalism while showing its belly to the world by refusing to lead the fight against capital R, capital I, capital T radical Islamic terrorism.

But such analysis is simply too facile (and false). That thesis ignores Trump’s across-the-board (not to mention geographical) success. While it is true that Trump cleaned up in the deep South, and particularly in areas with fewer college graduates, he also prevailed in places like Illinois, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Connecticut - all of which have heterogenous electorates where Trump garnered the votes of CEOs and their workers alike. Indeed, were Trump anyone other than Trump, a candidate whose victories spanned such a diverse segment of age, income, and geography, the chattering class would have deemed this race over long ago.

But the Republicans’ attempt to separate themselves from Trump has been equally foolhardy. House Speaker Paul Ryan gave a speech this week bemoaning the tenor of the political debate in this country, but Ryan’s apologia missed the forest for the trees. The Republicans do not have a messaging problem but rather, a message problem. When you support restricting voting rights, deporting millions of undocumented immigrants, shutting down abortion clinics, and show antipathy toward gays and lesbians, it should be no surprise that your party struggles to elect a President in a national election. Yet, because Republicans have successfully gerrymandered House districts to a point where their incumbents are more threatened in primaries than general elections and have scooped up Governor’s mansions and state legislatures, they have shown little interest in considering why their Presidential results are so poor. 

The Republican “fever” Obama hopefully claimed would break in 2012 has instead deepened. It is not just Trump’s rise, but in the Senate’s refusal to take up his nominee to the Supreme Court, the almost instantaneous condemnations that flow from the mouths of Republicans in the wake of things like terrorist attacks in other countries and the boilerplate rhetoric of almost every Republican nominee for President not named Trump questioning everything from Obama’s loyalty to the country to whether he is subverting the Constitution that is indicative of mainstream  Republican thought - Trump is simply refracting that ugliness back in a coarser, purer way.  

Even as Trump marches inexorably toward the nomination, plans are afoot to insulate down ballot candidates from what party elders fear will be Trump’s landslide defeat in November. Endangered incumbents like Mark Kirk and Kelly Ayotte are already making the pivot to try and show they are bipartisan in an effort to appeal to voters who might otherwise punish them for their obstruction of President Obama. And such a strategy may work. Republicans are far more invested in framing Trump as an invader out of step with its party’s orthodoxy than in seeing him as a representation of it. 

Instead of addressing the cancer inside its own party, Republicans can rely on an incurious media that missed Trump’s appeal entirely and has written his political obituary over and over again to no avail. This should not be surprising. For years, the media poo-pooed the unprecedented tactics deployed by Congressional Republicans; instead using their all too comfortable “both sides do it” frame even as Obama was demeaned in the basest ways, insulted before a joint session of Congress, and his very legitimacy as a U.S. citizen called into question. That off-year elections, which skewed older and white, swelled Republican ranks in both houses of Congress did not hurt either. This toxic brew created the virus that now infects the GOP, but the thing about pathogens is they cannot thrive without a host body. In the Republican Party, Trump found a fertile breeding ground. 

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Cameron's Cycling Revolution - Why I am not waiting for it and why I am getting fed up

The Times campaign spearheaded by Kaya Burgess to make our Cities Fit for Cycling thankfully goes on and pulls the Government up for failing to invest more than a tiny proportion of the money required to turn cycling from a niche to a mass-participation activity.

We are currently in a vicious spiral of hopelessness.  A significant proportion of the general population believes that only the brave, the foolhardy and the weird cycle and that nothing should be done to encourage the activity.  Has-been celebrities come out of retirement to rail against the Mayor of London's vision for cycling and specifically his segregated cycle lanes (the first to be built anywhere in this country in modern times that are of sufficient quality to be worthwhile).  

Even worse, though, than this active hostility is the casual acceptance of cycling as appropriate only for the brave few.  The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, ultimately responsible for law enforcement on London's roads simply states as an acceptable fact that cycling in London is too dangerous for him (and by implication for anyone else with any sense of self-preservation).  My fellow school governors meet all efforts to increase cycling and walking to school with protestations of how dangerous (certainly the cycling) is and whether we should require pupils not in cars to wear fluorescent vests, armbands or backpacks.  My local authority councillors would rather encourage sponsorship whereby high-viz is given to children than reconsider the 40 mph limits on narrow roads where many walk (and a hardy few cycle) to school and where one pedestrian child was run down trying to cross the road this winter.

