I verify that this is the exhibit marked '[exhibit reference]' to my [number] witness statement dated [date]. ii) having the required medical qualifications for the purposes of diagnosis and prognosis of a whiplash injury. If you have any doubts or reservations about what you say, state them. You don’t want to be accused of misleading the court by leaving a false impression.

Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions about Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions about

Even if you're a party to the proceedings, it's your overriding duty to tell the unvarnished truth, politely and respectfully. If you start to advocate your own case or take a side, everyone notices. whistle-red Since the financial crisis of 2008, there have been regular complaints about the revolving door between the financial sector and governmental institutions around the world, most importantly the White House. There has been far less criticism of the similar door that links the media and politics. The exception to this comes from populist leaders, who routinely denounce all “mainstream” democratic and media institutions as a single liberal elite, that acts against the will of the people. One of the reasons they are able to do this is because there is a grain of truth in what they say.This is not as simple as distrust. The appearance of digital platforms, smartphones and the ubiquitous surveillance they enable has ushered in a new public mood that is instinctively suspicious of anyone claiming to describe reality in a fair and objective fashion. It is a mindset that begins with legitimate curiosity about what motivates a given media story, but which ends in a Trumpian refusal to accept any mainstream or official account of the world. We can all probably locate ourselves somewhere on this spectrum, between the curiosity of the engaged citizen and the corrosive cynicism of the climate denier. The question is whether this mentality is doing us any good, either individually or collectively. At the trial, witnesses are usually limited to speaking to matters referred to in their witness statement, unless there is a good reason to expand upon those matters.

Witness Evidence and Questioning — Defence-Barrister.co.uk Witness Evidence and Questioning — Defence-Barrister.co.uk

Trust in the media is low, but this entrenched scepticism long predates the internet or contemporary populism. From the Sun’s lies about Hillsborough to the BBC’s failure to expose Jimmy Savile as early as they might, to the fevered enthusiasm for the Iraq war that gripped much of Fleet Street, the British public has had plenty of good reasons to distrust journalists. Even so, the number of people in the UK who trust journalists to tell the truth has actually risen slightly since the 1980s. Professional editors have always faced the challenge of reducing long interviews to short consumable chunks and discarding the majority of photos or text. Editing is largely a question of what to throw away. This necessitates value judgements, that readers and audiences once had little option but to trust. Now, however, the question of which image or sentence is truly significant opens irresolvable arguments. One person’s offcut is another person’s revealing nugget. you give your permission (in writing) for your statement to be used for another purpose, other than in the proceedings for which it was made The financial obstacles confronting critical, independent, investigative media are significant. If the Johnson administration takes a more sharply populist turn, the political obstacles could increase, too – Channel 4 is frequently held up as an enemy of Brexit, for example. But let us be clear that an independent, professional media is what we need to defend at the present moment, and abandon the misleading and destructive idea that – thanks to a combination of ubiquitous data capture and personal passions – the truth can be grasped directly, without anyone needing to report it. at the trial: The trial takes place after all of the preparation been completed. All of the parties, their witnesses, their experts (if any) come to court for the dispute to be heard and decided by the judge.Where the source of the information or belief is not provided, it's likely to lead to the evidence given being (at least) heavily discounted and perhaps excluded from evidence which the court is prepared to consider altogether. On one level, heightened scepticism towards the establishment is a welcome development. A more media-literate and critical citizenry ought to be less easy for the powerful to manipulate. It may even represent a victory for the type of cultural critique pioneered by intellectuals such as Pierre Bourdieu and Stuart Hall in the 1970s and 80s, revealing the injustices embedded in everyday cultural expressions and interactions. In case you need reminding, the point can be illustrated as follows: I would not be writing this on a laptop if computers had not been invented, but this does not prove that computers were invented so that I could write this.

Book Review: Questions of Truth: God, Science and Belief by

assessing motives for lying: Courts know that witnesses can regularly lie. This does not mean that all of the evidence of the witness is discarded or discounted. Court is likely to take into account and/or assess ( EPI Environmental Technologies Inc -v- Symphony Plastic Technologies PLC [2004] EWHC 2945): Although they give evidence for party that briefs them, experts owe an overriding duty to the court, and should confirm that they have done what they are meant to, in addition to the statement of truth.whether the witness has lied in respect of a particular part of the case or all of the evidence given Although it sounds silly, "lay evidence" and "lay witness statements" is evidence given by a person who is not appointed as an expert witness in the proceedings. To tell the difference between expert evidence and lay evidence, here's the terminology: