We at Renaissance are appalled at the witch hunt of Upper Tribunal Judges who have had the audacity to allow a criminal deportation appeal. As those on the coal face know, winning a criminal deportation appeal is no walk in the park and at first instance demands a great deal...
Yet again I missed the blog’s birthday, which was 7 March. Unbelievably (for so, so many reasons) the blog has now been going for over five years. In that time it has clocked up roughly 1,346,037 hits, 521 posts and 2,608 comments between the old wordpress.com site and the newer...
Free Movement entirely retracts the article that was previously published here regarding the Chapti case and apologises to those involved. The comments in the article went considerably beyond fair, were unreasonably speculative and were misleading as to the true circumstances of the litigation. No contact was made with those responsible...
Got a Kindle for Christmas? Wondering what to do with it now you’ve read the first couple of chapters of Great Expectations and then swiftly moved on to some Sherlock Holmes? You can now subscribe to Free Movement on your Kindle: while away your commute and keep yourself bang up to date...
Regular visitors to the website will have noticed some changes over the Christmas period. A second column has been introduced on the right with Renaissance Chambers and HJT Training information, with both of which the editor is personally associated. The About the blog page has been slightly rewritten to make...
The blog has been experiencing a few problems over the last few days, for which I apologise. The hosting provider moved the blog to a new server accidentally or some such, and everything went offline for about a day. Somewhere along the way some content was lost. I’ve re-inserted the...
There will be some changes coming on Free Movement. This has been absorbing quite a lot of my rather limited time of late, and there are several significant recent cases that I haven’t managed to flag up yet, for which I apologise. Work has been extremely busy and I have...
Passing through immigration control on my return to the UK yesterday, my wife had to restrain me from taking a photograph of one of the notices that appeared on the UK visual displays at Heathrow. She wanted to get home sooner rather than later and, on reflection, I wasn’t in...
It is now possible to claim CPD (Continuing Professional Development) points through the blog, in conjunction with HJT Training. The poll a couple of weeks ago suggested that there is a reasonable level of interest in this, so we’ve put together two test tests, so to speak. The idea is that...
Free Movement is planning to launch a scheme to allow regular readers who are barristers, solicitors or OISC advisers to claim some CPD hours by reading the blog and then answering multiple choice questions. This would be done in conjunction with HJT Training, of which the editor is a director....
BAILII, the invaluable resource which provides much of the material for this blog, is under threat of closure. It seems that the Ministry of Justice has withdrawn funding, and BAILII are seeking replacement commitments from solicitors firms and barristers chambers. Some professional associations have also committed funds. I have sought...
It had escaped my attention that Free Movement was four years old on 7 March 2011. The first ever post was published on that day, entitled Overstayers and illegal entrants. The Home Secretary was Dr Reid. How long ago that all feels! Since then 365 posts have been published, the...
Only this morning I was making extensive use of the websites of both the First Tier and Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chambers. I’ve returned to chambers only to find that they have now seemingly vanished into thin air, with nothing but a redirect to a new looking Ministry of...
As some may have noticed, I’ve made a few minor changes to the blog in the last few days. I’ve added new pages about instructing the barristers here at Renaissance Chambers, both for solicitors and members of the public, and about contributing guest posts to the blog. I’ve removed some...
I gave a short presentation this morning to John Vine, the Chief Inspector of UKBA. I thought I’d share it with you. It lacks a certain something without my narration, I feel, but it at least gives you the gist. The presentation was based on ILPA submissions to the Parliamentary...
I have taken the surprisingly easy decision to wind down Free Movement. For reasons that continue to escape me and which have never been explained by John O, formerly of NCADC, he left that organisation in April 2010 and set up a website called, imaginatively enough, Free Movement. It can...
It has come to my attention that Google Ads sometimes (or possibly always) show on Free Movement to those not already logged in as WordPress users – i.e. everyone except me sometimes sees Google Ads on my blog, basically. This blog is hosted mainly for free on WordPress.com. In truth...
I’m up late this evening with plenty more work still do to, and like many bloggers (er, all of us, I suspect) will check my blog stats in idle moments. It’s all part of the narcissistic nature of the beast. An old colleague once teased me about reaching the half million...
In the really very small world of UK immigration websites, someone has seen fit to set up another one called Free Movement. I’ve tried politely getting in touch but have received no response. It seems that there has been some sort of bust up at NCADC and the legendary John...
That’s Twitter for you. Or so I thought… Long term and very observant readers may have noticed a brief and unsuccessful experiment with Twitter some months ago, where I thought creating an intelligent (i.e. authored rather than automatic) case law feed would be helpful. There aren’t enough cases coming out...
I’ve just visited the Immigration Museum in Melbourne, Australia. It is based in one of the city’s grand buildings, and one which is tied to the subject matter: the old Customs House. There is an enormous amount of space and the exhibits, text and interactive bits are all very well thought...
Free Movement is leaving for warmer climes and will return embarrassingly late in January. I hope you all have a good Christmas break, and I hope UKBA doesn’t illegally remove too many detainees while their lawyers are off work. I was going to do a parody of the hideous UKBA...
As you can see, I’ve made some presentational changes to the blog over the weekend. Votes were overwhelmingly in favour of de-orangification! I’m looking for a cleaner and more professional presentation, but to retain the functionality of the old version. I’ve decided to use the Grid Focus theme by Derek...
Enough is enough. I’ve deleted the earlier Cambridge College of Learning posts and comments because I am concerned that this website was being used by various groups of alleged ex-CCL students to take money from other alleged ex-CCL students. The ‘comments’ were being used to notify meeting places and times....
Following a comment on the comments system, I thought I better do a quick update. Firstly, I’ve been very busy recently and as a result have not been posting as frequently or extensively as normal. This is inevitable, I’m afraid, and given that there are so many email subscribers (115...
But lacks the energy to write anything intelligent. Par for the course, some might claim. I have however been deleting the many comments I now unfortunately receive asking for legal advice. Inevitable, I suppose. Instead of informed, witty, incisive commentary I shall content myself with some random alerts: Metock guidance is finally...
After a long day in court fighting a losing battle and with plenty of work still to do before Christmas, Free Movement is signing off until well into the New Year. I’m knackered and need a break. A number of fellow immigration lawyers have commented that it is always busy...
I’ve decided to make a few changes to the blog, which I hope are improvements. Comments from regular readers most welcome. Incidentally, I checked Feedburner recently and was surprised to see there are 62 of you out there who subscribe by email. A bit of a ‘hello Mum!’ moment for...
Via a comment left on this site, I’ve been made aware of an excellent blog called EU Case Law, which I’ve added to my ‘blogroll’. It’s a really good way of keeping up to date with the latest legal developments in Europe and certainly covers free movement issues, as today’s...