All this chimes with the tabloids (deriving some support from otherwise distinguished criminal lawyers) questioning the expenditure of maybe five to ten thousand pounds (greatly increased by Defence tactics) of public money on the reasonable and necessary costs of bringing a driver to Court in circumstances where there was really quite incontrovertible expert evidence that he passed a cyclist (happened to be me but could have been anyone) with 60-80 cms clearance (excluding wing mirrors) at 51 to 57 mph in a 30mph narrow suburban road.  What type of person is going to be willing to cycle in those conditions?  Whilst widespread casual indifference to this kind of behaviour persists, cycling will remain for the hardy few (perhaps with a few more who are fortunate enough to have their whole journey on a CSH).

This casual assumption that cycling is dangerous extends to totally misdirected law enforcement.  The Times (this time behind a pay wall) reported earlier this year the greatly increased law enforcement directed at cyclists  with the police presumably assuming that it is cyclists that are the problem.  Every piece of independent research that has gone into this indicates that they are not.  Even red-light jumping by cyclists is not in any objective sense dangerous as I tried to explain in this article  I would not mind this enforcement of the law against the essentially harmless if there were resources to spare after dealing effectively with the very harmful.  However there clearly are not.

Finally thank heaven for the irreplaceable Chris Boardman who understands that cycling must be opened up for everybody and the only way to do it is to spend public money.  Not many professional cyclists have his inclusive sense of vision.

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Lessons from a Private Prosecution (1) The Criminal Justice System

I have learnt much from my private prosecution of a motorist whom I accused of dangerous driving but who was acquitted of that charge by a jury at Isleworth Crown Court on 9th March.  I will endeavor to share what I have learnt in case it is of benefit to others.

I could write a book on it but nobody would read it.  To avoid a very long blog I intend to cover aspects of the case in a series of posts.  I start with some general reflections on the criminal justice system.

The first priority of the English criminal justice process is to safeguard the rights of the accused.  This has to be correct.  It has long been said that the conviction of an innocent is many orders of magnitude worse than the acquittal of the guilty and the burden and standard of proof required of a prosecutor is commensurately very high.  It follows that a prosecutor cannot complain of unfairness.  The prosecution must reveal everything at an early stage.  A Defendant may hold his cards very close to his chest and may choose what he wishes to reveal and when.  The prosecution must prove a case so that the trier of fact is sure of guilt.  A Defendant need prove nothing.

It follows of course that an acquittal proves nothing.  An acquitted Defendant has not been 'proved innocent' and nor has a prosecutor who does not secure a conviction been proved wrong.

I am used to civil proceedings (claims for damages) where it is a stated and important objective that the parties are on an equal footing and the tribunal will determine disputed questions of fact on the balance of probabilities.  It is all very different in the criminal courts and we do not punish people because they are probably guilty.

As an adherent to the rule of law I have already indicated that I respect the jury verdict.  Nothing I say in this series of posts should be taken to detract from that.  Obviously, though, I cannot be expected to agree with it.  I remain fortunate that I was not injured.  Many many worse things could have happened to me (and indeed have happened to me) than failing to secure a conviction in this case and my disappointment is not of course remotely comparable to the angst experienced by those who have sustained serious injury or the death of loved ones as a consequence of criminally bad driving.

I therefore have no regrets.  I will consider whether there is anything I might have done differently in following posts.  However my general viewpoint is that there was sufficient evidence to place before a jury and that the public interest demands that something be done about the minority of drivers who terrorise cyclists or would be cyclists off the road.  It would have been far preferable had the Metropolitan Police chosen to take the issue more seriously but, as with all cases of this sort, they did not.  The amount of reliance placed by the Defence on the (strictly speaking inadmissible) police view is something I had not adequately anticipated.  Juries do not give reasons but I agree with other observers at the trial that this was likely to have been a major factor.

I continue to believe that there is a strong case for private prosecutions certainly where the police fail to act.  Failure of action by the CPS is less of an issue since there is an effective right of review which should be used in preference to a private prosecution.  It would make a lot of sense for victims to have an effective right of review by a CPS lawyer of a police decision to take no action but unhappily this is not something that is in place.  I do not mind attracting opprobrium in the columns of tabloid newspapers.  On the contrary even a 'failed' prosecution may have some deterrent effect.  Nobody, however convinced of their own innocence, would wish to be dragged through a 3 day Crown Court trial and driving in such a way that you cannot reasonably be accused of dangerous driving is a good way to avoid this.  One tabloid has speculated about the risk of other cyclists following my example and I hope in suitable cases that they will.  Obviously I would have preferred the greater deterrent effect of a conviction but that does not mean that the process was not worthwhile.

