Saying it's a "material consideration" isn't applying the new planning rules

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The Daily Telegraph is again seeking to scare its NIMBY readers about the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF):

Official inspectors, who have the power to approve local developments, were given the fresh guidance by the Planning Inspectorate last week.

 It told them to start abiding by the new draft planning framework, which campaigners fear could lead to unchecked development in rural areas, because it represents the Government’s “direction of travel”.

Terrifying I know. Except that nearly all applications get nowhere near a planning inspector and, more to the point, that isn't what the inspectors have been told. Which is:

“The draft NPPF is likely to be referred to by the parties in current appeal and development plan casework.

 “Whilst it is a consultation document and, therefore, subject to potential amendment, nevertheless it gives a clear indication of the Government’s 'direction of travel’ in planning policy.

“Therefore, the draft National Planning Policy Framework is capable of being a material consideration, although the weight to be given to it will be a matter for the decision maker’s planning judgment in each particular case.”

So inspectors haven't been told to apply the new NPPF but have been reminded that people in the planning appeals process will refer to it, that this is material and that the inspector should use his judgement. And this is important since there is loads of precedent for Bills before parliament being material considerations in planning. Furthermore it is very clear that the weight given to a particular material consideration is wholly a matter for the planner and always has been. And the law is pretty clear (this from the recent Cala Homes ruling in the High Court):

Secondly, the provisions of a draft development plan document progressing through its statutory process towards adoption, even while objections to them remain unresolved, can be material considerations in a planning decision. There is abundant authority to this effect (see paragraph P70.09 of the Encyclopedia of Planning Law and Practice). Thirdly, emerging national policy, for example in the form of a draft circular or Planning Policy Statement, can also be a material consideration

So all that the Planning Inspectorate has done is to remind inspectors of what the law says. That the NPPF is a material consideration is a matter of fact - how much weight is given to it is a matter of the inspector's judgement. The main considerations for inspectors - the rules if you like - remain the current legislation and, where they are in place, the strategic plans of the local planning authority.

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Abortion: why it's not a simple as it seems to some folk....

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I used to think things were simple. You remove barriers to people’s rights and they behave like grown ups. And for most of us this is true, most of the time, under most circumstances. But let’s paint a little picture, tell a story – one that’s only too real for many young women.


A 17 year-old girl gets pregnant. She know who the Dad is but isn’t in a relationship with him any more, she’s going out with a different bloke who isn’t all than keen on his woman carrying some other man’s child – especially when that man is the spotty Darren from Eccles Street.

Now the girl – let’s call her Carol – tells her Mum and her best friend Shazza that she’s going to keep the baby. They’re happy with this, just as they’d have been happy if Carol had chosen to have an abortion. Happy in her choice and supported by friends and family, Carol trogs off to tell her boyfriend – we’ll call him Karl. Who hits the roof. And Carol.

 The police are called. And, because Carol’s pregnant, unmarried and under 18, social services get involved – after all Carol has decided to keep the baby and that is the proper concern of social services.

Social services tell Carol that, because of her circumstances and her boyfriend’s violence, it’s very likely that the baby will be taken into care straight after birth. Understandably Carol’s pretty distraught and confused. She thought she was going to have a lovely baby to care for but instead she’s become just breeder – having a baby for somebody else.

 And Karl’s on the phone, on Facebook. Begging forgiveness saying he’ll not hit her again. So she goes to meet him. And he says again that she should get rid of the baby.

So she goes to the doctor…

I’m making no moral judgments here about abortion merely pointing out how ignorant it is to say abortion is as simple as this:

…if a woman seeks an abortion within the first 24 weeks of her pregnancy, it is surely then a matter for her alone, subject only to medical advice and approval.

That may be a stripped down description of the law. It may be the case for some women – even for many women. But the reality out there is that plenty of ‘unwanted’ pregnancies are simply not that simple. Young women don’t arrive at the decision to terminate on their own (with their doctors) but do so after speaking with mum, with friends and with others involved in their life. This may not fit that simple picture but it is the real world - and we should deal with the real world rather than one stripped of social interaction where decisions are taken in isolation.

Is it really such a bad thing to say that the NHS should make impartial counselling and advice available to young women in such circumstances? Is it such a bad thing that women contemplating termination should receive the information about their options allowing that “informed choice” the law speaks of?

Personally I don’t think so.

