Well, hi everyone…. most of you know me now and over the past 3 months I must have read 150-200 blogs, articles, reports and opinions as well as in excess off 100,000 tweets, comments. The No to PCT ‘thing’ started just as Facebook page to help connect the Profession through social media. In the space of a week the demand was also for a twitter feed.

In the last 3 months we have had over 1400 likes on Facebook, nearly 2000 followers and tweeted nearly 9,000 times.

Within a day of going live I connected with Katrina and Rachel of saveukjustice and together we had one common goal. To connect, unify and save uk justice.

For those who don’t know, I am just a Costs Draftsman from Birmingham and have been lucky enough to be able to spend hours, days and weeks posting and interacting with the profession. Although I know many people from reputation and meeting the odd occasional person on a costs course, I feel privileged to have spoken to literally hundreds of people I wouldn’t normally get the chance to meet in day to day life. to quote someone from earlier this week ‘in a perverse kind of way i’ve really enjoyed it’ that person knows who they are. I am humbled with the comments and good wishes that have come my way, but make no apology for filling up your timelines with words of inspiration, motivation and sometimes pure childish sillyness.

Whilst some people have thrown some abuse and unfair comments my way, on the whole the feedback has been positive.

This brings me to the reason why I have blogged.

A massive thank you, not just for all the kind comments, but for sticking together being unified and finding a common goal. Trying to ensure that your profession doesn’t go the same way as many other public sector professions.

A massive thank you for taking the time to talk to people you and I would never have spoken about work to before. We have had probably one of the biggest networking events the profession has ever seen. We have talked to (sometimes unsuccessfully) but most of the time positively with Housing Officers, Probation staff, Speech therapists, Interpreters (who’d of thought it), Court Staff, CPS, Train Drivers, Firemen, Nurses, Students, Schoolteachers, School Children and for goodness sake a Hulk, Dalek and 2 flaming badgers.

We’ve got the word out there Justice should not be run by middle managers, directors of procurement, financial chief operating officers, Lord Chancellors….. oh wait yes Lord Chancellors, not cost cutting people, not some fancy job title which means justice must be based on costs and price. This Lord Chancellor has a duty to ensure justice is efficient and remains independent.

Despite the Law Society giving him, in my opinion, a way out of what should have been a difficult Justice Select Committee, the proposals he originally laid before us in April of this year are still there.

Please do not lose sight of this, there has been much discussion this week over the rights and wrongs of the Law Society proposals, but the situation is this. The Law Society Proposals are not on the table. The ‘Transforming Legal Aid’ consultation is the paper still on the table and until every solitary one of those ridiculous proposals are thrown in the shredder, with our responses, we do not engage with the Ministry of Justice.

So far 102,000 of you have signed the E-petition at http://www.tinyurl.com/itsmychoice I will blog about petitions next, but please keep the pressure up don’t lose sight of the common aim here.

3 months of #saveukjustice for a lifetime of justice.

Thank you