In subsequent posts I plan to consider:
2.  The factual evidence.  What is required?  What type of incident?
3. Was I the right complainant?
4.  Reporting to the police.
5. The difficulties presented by the requirement of a Notice of Intended Prosecution.
6. Starting a prosecution by laying an information before magistrates and deciding with what offences to charge.
7. Initial hearings prior to committal.
8. Committal for trial.
9. Bad character evidence.
10. Dealing with the safeguards that prevent unsuitable prosecutions reaching trial.
11. Expert evidence.
12. Trial.
13. Why I believe it is reasonable even in times of austerity for the state to contribute towards the costs of an unsuccessful but properly brought prosecution.

If I have missed anything out that anyone considers I might cover in addition let me know.

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Coat of many colours

The photo at left is reasonably accurate in depicting the crazy colours in The Sewing Lawyer's recently completed jacket, and she likes all of them!

The jacket doesn't go with everything in my closet, but there are quite a lot of choices.

To the right, here it is with my new grey pants and a teal sweater (which is however hiding from view under the buttoned jacket).

Aubergine top

Or how do you like it with an aubergine wool top (Jalie 2682) and the same pants?
















Or we could go with a dress. My new grey one, from BurdaStyle (August, 2012), is a natural.

Grey dress

Or a black dress (BurdaStyle, February, 2012).  I even tried it with a bright turquoise dress (Burda, February 2012).

Turquoise dress

Black dress

I do like what the crazy stripes do in the back.


It occurs to me that there is a hole in my wardrobe that could be plugged with a new pair of dark navy pants. You may not be surprised to learn that there is a pant length of such fabric in The Sewing Lawyer's stash. And something in a nice cherry red... So many possibilities, so little time!

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Bernie's Last Gasp

With a five-for-five night on Super Tuesday II, Hillary Clinton attained a practically insurmountable delegate lead against Bernie Sanders. While the Clinton team is itching to start aiming its fire on Donald Trump, the erstwhile Vermont Senator is showing no sign of going quietly into the gentle night. 

I am here to say it is time for Sanders to quit the race. It is not just the nearly 2:1 delegate lead Clinton has amassed, the 2.5 million more votes she has received than him, or the near mathematical impossibility of him catching her, it is also for the good of the party that all Democrats, like minded Independents and concerned Republicans begin the task of forming the coalition that will keep the White House in Democratic hands for another four years. 

But, says the Sanders team, what about 2008? Hillary contested every single primary before bowing out. True, so far as it goes, but this is not 2008 for several reasons:

• Obama and Clinton were neck-and-neck in the popular vote throughout and practically so in the delegate race. Clinton is millions of votes ahead of Sanders and whether you want to use “pledged” delegates as the benchmark or “pledged delegates plus super delegates,” her lead is far more than Obama’s was against her at any point along the way;
• The Democrats had a tail wind in 2008 because George W. Bush was incredibly unpopular. Even before the Wall Street collapse in September, Bush’s favorability had taken massive hits because of Hurricane Katrina, the endless fighting in Iraq, and the slowing economy. Republicans were also seeking to hold the White House for a third consecutive term, something not often done.
• Speaking of that third term, Obama is still incredibly popular with the Democratic Party and has a roughly 50% approval rating overall. While this accrues to the nominee to succeed him, the best way to lock in that support is to hew to policies that build on those already achieved, not calling for a political revolution that people are not clamoring for.

Sanders has achieved an enormous amount and the passion of his supporters cannot be questioned; however, his continued presence saps precious resources that will be needed in the fight against Trump for no particularly good reason. The idea that he will be competitive in places like New York (where Clinton served as Senator for eight years, won two landslide victories and the 2008 primary against Obama) or California (which she also won in 2008) or Pennsylvania (ditto, along with its long history of support for President Clinton) is simply not credible.

The Democrats have a unique opportunity not just to buck the no-party-gets-a-third-term trend, but to win back the Senate and eat into the Republican majority in the House. With Hillary atop the ticket competing against Trump, predictions for House races are already shifting toward “toss up” or “lean Democrat” that had previously been safe and the Senate map, which was already favorable for Democrats, will become more so. A President Clinton coming into office in 2017 with a Senate majority and a Republican House with a 10-12 seat majority may actually be able to get things done.

Conversely, Sanders backers must acknowledge the reality that the “revolution” he claims to be leading has simply not come to pass. He lags with many of the constituencies that make up the Democratic coalition and has lost badly in places like Florida, Ohio, and Virginia that will be critical in November. Down ballot Democrats may run from his support and otherwise vulnerable Republicans may survive. While he should be lauded for his narrow win in Michigan, other state victories in places like Maine and Nebraska were with vote totals that were far less than what Clinton received in a single city like Chicago or Miami. 