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Is the Charity Commission admitting defeat on public benefit?

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It certainly sounds that way...

Robert Pearce QC told the hearing in the Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery) yesterday: "The commission’s programme of public benefit assessments is now at an end. "Irrespective of the outcome of this case, the commission intends to review the guidance in the light of its experience of its use."

Or more to the point, in a manner less likely to annoy Ministers by involving the courts in long drawn out reviews! As the National Council for Voluntary Organisations pointed out:

"The commission’s guidance on public benefit could be clearer, so the proposal that it should be reviewed after this week is welcomed."

Which was rather the point of the challenge from the Independent Schools Council - the Charity Commission were giving opaque guidance and then jumping up and down on a few schools that did not "comply" with this vague guidance. And, of course, the random nature of the Commissions interpretation of the guidance worried a load of other charities who, for whatever reason, charged fees.

Time to put Ms Leather back in her box and get the Charity Commission back to doing its core job - ensuring charities are meeting their charitable aims and are managed properly. End of.

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Campaign Diary: the final flourish

Feeling a little footsore today but have shifted all the last minute leaflets - still getting an excellent response on the doorstep especially with the weather making folk so cheery any how!

Handed one lady in Harden the leaflet emblazoned with the words "Re-elect Simon Cooke" and got a big beam plus the words:

"...and why not!"

Motivating stuff to finish the campaign with - will be out and about tomorrow but most of the effort will be on knocking up. Both in Bingley Rural and, hopefully, helping out in Shipley and Keighley West where we've hopes of winning (Shipley would be a great gain from the ghastly Greens).

However, I had a long and sobering conversation with one woman about the 'smelly wagons' and the seemingly endless problems with breaches of planning and health regulations. Long because I needed to update the woman with what was happening, sobering because it showed once again that, given enough cash, businesses like the one concerned seem able to carry on flouting the rules with seeming impunity.

It's all well and good us politicians promising "action" but the powers available to the local authority are limited and subject to endless review and appeal. Moreover, there appears to be little or no ability for members to really influence the process or the outcome - frustrating for us as councillors and no help at all to local residents. It seems we may need to look at some sort of legal action - there must be some recourse available for these local people.

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Super-injunctions and the media missing the point

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After perhaps six or so weeks of discussion in various corners of the 'blogosphere' - notably regarding the efforts of John Hemming MP to raise his concerns in Parliament - the big media boys and girls have finally noticed. Or rather have fixed on one aspect of the problem - its use to protect the 'privacy' of footballers, actors and politicians who don't wish for their sexual adventures, peccadilloes and misbehaviour to be paraded across newspapers and TV screen for the public's titillation and entertainment. As the Daily Mirror puts it:

The people who are granted injunctions that prevent the media revealing things of which they are ashamed have two things in common.

They are all rich and they are all men.

These injunctions aren’t just creating a privacy law, which should be the prerogative of Parliament, but can be an attack on women who ­understandably want to reveal how they have been treated.

All very righteous but, I feel, missing the main point. The place where John Hemming started wasn't with some footballer's sex life but with the family courts. With the gagging of people through threats to remove children, with the seeming tendency of the courts to protect the professional rather than the child and with the byzantine - even Kafka-esque - processes within these systems.

The person in question could actually be jailed for telling his MP that he had been in court case No. 773. What is so sensitive about that? In practice, even family court proceedings are not that confidential. I think this case was in the Commercial and Admiralty court. My first question is not just how the hell this could happen – I apologise for the non-parliamentary language, Mr Bone. How does this happen? How many more of these cases are there? How many secret cases do we have in this country, with people being banned from even saying that the case exists?

This is what we should be concerned about. It is not enough for us to be told by some lawyerly opinionator that:

Hemming seems to discount the possibility that the professionals involved may actually be genuinely trying to do what we pay them to do – protect young people like this. 

I know from experience that professionals do try to do their jobs well and to maintain their duty to the child. But that general observation - along with ad hominum attacks on John Hemming and others - is not sufficient to answer the specific charge. And that charge is that the family courts do not always behave properly and that these hyper-injunctions can be used - just as they are with footballers - to prevent the public knowing what the public should have the right to know.


By obsessing about the sins of celebrities, the media are providing a smokescreen for a substantive examination of these issues and, at the heart of them, the use of gagging orders to cover up the failings of public servants.

