The assessments which include tests on immigration procedure law and ethics are part of a wider clampdown on abuses of

The assessments, which include tests on immigration procedure, law, and ethics, are part of a wider clampdown on abuses of the £174m-a-year legal aid system.Crispin Passmore, head of immigration services at the Legal Services Commission, which has joint responsibility with the Law Society for the compulsory assessments, said: “We must make sure the public has confidence in the system and solicitors are not just making money out of vulnerable people.” A private company would perform the tests.From April 2005, the commission will require all advisers working in immigration – solicitors and non-solicitors -to pass the tests. All immigration lawyers are to undergo strict new checks in a bid to weed out unscrupulous ones who take on clients who have no reasonable hope of winning asylum in Britain. He said it could also be a matter for the Human Rights Commission.”The Electoral Office has made a quite arbitrary decision and I think it is very, very unfair,” Mr McGlone said. “He is entitled to everything else but the Electoral Office is saying that just because he has Down syndrome he is less of a citizen than anyone else and has less of a right to vote.”The Electoral Office was not available for comment yesterday.David Congdon, Mencap’s head of policy, said: “People with a learning disability are equal citizens and should be allowed the same civil rights as everyone else, including the right to vote.”. Mr McGlone has been in contact with the Equality Commission, seeking to challenge the issue under disability legislation.

This fellow wants to go out and vote with everyone else and I know fine well that he knows who he wants to vote for,” said Mr McGlone.The Mid-Ulster MLA claimed that his constituent was not alone and that he knew – through fellow Assembly members – of hundreds of people across the province who were suddenly in the same position. The Hall?hoir contributed thrillingly, wholly involved, and involving, from its position on the stage, surrounding the instrumentalists. Despite being a far cry from the currently fashionable one-to-a-part chorus, it succeeded in being both sensitive and fervent, fast-talking its way through the casting of lots for Jesus’s clothes, and sublimely radiant in the broad melodic sweep of the bigger, meditative choruses. Choral director James Burton had clearly worked hard to achieve a combination of containment and clarity. The new Hall?outh Choir added a freshness to the chorales and a touching tenderness to the warm tones of James Rutherford’s bass lament, “By dying has Thou conquered death?”.

After an account as expressive and deeply-felt as this St John, one can only hope that the bigger dramatic pictures of the St Matthew Passion (sung in German, please) and the B Minor Mass will follow soon. The Hall? audience is hungry for more, and can’t wait another century or so.. Stravinsky once called the lute “perhaps the most perfect and certainly the most personal instrument of all”. Doubtless he was thinking of its more intimate, silvery tones compared with the fuller sounding guitar.