Moreover, a Sanders nomination would embolden Republicans to dump Trump and rally the party to a consensus nominee like Paul Ryan because Sanders would be an incredibly weak general election nominee. Polls may show him to be competitive right now, but hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent turning him into the second coming of Karl Marx. Say what you will about Hillary, she is a known commodity and someone who has survived decades of Republican barbs.

Lastly, while it is entirely possible that mainstream Republicans like Colin Powell (who endorsed Obama twice), Bob Dole, or George H.W. Bush might endorse Hillary over Trump, giving tacit permission to Republicans to vote their conscience for fear of turning over the country to him, it is impossible to imagine them doing the same for an avowed democratic socialist. Her ability to attract Republicans who view her as an acceptable alternative to Trump is simply not true of Sanders.

Were Sanders an actual member of the Democratic party and had he spent the last 25 or 30 years of his career doing the rubber chicken circuit helping to elect down ballot Democrats and sitting in state meetings building friendships and alliances with key leaders at the local level, he would understand the concept of “for the good of the party.” Hillary understands this because she has been campaigning for Democrats since George McGovern in 1972. In 2008, she not only put Obama’s name in nomination at the Democratic National Convention, she campaigned vigorously for him, went on to serve as his Secretary of State, and her husband gave a re-nominating speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention so comprehensive in its defense of Obama’s record that Obama himself said he was going to appoint Bill Clinton Secretary of Explaining Stuff. 

I hold out far less hope that Sanders will give a full throated endorsement of Clinton or campaign for her or encourage his supporters to donate to her campaign. He has been a one-man band for decades and holds no allegiance to the Democratic Party; if he did, he would know it is time to quit.

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State of the Race - Super Tuesday II

Now that Super Tuesday II is over and both parties have just about settled on their nominees, let’s take a quick look back at some lessons learned about what has undoubtedly been the strangest election cycle in a long time:

The Hostile Takeover of the Republican Party Was Not Hard or Expensive. Donald Trump has stampeded his way to the GOP nomination largely on TV appearances and a Twitter feed. He has spent less than $25 million, did not even start advertising until January, and eschewed the conventional retail campaign tactics in Iowa and New Hampshire that are supposedly essential to winning those states (he finished a close second in the former and won the latter in a walk). Meanwhile, his opponents raised (and spent) close to $200 million to little effect. In Florida, they threw more than $20 million in negative ads at him and he still won by 18 points. Trump barely broke a sweat while outlasting current and former Governors and Senators that made up the biggest (though not the “deepest”) field of Republicans in history. For as odious as his politics are, his achievement may be the most impressive feat in recent political history.

Horse Race Reporting Has Completely Taken Over Presidential Politics. Did you know Marco Rubio wants to completely eliminate the capital gains tax? Or that Rand Paul called for temporarily stopping Muslims from 32 countries from entering the United States? That Chris Christie wanted a massive overhaul of Social Security? Of course you did not because the media has become completely consumed by polling and “who won the day” analysis popularized by publications like POLITICO and cable shows like With All Due Respect. At the same time, there has been even more emphasis on faux controversies like whether Hillary Clinton tipped properly at a Chipotle instead of a deeper dive into the policies of the candidates. 

The Media Could Not Make Marco Rubio Happen. No candidate benefitted more from favorable media coverage than Marco Rubio and no candidate so successfully manipulated the press for his own gain. He spun a third place finish in Iowa into a “victory,” sold the media on a “3-2-1” strategy in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, then ignored it when it turned into “3-5-2,” and finally bought himself another month in the race by selling himself as the consensus candidate even as he was getting rolled in state after state. When he trained his fire on Trump, it backfired spectacularly and then, in a final swing of shamelessness, he bemoaned the tone of a campaign he helped lower by making allegations about hand size and pants peeing. 

The Bern Is Real. Readers of my blog know where my allegiance lies, but I will give the 74-year old democratic socialist his due, his campaign legitimately tapped into left-wing frustration and his fundraising prowess is remarkable. The media coverage of him has been awful throughout. There is no question the media was slow off the mark in seeing his popularity, but they have now overcorrected even as he is at a 60/40 deficit in both delegates and the popular vote against Hillary Clinton while she enjoys a more than 9:1 lead in super delegates that will ultimately push her over the top - which is how Obama won the nomination in 2008 even though he and Mrs. Clinton split the popular vote very close to 50/50. Sanders has been the most effective insurgent since Gene McCarthy in 1968, but he has also benefitted from tissue thin vetting that has given him a wide berth to drum home his message. After losing all five races on Super Tuesday II, he would rise in stature if he dropped out, but instead, he will soldier on, even though he has no chance of winning the nomination. 