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The Charity Tribunal - off to a good start in examining the private schools issue

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Aside from a daft argument about where the tribunal members went to school (and, wrongly, where they choose to educate their children), the Charity tribunal looking at private education and charitable status has started well by tightening the scope of the examination:

These are deeply political and contentious questions and not for the Tribunal to decide.”

Therefore, he said, the scope of the hearing would be limited to the issues raised in the Attorney-General’s reference and the judicial review.

He warned the legal teams representing the parties that this meant “huge rafts” of the evidence they had already submitted were probably irrelevant and inadmissible and he did not think it would be necessary for any of them to present oral evidence.

The crux of this decision is that all the extraneous, irrelevent stuff from NCVO and the Charity Commission's leftie advisors seeking to widen to debate falls. We are left with the original judicial review brought by the schools and the careful, specific questions asked by the Attorney General.

A good start which, I hope, will conclude with a sensible settlement allowing private schools to continue providing the educational benefits for local communities that they were established to provide as charities.

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Shocking...

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“upon the first and second Respondents agreeing that they will make no further disclosure in respect of this matter to any third party, including in particular the media and John Hemmings MP.”

I am struck dumb by the enormity of this statement - and many others.

Read Anna Raccoon's fuller piece and if you've an hour spare read John Hemming's full address to Committee.

It really is shocking.

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Saving law from the lawyers

The Bar Council - that trade union for the bewigged closed shop that is appearance in the higher courts - is in a bit of a funk over changes to the funding and structure of legal aid. You see, our expensive elite of clever lawyers think that the result of the changes will be that folk decide to represent themselves:

We fear these attempted cuts, being so crude and brutal, will cost more than they save. They will trigger a surge in DIY litigants which risks gridlock in the courts, as they struggle to get justice.

Note here the real problem - rights to represent people in a court of law - rather than the fake problem identified by the Bar Council. What barristers cannot countenance is that ordinary lawyers - or for that matter well-informed laymen with the ability to marshall an argument - might muscle in on their cosy little protection racket. After all DIY is the only alternative to using a barrister! So the barristers join all the other special interests and wave shrouds:

“Barristers who practise in crime and family work are in the front line. They want to deliver the best service to their clients. But in these and other practice areas, the threats posed by the Government’s proposals are real and potentially brutal. In family cases, men or women suffering from serious psychological abuse may go unrepresented in private law proceedings. Parents, without representation, could face the removal of their children into care if the court finds reasonable grounds for believing that the children are suffering significant harm. Consumers suffering at the hands of negligent corporate entities may have to fund their own claims. The list is extensive.”

You see, dear reader, that barristers feel only they have that special magic that is needed to appear before a judge - not surprising given that the judge will also be a barrister and therefore inclined to prefer the cosy, lucrative ramp that is our legal system. Sadly, we are not making the right changes - sweeping through law's Augean stables to find a system where DIY representation (or even getting help from some other person, maybe a trade union official, a human resources specialist, a social worker or a planner) is not only possible but encouraged.

But the barristers are just protecting their interests, I guess.

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The law is an ass. And lawyers serve that donkey.

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My professions – such as they are – are accessible. That is you do not require a particular piece of paper in order to be a politician, a marketer, a fundraiser or a regenerator. There are folk with a range of qualifications, experience and approach doing all these professions – and doing them well.

The problem with all this is that people try to make their professions exclusive – there’s a Chartered Institute of Marketing, there’s an Institute of Fundraising and I’m pretty sure there’s an Institute of Economic Development. All these institutes wish to secure – in the manner of the medieval trades guilds – control over who does these jobs. Not because it is only possible for people holding the institutes’ paper to do these jobs – that is demonstrably not the case – but because the use of these barriers restrains supply and thereby artificially raises the price (we get paid more money).

These tyros look wistfully at the old professions – and especially at the law. The legal professions have control of a system that ossifies the inefficiency of the ancient courts, that talks in a language different from that or ordinary people, takes on a position of such elite magnificence that us mere civilians must nod in wonder at its genius.

But there’s a problem. The law is an ass. And lawyers serve that donkey not the public.

The question is whether the law’s stupidity is a function of those who make the laws – the politicians – or a result of the profession’s distance from normal life? And while we rightly focus on the daftness of some laws, we do not ask about how the law’s concepts corrupt real meaning and act to drive perverse and sub-optimal outcomes.

