Firstly, I need to mess around with and change the theme as it seems to be doing a few odd things. This will result in some slight cosmetic changes. It should also open the door to doing different post formats in future, which may lead to my posting links and Twitter style very short posts from time to time. I still use the blog as a sort of online legal notebook, and if I post a link to Twitter it is effectively gone forever after about a week. Posting a link to the blog will store it much better for my purposes, and probably for yours too.

More significantly, I intend to introduce a forum. This was an idea I had some time ago but abandoned because of the difficulties in moderating comments. There is only one decent, well used forum for UK immigration lawyers of which I am aware, which is the Refugee Legal Group. Its title somewhat limits its scope, although that doesn’t stop some people asking all sorts of immigration questions there. I also myself find it rather unsatisfactory, although others seem to remain devotees.

To avoid the moderation issue the plan is to make the Free Movement forum a private, members-only affair to which a log in will be required. There will be a sort of approval process and it will be blog regulars, lawyers, academics and, perhaps, students only. Giving immigration advice is potentially a criminal offence and I simply cannot police having the public on a forum in case anyone starts trying to advise them!

I THINK I can manage the technology for this, but won’t really know until I try.

If you have thoughts or suggestions (good idea, bad idea, different forums for different topics, whatever), please do leave a comment here or drop me a line.