It began last Thursday, when right-wing Tory MP Philip Davies labelled Judge Peter Bowers (of burglars are courageous fame) an “idiot” and “lily livered” in the House of Commons – then went on Radio 5 to drive home his slur.
This annoyed ‘Boro Barrister’, an anonymous tweeting barrister who practises in the Teeside area where Bowers sits as a judge:
To which Davies responded…
Before continuing:
As you may have intuited, Davies appears to have something of a chip on his shoulder about the legal profession.
It’s possible that he may hold its members responsible for annoying rules preventing disabled people from earning less than the minimum age which he has argued should be scrapped. Dinner party-loving lawyers may also be associated in Davies’ mind with the regrettable abolition of the death penalty (the MP for Shipley loves the idea of killing criminals so much that he went on a pilgrimmage to Florida’s death row this summer).
Anyway, having embarked on his anti-lawyer theme, Davies couldn’t resist expanding, adding on Friday:
Check out Philip Davies’ Twitter feed for the full text of his rant.