The Establishment Is Dead. At varying times, TIME magazine anointed Rand Paul “the most interesting man in politics,” Marco Rubio “the Republican savior,” and Chris Christie simply “THE BOSS.” (caps in original). This was before Jeb Bush brought his family name into the race and immediately vaulted to the top of the polls. Paul dropped out after Iowa, Christie after New Hampshire, and Bush after South Carolina. Rubio limped on with little money but plenty of endorsements and media support (see above) before dropping out after being humiliated in his home state of Florida. Other candidates, like 2012 runner-up Rick Santorum, 2008 runner-up Mike Huckabee, three-term Texas Governor Rick Perry, and South Carolina’s senior Senator Lindsey Graham, barely registered before quitting to no ado. If a year ago you had a reality TV star and the most hated man in Congress as your two most likely victors in the Republican field, bravo.

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Productivity

Sadly, my annual five week sewcation is over. Happily, it was more productive than ever, resulting in a swimsuit and exercise top, dress pants, a knit dress, two knitted cardigans (one by machine and one mostly hand knit) and the pièce de résistance, my new jacket. It was hardly a sweatshop, however, as I found time to do lots of other fun things too.

I'll post modeled shots of the jacket when I have time at home during daylight hours. But this is it. Vogue 2770, OOP, a Tamotsu designer separates pattern.

Sweet and simple and striped in multi colours. Light and soft and warm.

Making up a pattern that I had already adjusted for fit was a treat.

I kept the construction fairly simple and the jacket has minimal structure.

Fusible underlining; serged SAs

I underlined all body pieces with an extremely light weight fusible interfacing, to give some body to the very soft and loose-woven fabric, but also to minimize its inherent stretchiness (mostly in the length, surprisingly). I underlined the sleeves with silk organza cut on the bias as I wanted to keep them light.

All seam allowances were serged to control the tendency of the fabric to fray.

The sleeve caps were eased with a bias strip of wool which also serves as a light sleeve head. I inserted shoulder pads.

The jacket is fully lined with Bemberg. I went with this weird purply-grey colour.

The buttonhole was made with my vintage Singer buttonholer (perfect every time).

All this goodness, including wool, lining, interfacing, thread and button, came from The Sewing Lawyer's imperceptibly diminishing stash.

I have enough of the fabric left to use it as an accent on another piece (a yoke for a skirt?). Maybe I should check stash for coordinating fabric or leather... Who knows what's in there?

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Book Review - Too Dumb To Fail

Presaging what will surely be a flood of books about the 2016 campaign is Matt Lewis’s Too Dumb to Fail, equal parts polemic and screed by a card-carrying member of the conservative media establishment (Lewis is an editor of The Daily Caller and regularly appears on “the shows”). Lewis’s thesis is simple - the ideas that undergirded the so-called “Reagan Revolution” have been jettisoned by the Republican Party, which needs to get back to being a party animated by the big, bold ideas that, according to Lewis, led to Reagan’s ascent.

While one cannot question Lewis’s conviction, he cherry picks information to suit his point of view. Perhaps this is simply my own political perspective, but if the first step in solving a problem is admitting its existence, readers will find little comfort here. It is not simply the pot shots Lewis takes at President Obama, Democrats, or the definite article “The Left,” it is the failure of his book to come to terms with some basic facts about Saint Ronnie. 

While the hagiography embraces Reagan’s bumper sticker appeal - low taxes, less government, and a strong national defense - his record was not that simple. Yes, Reagan cut taxes in 1981, but he subsequently raised them - several times - during his time in office. His attempts to rein in the federal government barely moved the needle on the actual number of federal workers (Republicans would have to wait for some guy named Bill Clinton to arrive before a meaningful reduction occurred), and the massive military build-up was done on the government’s credit card, leading to swelling budget deficits that undermined any suggestion of fiscal restraint. And this is without even getting into Reagan’s signing of a bill in 1986 that granted “amnesty” to millions of undocumented individuals, his decision to “cut and run” from Lebanon in 1983, or his sale of sophisticated weapons to the Iranians and the shifting of the proceeds from those sales to Nicaraguan Contras, action that should have gotten him impeached. 

Similarly, Lewis whistles past the graveyard of other recent Republican apostasies. The Second Iraq War barely rates a mention, the Great Recession is an afterthought, and the massive deficits accumulated under recent Republican administrations are barely touched on. Meanwhile, President Obama is dismissed as a paint-by-numbers liberal who has attempted to foist any number of evil government policies on a gullible electorate, not the least of which is of course the Heritage Foundation idea that people be required to purchase health insurance, which forms the core of what we now call Obamacare. 

