Chris Milton : Independent Journalist & Writer

Plain text version (no online copy available):

In a world first the Supreme Court of the Philippines has issued groundbreaking rules on how environmental cases should be handled which will come into force later this week.

The procedures have rebalanced the legal process between campaigners and corporate or government bodies and made quick and accessible legal mechanisms available to those who wish to protect limit needless environmental damage.

The procedures include the following provisions:

Access to the law by any citizen
A cheap civil law mechanism allows any citizen to bring a complaint against a company or government body with many of the usual legal fees waived.

The complaint must be answered within 15 days and certain defences are barred in order to ensure the matter is resolved within a year. (more…)

Following on from the examination of supermarkets published last week, this time I turn my attention to the Banks.

This quick survey is different from the previous one in two ways: first of all I’m not basing the criteria on an existing survey, and secondly I’ve gone for a simpler method of calculating and displaying the results of the survey.

As before, this is based on a quick examination of the websites and reports of the banks in question: this is designed for guidance purposes, not to be empirically accurate. (more…)