Only if it was with intent to obtain something in return. If it was truly gratuitous, and of trifling value, then it would be OK.

Anyway, it's not just cops,pretty much the same prohibition on bribery applies to almost everyone now, thanks to the Bribery Act 2010 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/23/contents).

In the UK it's flat-out illegal to pay police officers for anything related to their being police officers, be that information, favours, or whatever.

The trial of other people accused of the same crime was still ongoing, on which she was a juror, which is why it was contempt for contacting the acquitted party.
  .
Although it's also illegal, in the UK, to discuss anything about the jury deliberations after the trial.

In England, a juror was jailed last year for communicating with an acquitted defendant on Facebook: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jun/16/facebook-juror-jailed-for-eight-months

And another was jailed last week for researching the defendant on the internet generally: http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/23/juror-contempt-court-online-research

This is already being seriously proposed for English schools, but it's still unclear where they are going to find the teachers who understand enough about CS and programming to deliver the classes.

"In the EU we have the further problem that member states can apply for arrest warrants after convicting people in their absence"

Are you quite sure about that? Don't most (all?) EU countries hold that trials in the absence of the accused are a violation of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights? The EU arrest warrant, and resulting extradition, is so easily available it's hard to see why an EU country would ever have recourse to try someone in their absence if they knew them to be in another EU country.

"On the contrary" to what? Everything I wrote is totally, 100%, correct.

Anyway, the only substantive changes the HRA made were (a) to allow the pleading of Convention rights cases in the UK courts (rather than pursuing them in Luxembourg), and (b) to require the UK judiciary to take Convention rights, and ECtHR jurisprudence, into account in reaching their judgements.

The ECHR may, or may not, be "vague and littered with exceptions", but it does not come from the EU - it's the product of the Council of Europe, which was formed in 1949, and of which the UK is a founder member.

There are two, quite distinct, legal Europes - the European Union, and the Council of Europe.

The EU has 27 members, the CoE has 47.

The EU court is the Court of Justice of the European Union, which sits in Luxembourg.
The CoE's court, the European Court of Human Rights, sits in Strasbourg.

Don't worry; we don't have state licensing or certification for EEs over here.

Junior lecturers (assistant professor in US-speak) in the UK start on about the same -- and they will normally have PhDs. It's not a bad salary for a recent graduate, which seems to be what Hawking is looking for.

Easy £50K for an EE? You're not talking about the the UK, are you?
So, it's totally irrelevant to a job based in the UK.

It's more or less the average wage in the UK.

. If you took another picture at that point you would be trespassing and and since that is an indictable offence they could actually arrest you at that point and hold you for the police.

This is not the case in Scotland, where the events took place. There, trespass is not an indictable offence (it's a civil delict), and, even if it were, the rights of non-police to detain people is very limited, especially if force is required.

the police told him they were entitled to confiscate his phone (under anti-terrorism legislation)

Which, for the record, he had no power to do, under anti-terrorism legislation, or any other provision.

(Ignoring the England/Scotland confusion...)

It's also highly unlikely that such ah onerous contract term (camera confiscation) would be binding, unless the conditions were very prominently displayed (Thornton v Shoe Lane Parking Ltd). And I can tell you that they are not - I've been to the Braehead mall many times (I used to work nearby), and such signs, if they exist, are not prominent.