The Guardian recently reported a study that two-thirds of the British public backed the banning of the practice of “firing and rehiring” by employers.   “Firing and hiring” occurs where employees have been asked to agree to a change in their contractual terms, usually a less favourable change, but they do not want to and the employer then considers that it has been left with no option but to terminate their contract on notice and offer to rehire them under

The Guardian recently reported that a major rail company emailed over 2,000 of its employees to thank them for their dedication over the Covid-19 pandemic across the course of the past year. This email promised a singular one-off payment for the employees’ hard work after a “huge strain was placed upon a large number of our workforce”.   Unfortunately, the employees who clicked through the email discovered that the promised payment was not actually in store for them. Instead, they

Often your conveyancer will tell you that the ‘mining and mineral rights to your property have been reserved’. But what does this actually mean?   To start with, the legal position set out by the Supreme Court in Bocardo SA v Star Energy UK Onshore Ltd [2010] UKSC 35 is that the owner of land owns everything below it except where rights to the minerals have been separated off and reserved to third parties. Such separation could have taken place

A judge has refused to publish the details of a high-profile divorce case, despite intense public interest. The Hon. Mr Justice Cohen dismissed media applications for information following the divorce granted between Lady Hiroko and Sir Frederick Barclay, one of the multi-millionaire ‘Barclay Brothers’ and a national newspaper proprietor. The divorce, initiated by Lady Barclay and approved at the end of March 2021, saw the judge order Sir Frederick Barclay to pay his wife £100 million.     In England

Storm Sturgeon blasts Boris re Children’s Rights Where are the rights of children best protected in the UK? Does a piece of legislation exist that comprehensively outlines your child’s rights during a separation or divorce?   The United Nations has recently created such a document. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is an international human rights treaty which covers all aspects of a child’s life to ensure they have adequate civil, political, economic and cultural rights.  

Long COVID, also known as ‘post-COVID-19 syndrome’ or ‘long-tail COVID’, is a condition where those who have previously suffered from COVID-19 experience symptoms that can last for several weeks or even months after the actual infection.   Common symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pain, brain fog, insomnia, heart palpitations, dizziness, joint pain, depression and anxiety, sickness, diarrhoea, stomach aches, loss of appetite, coughs, headaches, sore throat and rashes. The Office for National Statistics estimates that over one million

The impending divorce between Bill and Melinda Gates is one of the most high-profile breakups ever, but it’s a sad fact that divorce is a fact of life in the modern age, with nearly half of Britons having to go through one at some point. The Gates’s divorce is taking place in King County, Washington, under US law, but what would the situation be if the couple were getting divorced in England and Wales?   Grounds for divorce   Court

Hungarian worker who showed ‘swastika’ tattoo at work unfairly dismissed   A supermarket employee who was fired after showing a ‘swastika’ tattoo to a colleague has won an unfair dismissal claim against his former employer.   Istvan Horvarth, originally from Hungary, had been a caretaker at Lidl’s Telford Hadley store since 2013. Horvarth was fired from his job after showing a co-worker a swastika tattoo on his upper arm, claiming it was a ‘Buddhist peace symbol’.   The co-worker, identified

High profile divorces always make the news. After all, we are fascinated by them. Famous actors, movie stars and singers seemingly have everything they could ever want: money, fame, endorsements and legions of loyal fans. So why are we left scratching our heads when their supposedly perfect marriages fall apart in divorce? How could it all go so wrong?   World-famous hip hop mogul Dr. Dre was ordered to pay his estranged wife, Nicole Young, $500,000 on Tuesday 28th April

Cage fighter and former reality TV star, Alex Reid, has found himself in the headlines again recently.   In all personal injury claims brought after April 2015, where the person bringing the case is found to have been fundamentally dishonest, the claim as a whole is likely to be dismissed and they are likely to be denied protection from paying the other side’s legal fees. This is the case even if parts of their claim have succeeded in whole or