It says: “In practice the opinion of silk is often endowed with a prestige which does not necessarily correspond with its value. There is often little to distinguish the silk’s opinion from that of a competent junior.”The report says that the Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine has criticised excessive fees for barristers, with some earning well over pounds 1m a year, and gives an example of a legally aided criminal trial, comparing the fees for different barristers. For a four-day hearing for a manslaughter case, a silk would receive pounds 5,365 from legal aid while a junior would receive pounds 2,683 for the same work.It says big firms of solicitors have complained about QCs charging pounds 750 an hour for commercial work and adds: “A retainer for silk of pounds 40,000 is not uncommon, with a daily `freshener’ of pounds 2,000 a day.”The number of QCs – around 900 – has stayed at about 10 per cent of the total number of barristers (they are King’s Counsel under a king). She married, but in 1983 her husband was shot dead by loyalists. It was their son, who is around 11 years old, whose life was threatened a few weeks ago.Jack summed up as his wife looked out the window: “That’s why I say Bloody Sunday is still an ongoing thing.

We are three families, and each of us had another death resulting from the deaths of the lads in that explosion. How many other sons like mine joined the IRA after Bloody Sunday? Bloody Sunday was the pebble in the pool and the ripples went out And they’re still going out.”. The system of having Queen’s Counsel – or silks – should be abolished because it only exists so barristers can charge higher fees, claims a solicitor writing for a right-wing think-tank. The two lads in the front were able to scramble out and run but the three in the back were just stuck there, and they kept firing and firing.” A 16-year-old youth from the estate, who was in the back seat, was killed Also in the back seat was Jack’s daughter Margaret She died a week later.

For generations the letters QC have held a certain mystique for the general public. Michael Streeter, Legal Affairs Correspondent, looks at the case for the prosecution. “The truth is that the vast majority of young people in the West have no interest in classical music whatsoever,” he said. The third person in the back seat was another girl whose brother had died in the garage explosion.Although she was hit by twelve bullets she survived. Later, in 1972, a brother of the other teenage IRA member was walking home after work when loyalists shot him dead.In 1974, two years after Bloody Sunday, five young people from the estate were in a car driving to their work in a nearby factory when loyalist gunmen stepped in front of it and opened fire.Jack related: “It was a two-door Ford Anglia.

A senior republican appeared at their home to pay his respects Jack recalled: “He was commiserating with us I told him to fuck off He had all this patter about the three volunteers and all. I said, `Fuck off, they’re three dead volunteers now, they’re no use to anybody’.”The families of the other teenagers also had no republican connections. But the explosion branded the little estate as a centre of IRA activity, and loyalists went for it.The father of one of the teenagers, who worked as a cleaner at the High Court in Belfast, realised he was being stalked as he went to work He gave up his job, and died soon afterwards. More than 25 years on there was still shock in his voice as he re-lived the experience.

“Under the first sheet was the top half of one of the lads, just the upper torso, all covered in cement dust. Under the next sheet there was nothing recognisable at all, nothing, just a heap of flesh and an evil smell The next one was the same, a big tray, a big steel tray. The only identifiable piece of a human being was a human tongue sitting on the top of it all That memory hasn’t left me. The smell sticks in your mind.”Jack and his wife were insistent that the three teenagers were not working on a bomb in transit. By making discreet inquiries, he said, he had discovered that the three had been ordered by the IRA to remove gelignite which was in a dangerous condition.They refused to allow any paramilitary trappings at their son’s funeral. When Brendan didn’t appear for his evening meal that’s when we started to worry, and then it was confirmed. The police and a priest came down, and they had a piece of shirt with them.