Let me explain with reference to two ‘terms’ often heard in reference to court decisions – “reasonable” and “ordinary”.

We think we understand what these words mean. To most of us, “reasonable” means governed by common sense – we do not need firm or strong boundaries to that and can be flexible or fuzzy about it. But we know reasonable when we see it! But hang on – lawyers don’t mean common sense they mean something else entirely:

The word “reasonable” in law means fair, proper or moderate having regard for the circumstances. It is most frequently used as a word fixing a standard of assessment. Use of the word imports an objective test to the noun with which it is used.

So this isn’t the exercise of judgment but the application of a test. And, in applying that test, it is possible to make the reasonable unreasonable (and vice versa). The law becomes that donkey again.

And so to “ordinary” – used in the recent ‘twitter joke’ appeal. As the judge put it:

As for the tweet at the centre of the case, she called it "menacing in its content and obviously so. It could not be more clear. Any ordinary person reading this would see it in that way and be alarmed."

It is very clear that the lawyer has a very different – perhaps more precise – definition of “ordinary”. The ‘ordinary person’ is a lawyer’s convenience – untested and unevidenced – allowing them to lay claim to understanding. The judge’s statement has to be untrue since she could not possibly know – so a convenient fiction is constructed to avoid the need to test the truth of that ‘ordinary person’s’ response.

None of this is meant to be an interpretation of that case since, as I am not a lawyer, I cannot understand the decision. What I am observing is the manner in which the law and lawyers create a language that excludes that ‘reasonable man’ and ‘ordinary person’. Such people are merely chimera – constructs that allow the judge to impose his or her view on the world through a claimed ‘reasonableness’ or ‘ordinariness’. They are not you and me - real 'ordinary men and women'.

In its essence, the process of trial is simple. The situation is described, arguments are made on both sides and somebody (or bodies) arrives at a judgment on the basis of what is heard. To conduct such a process does not require great study except that lawyers – aided and abetted by politicians – have created a great body, a different language and an excluding process. Which allows said lawyers to maintain and protect their privileges.

The legal professions are the last of the medieval guilds still wielding power and control. They are self-regulated and exclusive. Access to the law is expensive – unavailable to all but the very rich, the very poor and, of course, the Government.

Any reform of the law has to start with reforming the professions and opening up the judiciary. So long as the professions act as guilds – controlling entry, managing the work and administering internal justice – we will continue to get these perverse outcomes of legal processes.

…but the law will still be an ass. And lawyers will still serve that donkey.

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Why Jack of Kent isn't a liberal

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Top legal blogging chap, Jack of Kent, has – in his glory and pomp – issued a definitive definition on his blog. Not to do with the law but an answer – nay a revelation – “what is liberalism?” Forget about the great minds of the past who have pondered the meaning of liberal and liberalism – Jack has given us the definition. In short, easy to digest sentences:

Flowing from this priority placed on human autonomy then come the more practical applications of liberalism: due process, equality and diversity, freedom of expression on public matters, a private space on personal matters, free movement of peoples, internationalism, free trade, an evidenced-based approach to policy and law making, and so on.

Now because I’m a good boy and not as clever as Jack, I’m going to accept his definition of liberalism (even though I don’t entirely agree). Which is why I know Jack isn’t a liberal. He wrote this:

The ongoing economic crisis is a good moment to test this faith in the Market deity

And this…

It is as if the invisible hand has let us all go and started slapping us instead. One really must now have doubts that the Market is omnibenevolent, even if it retains the other two usual attributes.

No-one who claims to be a liberal should hold these views. You cannot be selective in your choice of liberal viewpoints and it is as illiberal to reject the free market as Jack does here as it is to reject freedom in sexuality, worship or diet.

But then, even in his glorious defining statement, Jack falls back on that old leviathan:

The liberal endorses an individual's autonomy unless there is a greater public interest in interfering with that autonomy.

So I can do what I want so long as the Government (or Jack) doesn’t think I shouldn’t do that something. I hate to tell you, Jack, that ain’t liberalism. It's social democracy.

But then, what do I know, I’m not a liberal!

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Copyright, free riders and the New England turnpikes

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The problem really isn’t that copyright is a bad thing. As a right it’s not really much different from assorted easements, permissions and other non-physical property rights (I don’t own the drive to my house but I own a right to use it to access my house). So I defend it and the associated right for those who own the copyright to expect the law to be on their side.

