Cuts to legal aid 2012. How unkind am I to laugh?

[longwayoff]

Nigel Evans, Tory MP, happily voted through the hefty cuts to legal aid in 2012. Hurrah, away with the scroungers. Oh dear though. Mr Evans was later accused, falsely, of criminal acts and Mr Evans had to spend his life savings on his defence. Guess what? He didn't like that and now thinks the cuts were too harsh. AIBU to wish it had cost him his house as well, so he could experience a bit more austerity?

I too am laughing hollowly ... These fucks rarely get their comeuppance and when they do it would be rude not to chuckle

I always like it when the biter gets bit.

Really unkind. And him coming out making this protest is I likely to change things for him but may change things for the future. Karma is a bitch as he has discovered but your statement is no better.

So he has seemingly learnt his lesson and got his comeuppance and all you can do is laugh that he got falsely accused of crimes. You sound nice.

The taste of ones own medicine is the most bitter.

Nice to know you are happy someone was falsely accused of rape, such allegations add to the myth that people are falsely accused all the time and why people who are raped aren't believed and all you can do is laugh, try thinking about wider consequences before you all laugh, fucking idiots

I think the point is, the consequences were always pretty bloody clear. He knew what they were, he just didn’t think he would suffer them.

I agree with the OP - these privileged types need to know what the impact of austerity really is.

Totally serves him right.

Karma is a bitch as he has discovered but your statement is no better.

I question the morals of someone who thinks laughing at someone is “no better” than the austerity cuts that have literally killed peoples.

He never would have been entitled to legal aid anyway

Karma - how I love her!

it is mad isn't it - how could you agree to that and never think about it!

well, he still wouldn't care if it hadn't affected him.

You'd be surprised kikipost

Robert Maxwell's sons claimed 000's in legal aid, although they were enormously wealthy, by putting assets in wives' names.

Let's just hope the ones wanking over universal credit get a taste of their own medicine one day, too.

Well, I'm not laughing. But I am headdesking so hard I have a dent.

Agree completely with Weebitawks:
the consequences were always pretty bloody clear. He knew what they were, he just didn’t think he would suffer them.

You are being unreasonable to laugh at this. It is no laughing matter for the thousands who go without legal representation, and without justice being served, every year.

It serves Nigel Evans right though. Funny isn't it that they don't think anything provided by the state is worth funding until they need it themselves.

So he has seemingly learnt his lesson and got his comeuppance and all you can do is laugh that he got falsely accused of crime

Don't misrepresent what OP said, RandomObject. Self-evidently she is not laughing that he got falsely accused, but that his own heartlessness and shortsightedness has come back to bite him. At the time the cuts were made, the subtext amongst the MPs supporting them was very much along the lines of "It won't ever affect me or people like me, so why should I care" - because they simply didn't have the imagination to realise that the cuts could and would hit anyone and everyone.

YANBU at all to be glad that he has been bitten by his own party's policies. This is less schadenfreude, and more "serves the fucker right for voting for something that has adversely affected so many more than just him".

If I was innocent of something I was accused of then I'd like to think I would defend myself in court because I'd know I was in the right. I may not win the case but I'd be even crosser if I'd paid someone to defend me and still lost. It's only if I was guilty I'd think I'd probably need a barrister and I don't see why someone else should go to work and pay their taxes to fund that.
Too many people in life think others should pay to sort out their problems for them rather than tacking the issues themselves or not getting into certain situations in the first place e.g. not getting involved with unsuitable partners, getting into debt etc.

Someone above described him as privileged.

Doesn't sound like his money situation put him in the same category as the Camerons and Osbornes and Ress-Moggs.

But he was privileged in exactly the way many of us are: he simply didn't grasp that he was, through no virtue of his own, in the advantageous position of not having been accused of a crime he didn't commit. And that that privilege could, through no fault of his own, be removed at any moment.

Now he gets it.

See also, people who don't expect to become disabled. People who don't expect to lose their jobs and be unable to walk into another. People who don't expect to suffer financial catastrophes of one kind or another.

PerkingFaintly It's all relative. The vast majority of people in the UK do not have £130,000 in savings and never will. I'd be happy if I had a quarter of that!

@quizqueen If you think the innocent don't need representation and will be found not guilty just because they are innocent you are deluding yourself. Do have a read of the book by The Secret Barrister: The Law and How it's Broken.

I hope you’d have someone to talk you out of that if it happened quizqueen.

@quizqueen That is both incredibly naive and incredibly patronising.