Lewis also overstates the direness of the state of the Republican Party. The Obama years have been phenomenal for the GOP at the state level, where they control more than half the governorships and legislatures. Indeed, but for a single house of the Kentucky Legislature, the entire Old Confederacy is under Republican rule - a decimation of the Democratic Party that has been as total as the Republicans in the Northeast. In Congress, more Republicans are seated in the House of Representatives than at any time since 1928 and they also hold a majority in the Senate.

On public policy, for all the Republican kvelling about Obama’s overuse of executive authority (itself a pile of Grade A horseshit), after Sandy Hook, states passed more laws expanding gun rights than restricting them, and many states in the South have all but eliminated access to abortion. At the national level, the battle over tax policy has been won by Republicans with the assent of Democratic Presidents who have defined up the “middle class” from $250,000 under President Clinton to $400,000 under President Obama, who, incidentally, signed the law that permanently codified 99% of the George W. Bush-era tax rates. Reductions in capital gains and carried interest rates have shifted wealth upward, with many millionaires paying lower marginal rates than middle class wage earners while the amount of federal spending going toward so-called “discretionary” parts of the federal budget are at Eisenhower-era lows. 

And therein lies the limitation in Lewis’s argument. On the one hand, there is little interest in seriously examining the Reagan Revolution and its distortion by Republicans to suit their facile arguments about things like taxes, the military, and domestic policy and on the other, they have suffered no political consequences for it - indeed, but for the Presidency, Republicans have not held so many offices at the federal and state level in eight decades. 

What Lewis is left with is a lot of Poli Sci 101 ruminations on political philosophy and a few well-placed critiques. For example, Lewis rightly criticizes the anti-intellectualism of his party and its failure to adjust with the shifting winds of social change. He points to the weakening of the party structure and the rise of outside groups as one symptom of why there is less party unity and fidelity. Instead of having extremism rooted out, the party has been overtaken by its most intransigent members. In an alternate universe, Senate Republicans would be willing to give an Obama nominee to fill Justice Scalia’s seat a fair shake, would have negotiated (and voted for) the stimulus bill, and provided suggestions that could have incorporated more conservative policies into the Affordable Care Act - but Lewis cannot bring himself to suggest even these modest concessions.  

When it comes to solutions, Lewis goes for some unusual options - promoting “New Urbanism” - and more conventional choices - hello, outreach to Hispanics. But even here, he cannot mask his disdain for “the Left.” After a pages-long screed over how “the Left” politicizes climate change, the best Lewis can muster is the idea that it is okay to question the science but not demonize it (never mind that the Republican Party literally stands alone among all political parties in the Western Hemisphere as questioning man’s role in climate change). Similarly, instead of questioning (and offering answers to) the near total rejection of Republicans by African-American voters, Lewis glides right past this problem to focus on attracting other minority groups. In doing so, he misses the opportunity to mine what is a deep vein of skepticism toward his party by people of color based on the policies they advocate and the message they send. Finally, he encourages young conservatives to be well-read, but fails to identify anything other than standard conservative reading material as a starting point for their education. 

Any reckoning for why the Republican Party is so monochromatic and why the demographics that are making it harder and harder for them to compete for the White House will be lost so long as there are no electoral consequences in off year elections and at the state level. In the meantime, while the chances for winning in November become more remote with every batshit crazy Donald Trump incident, the reality is the GOP is that one election away from complete control of the federal government - hardly a political party in decline.

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Private prosecution results in aquittal

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What is the right number of cardigans?

Anyone?

Pretty soon I'm going to run out of storage space. But I may not be able to stop making them.

Wear it open

Wear it closed

This is the one I was planning in my last post. It goes pretty well with my new grey pants.

Machine knitting - it's fast. I started the actual knitting on February 27 and finished the garment today, March 4. It would have been finished even faster but I wet-blocked each piece and it took a while for them to dry.

The cardigan is exactly what I hoped it would be. Long with a cozy collar in this nice springy wool (Briggs & Little Sport).

The ribbing is really nice and springy - it's a kind of 2 x 2 ribbing that can't be done in hand knitting. Basically you fit two purl stitches in the space for one knit stitch on the front bed of a knitting machine, and two knit stitches in the space for one purl stitch on the back bed. There is no slack anywhere in this type of ribbing. I may use it exclusively from now on!

See those added stitches? Maybe not...

I was able to insert ribbing stitches in the middle of the fronts (at the point where the stockinette switches to ribbing) to widen the collar slightly, without changing its outer edge, as you can see in the photo to the left.