The problem is the free rider. Or more importantly the inevitable avoidance of payment (and remember this isn’t a moral argument). As such the challenge for owners of digitised information is how to protect the value of their asset. At present the approach is to seek (or rather to persuade those who administer laws) to seek more and greater powers to identify and control those who are taking a free ride.

This is a short-sighted approach that is ultimately doomed to failure. I’m by no means an expert on the working of the Internet but it seems to me that those who wish to take a free ride are going to carry on doing so. Each endeavour to close the loop – to check the metaphorical ticket – will be defeated by technological creativity. And the ever more draconian measures demanded by the owners will be resisted because of the collateral impact on legitimate activity (or the legal manifestation of Marshall McLuhan’s dictum).

However, we should not dismiss a model simply because of free rider problems – there’s a strong argument for allowing the present system to continue and for alternative models of production, protection and payment to evolve. To understand this I recommend reading this piece by Daniel Klein on the New England turnpike companies where the author describes how – despite a huge double problem of free riding – investors still stumped up to buy stock in these companies. Although these investors became stockholders in a business it was a business that they knew would lose money. In effect their purchase of stock was a private payment to secure the supply of a public good.

It strikes me that ‘investors’ in music, film and software are aware of the free rider problem but recognise that without some willingness to purchase something that free rider problem will mean no music, film or software. Thus we accept the need to purchase. Those businesses that provide simple, easy access to the product in response to these payments are like the turnpike companies in that the purchasers of this access enjoy a smoother journey avoiding the need to travel round the tollgate on a rough, dangerous track.

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All government can do is make and enforce rules - a polite society needs more than that, it needs us to defend it

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While driving to the cinema I had an interesting conversation with my wife and son regarding behaviour. This began with the usual litany of things we dislike – old people who think their age grants them the right to queue jump, people putting their feet on bus or train seats, those heading for early deafness who think the whole carriage should hear their music, litter, chewing gum and not letting folk off the carriage before embarking. All pretty regular stuff for a discussion in the Cooke family of grumps!

However, the discussion moved on a step further to discuss how ‘society’ might respond to such problems. And why there is such impoliteness and disrespect. We managed to blame parents, teachers, the telly and computers games before sanity returned and we remembered to blame the government. They’re in charge of rules so it must be their fault.

And here lies the problem. We have abrogated responsibility for good behaviour – passed it over to the government. In doing this we forget the fundamental limitations of government – all it can do is make and enforce rules. Government can only use threats, can only punish, ban or bar – government cannot set example, explain the reasons for politeness or provide moral direction.

The result of making polite behaviour ‘someone else’s problem’ is precisely the disrespectful, rude and selfish society we rant and rail against. Yet our response isn’t to ask how politeness might become commonplace again but to call for more rules, more enforcers and tougher punishments. It appears that until we become Mega-City One, we will not be satisfied.

It may just be me but I fear this way madness lies – rather than ever more draconian enforcement and even more controls, laws and regulations would it not be better to start expecting polite behaviour beginning with the youngest? To have children address their teacher as “Miss”, “Mrs” or “Sir”. To expect children to stand when grown ups enter the room. To cherish silence. To encourage quiet speaking. To celebrate quiet order.

You and I don’t litter the streets because of the minuscule change of being fined. We hold open doors, help people with heavy bags and say “please” and “than-you” because it’s the right thing to do not because we might be punished for not doing so. Yet we seem like rabbits frozen in society’s headlights at the prospect of expecting politeness from those around us. We’re told by the enforcers not to challenge bad behaviour – they might attack you or something. And we keep our heads down and hope that the enforcer arrives and deals with the perpetrator. But Judge Dredd never does arrive.

Those of us who can retreat to a safer world – to our homes, to the safety of the car’s bubble and to offices with door security – and sit it out. We avoid public transport, busy town centres at night and places where the impolite might gather and disturb us. We have to take our share of the blame. We have to start challenging impoliteness and rudeness.

But we have also to ask our government to lift the shackles of restraint – to allow police officers, teachers, shopkeepers, pool attendants, bus drivers and train conductors to be intolerant. In fact to permit all of us – all the polite people – to question, challenge and confront ignorance, rudeness and bad behaviour.