Collar seam - inside back neck

The back neck is hand sewn so I could figure out exactly where to seam the ribbing together. One nice thing about machine knitting is that it's super easy to knit a few extra rows more than you will need, and knit the piece off on waste yarn that protects the open stitches while you are blocking and handling the piece, and can be unravelled and tossed away later. Once I had sewn the neck seam to the CB point, I new exactly which rows of the ribbing I had to seam up. I joined them with a chain stitched seam made with a crochet hook through the corresponding stitches. It's less obvious than any other way to join this seam. And with steam, the ribbing pulled back in very nicely despite the seam.

More details can be found on my Ravelry project page.

And for you sewing enthusiasts, never fear. I haven't totally gone to the dark side. I'm going to up the pace of progress on my striped jacket of many colours next.

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State of the Race: Super Tuesday

Super Tuesday is in the books. What happened and where do the two parties stand on the way to the White House? Republicans handed Donald Trump wins in blood red states like Alabama and Arkansas and deep blue states like Vermont and Massachusetts. He also won Virginia, which is a swing state in the general election, along with several other contests. Ted Cruz triumphed in his home state of Texas, next door neighbor Oklahoma, and the lightly contested Alaska caucus. Marco Rubio finally got on the board with a win in Minnesota, but had a string of third-place finishes except a strong showing in Virginia, where he placed second. No one is dropping out and there are winner-take-all primaries in Ohio and Florida in two weeks. 

In the last week or so, the full weight of whatever is left of the Republican establishment has coalesced around the idea that Donald Trump must be stopped at all costs. The only problem is that the party itself - the actual voters who are going out and casting ballots - disagree. It is not a small thing that Trump is winning contests across the board. He is not, like Ted Cruz, a seemingly regional candidate nor is he someone who is only garnering support from a small segment of the electorate, like Marco Rubio. Any other front-runner who was getting the votes of conservatives and moderates, the rich and poor, in regions throughout the country, would be spoken of as the presumptive nominee, but Trump is no ordinary candidate. His comments and statements are considered poison by Republican elites and they fear he will lead them to electoral disaster. 

If there is a silver lining, albeit a slim one, for those in the Dump Trump orbit, it is that Trump did not sweep Super Tuesday, as some predicted. There may be just enough of a gap in his support to deny him the nomination outright, but the idea that his supporters will accept having the nomination go to someone else is as unlikely as Trump himself accepting such a result. Then again, the next two weeks will be critical - every resource remaining will be deployed to beat Trump in Ohio, Florida, or both. At the same time, Trump will need to put real time, energy (and money) into combating this strategy. If he is successful, he wins the nomination. If he is not, get ready for every political reporters wet dream - a contested part convention.

For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton swept the south by huge margins and narrowly won in Massachusetts. Bernie Sanders won in his home state of Vermont and took caucus wins in Colorado, Minnesota and a primary win in Oklahoma. Mrs. Clinton won the majority of delegates awarded, but Sanders collected a nice haul as well. He has the money and desire to continue the race even as his path to ultimate victory appears to be nearly shut. Hillary Clinton has amassed an insurmountable lead over Bernie Sanders when her pledged super delegates are factored in, but because the states apportion delegates to the convention proportionally, it is unlikely she can win the nomination based on the primaries and caucuses alone but Sanders cannot catch her either. He can stay in the race and continue accumulating delegates but will fall well short of victory. He is in the same position Secretary Clinton was in back in 2008 and while he has every right to continue his campaign until the end (as she did), he has lost. Were Sanders a member in good standing of the Democratic party, he might be open to a discussion with party elders about bowing out gracefully, content with the knowledge that his presence in the race has brought the issues he cares about to the fore, but he is not and has no stake in the party, which he has simply rented for the purpose of running for President. 

Of course, this did not hurt the Democrats in 2008. While Hillary and President Obama competed until the end, she pivoted quickly and gave the then-Senator a full-throated endorsement and campaigned aggressively for him throughout the general election. Will the same be true of Sanders? Again, were he a card-carrying member of the party, I would feel more sanguine, but the reality is that he is not and he owes no loyalty to the Democrats to advance his career. At best, he has one more election in 2018 for another six-year term in the Senate which he should win easily regardless of how he handles his loss for the nomination. If anything, he could become a nuisance and not an ally if a hypothetical President Clinton is not sufficiently progressive on the issues that matter most to him. 

For Republicans, their options are a Trump nomination or using party rules to deny him that honor. Either way, the party will be deeply split and weak going into the general election. For Democrats, it is simply a question of how Sanders wants to lose - with dignity and class, or swinging, bleeding Clinton of money and resources she will need to win in November. 

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The sewing-knitting lawyer's methodology for converting a hand-knitting pattern for the machine

And of course I also have another knitting project on the go too! Gotta get it all done before I go back to work (in two weeks, sniff).

I am making a shawl collared cardigan. I'd say it's my own design except that is not completely true. I'm way more comfortable starting with an existing base and modifying it than designing a garment from the ground up. In this case, I started with the schematic drawings for a cardigan of about the shape I wanted from a Bergère de France knitting catalogue (Créations 2014/15) that I bought a while back.

Incidentally, these publications are really great value. The current catalogue is 288 pages and contains 144 patterns for garments and accessories for men, women and children, as well as toys, blanket and pillow type projects. Only $12 CAD, which is practically free in $US...

I really like the fact that every pattern has a really clear schematic drawing. I'm working from pattern #887. But I'm completely ignoring the fancy stitch pattern and the sideways-knitted collar piece.



How do I convert this to a machine knitting pattern? I'm sure there are high tech ways to do this but I haven't figured them out yet. (If you have suggestions, please by all means make them in the comments!) Here's my non-digital method.

First, knit a swatch in your chosen yarn. In this case I am using the same yarn (down to the dye lot#) as I used to knit my son's zipper cardigan. So I already knew what stitch size to use on my Passap. If I was starting from scratch with a different yarn I would knit a big swatch of plain stockinette.

Telling me I have 18 stitches in 10cm

Like this one, which is the swatch I used to determine the stitch size for the sleeves of my recently-completed red cardigan. I knit this using my worsted weight yarn on my mid-gauge machine (a Singer LK150). You cast on 50 stitches and knit segments of 40 rows in different stitch sizes. In the middle row, you attach a contrasting yarn tag on the needles that are 16th from the centre, on either side (making 30 stitches really obvious). Separate the sections with a couple of contrasting rows. Then take the knitting off the machine, block it (ideally wash it and let it dry) and then measure using the handy-dandy stitch gauge ruler that is appropriate for your machine. I found a really great explanation of this process on Ravelry if you want to know more about measuring gauge.

My swatch

You should also knit a swatch that includes details like your ribbing. Because I already knew my gauge, that's all I did for this project. I decided on 2x2 industrial ribbing because it's really springy and thick, and it looks identical on both sides.

Once you have decided on the density of fabric you like and you know your gauge of stitches and rows in 10cm, print off some gauge-specific knitting graph paper. Make sure you print it without scaling! I like to use it at half size (so the "10cm" squares are actually 5cm on the page) because this is big enough to see the detail but not so big as to be unwieldy.

Then transfer the schematic to your paper. This is easy if you have an engineer's or architect's scale that is metric. Use the 1:20 edge if you have printed your graph paper at half size. An accurate metric ruler will also work but you'll have to do the mental math to get half scale. If you don't have the right kind of ruler, you'll have to use a calculator to figure out how many stitches or rows are needed for each segment of the schematic and count out the right number of tiny boxes on your graph paper - doable but a bit more painful.

Use a pencil or Frixion pen or some other erasable (very important!) writing implement.

At left is my graphed version of the Bergére de France schematic for the left front. The original information from the schematic are in orange Frixion pen and my changes (extending the front into a shawl collar) and key details are mostly in blue. I've taped two pages together to get the length I needed.

I've written key information on the chart - the dimensions of the finished piece, the ribbing pattern, the number of stitches I need, the row numbers in which changes like increases or decreases are made, precisely how many stitches are increased or decreased, etc.

I've also used the original pattern instructions to plot the shaping at the armhole edge. I could do this because the gauge for the pattern was very close to my actual gauge; if it hadn't been, I would have drawn a curve that looked about right and then charted the specific decreases. On the schematic the edge looks like a smooth curve; on my graph it is a steps and stairs effect; on the finished knitted piece it is again a smooth curve.

Speaking of the finished piece, I have now knitted both fronts (mentally mirror-imaging all the steps as I knit the right front) and I do believe my project is going to work!






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Vogue 2770 encore

Way back when I spent a lot of time altering the pattern for the jacket from Vogue 2770 to fit me perfectly. Why waste all that work? I'm making it again.

Out of this unique and irreplaceable fabric.

I got it at the Fabric Flea Market (where else?) in 2009. The vendor told me she had raised the sheep (merino), sheared the wool, spun and dyed it, and then wove it (together with a few novelty yarns) into this luscious and completely irregular stripe.

The fabric is only 98cm wide and the vendor had cut it into skirt lengths of around 1.5m. I bought two, which are enough for the princess seamed jacket.



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