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We need copyright to prevent censorship and promote freedom

Much of the debate surrounding the current Digital Economy Bill focuses on the dissemination of popular culture and the mechanisms to make that culture available – music, film and software. However, there is another business that will be profoundly affected by these proposals – academic publishing. These are some of the world’s oldest businesses – Cambridge University Press was founded in 1534 and Elsevier, the biggest academic publisher in 1580. And to understand the significance of copyright to this industry (a major contributor to the UK’s economy) we must go back to the origins of copyright law in 1709, The Statute of Anne.

Although the official title of this act was, “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned", in truth it was intended to curb the claim of perpetual copyright claimed by publishers under common law (since the previous provisions – registration with the Stationers’ Company - had lapsed). However, the two sources of copyright provision – the 1709 Act and common law – continued side by side up to 1774 when the House of Lords ruled perpetual copyright invalid (Donaldson vs. Beckett). This ruling included this important definition of ‘property’ from Sir Peter Wedderburn, the Solicitor General:

“Literary property had, by those who spoke before him, been said to be so abstruse and chimerical, that it was not possible to define it. The interpretation they had put upon the word, 'property' was, that it implied something corporeal, tangible, and material... He begged leave to differ from this opinion, and to point out how common it was for terms to be misapplied as to their import. The word 'property' had, by the ablest writers, been called 'jus utendi, fruendi, disponendi;' it was therefore. evident that any idea, although it was incorporeal in itself, yet if it promised future profit to the inventor of it, was a property.”

Plus the scoping to the bounds of copyright itself:

“It was absurd to imagine, that either a sale, a loan, or a gift of a book, carried with it an Implied right of multiplying copies; so much paper and print were sold, lent, or given, and an unlimited perusal was warranted from such sale, loan or gift, but it could not be conceived that when 5s. were paid for a book, the seller meant to transfer a right of gaining 1001.; every man must feel to the contrary, and confess the absurdity of such an argument.”

And if a copyright is a property, then we have to recognise the right of that property’s owner to make use of it as he wishes – including the right to sell. Or as we know with academic publishing to give away in exchange for editing, peer review and dissemination – plus of course protection of the author’s interests vis plagiarism. This is the publishing process and it is essential to academia however funded. Under the established – copyright protected – model there is no cost to the author as the subscriber pays. There are open access models based on authors paying for publication but these only work where there is significant and substantial public funding available (e.g. PubMed).

This is an important debate – personally I support only some of the campaigners arguments but the manner in which the bill has been captured by producer interests should concern us (although phrases like “Formula One” and “fox hunting” do spring to mind at this point). Let’s be clear, however, that despite the wonders of the web the publishing process remains important – maybe not to a new Indie rock band from Scunthorpe but certainly to the advancement of academic understanding.

If we enter into a free-for-all on copyright we run the risk of killing the goose laying the golden egg – and I don’t mean Bono creaming off a few more millions for crappy stadium rock. Without copyright there is no basis for publishers to operate – it is a simple as that. We return to the situation prior to the 1709 Act where protection is fought for in the Chancery Court or using common law or where there is protection for some censored publishing but not for uncensored publishing. And, if we deem copyright to be property, we have a duty as a society to enforce the rights to that property whoever they may be held by.

The question for Governments should be to ask what is appropriate, what can be enforced and where the bounds for the protection of copyright actually lay. In my view, the onus should lie with the owner of the copyright and his agents to take action. Government should make it possible for such action to be taken but not through the agency of a Whitehall Department.

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Two family stories - and why barring people without a degree from nursing is wrong

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Family Story #1

My Uncle was a judge. OK, I hear you - "Tory has judge for uncle, surprise, surprise". But my uncle - Ray Palmer - was one of the first solicitors to join the circuit.

So what? Oh yes - my uncle did not have a university degree. He joined a solicitors at 14 straight from school and worked his way up through the firm.

Today a young man from Ray's working class background would find it really hard to achieve what he did - to achieve without a university degree

Family Story #2

My wife is a publisher. She was a director of a leading academic publisher for many years and is widely regarded and respected in the business.

I'm very proud - she has achieved more and contributed more than I have.

So what? My wife does not have a university degree.

Taking these two stories as examples - and there are thousands more. Why are we barring yet another profession - nursing - to those who choose not to go to university. The idea that you can learn how to be a nurse in three years at university is ridiculous - and thousands of young people with loads to contribute are now unable to fulfill their promise and their dreams.