Busy

Published on 7 February 2010 in this site. 1 Comment Tags: .

Geeklawyer is not dead. But he is in a very large & com­plex case and so is unable to spare the time to blog. How­ever the mer­ci­ful release of clos­ing sub­mis­sions will soon be in sight where­after the whor­ing and drink­ing shall recommence.

Dear prospective advertiser number one million. Thank you for your interest

Published on 26 January 2010 in idiotic. 3 Comments Tags: .

Dear Casabian,
I’d rather have my bol­locks chewed off by a bad tem­pered rot­tweiler with a taste for slow pain, than have a bunch of low-life ambu­lance chasers taint my site with their ads.

Or alter­na­tively you could pay me £30,000 a quar­ter and I would give you a small link at the bot­tom of my page: then I would love you harder than I love your mother.

Let me know.

Warmest regards

Geeklawyer

———

On 25 Jan 2010, at 23:08, [Casabian Rotunda Emeti­cus] wrote:

Hello,

My name is [.…] and I work with http://www.[ambulance-chasers-direct].com . Ambu­lance Chasers Direct is a per­sonal injury claims firm who offer com­pen­sa­tion to all UK clients. We were curi­ous to see if you would be will­ing to let us gain a pres­ence on your site? What we would like you to do is to have a weblink to our site. We’re aim­ing pack­ages for 3 or 6 months, how much might this cost to be done? Please do let me know, we would really love to be a part of your website.

Thanks so much for your time and consideration.

Warmest of regards

[Casabian Rotunda Emeti­cus]

Dear Mother

Published on 22 January 2010 in This Blog. 7 Comments Tags: .

Thanks old girl. See you around.

Yea, but they’re our sons-of-bitches

Published on 6 January 2010 in politics. 13 Comments Tags: , .

Geeklawyer is up to his arse in lit­i­ga­tion but had to put draft­ing aside for a moment to com­ment on UK favouritism towards spe­cific war criminals.

Quite some time ago nations decided that it was right & proper that ex-heads of state and politi­cians who mur­dered tor­tured and abused their pop­u­la­tions could no longer say;

“Dude, like, I”m a head of state. Sov­er­eign immu­nity. You can’t pros­e­cute me for any­thing. Cya. Mwah”

The the­ory is that the likes of Hitler, Pol Pot, Pinochet could all of a sud­den find them­selves in an uncom­fort­able posi­tion. While they owned the cor­rupt or intim­i­dated judi­ciary and the polit­i­cal sys­tems of their own coun­tries and got their acts rub­ber stamped they were no longer able to rely on this rub­ber stamp­ing to get immu­nity abroad. This might per­suade them to be less beastly.

As Pinochet found to his cha­grin he now had to answer for atroc­i­ties that he thought, like his vic­tims, were buried at sea. Like­wise a steady stream of third world lead­ers have had to answer to the Inter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Court: Charles Tay­lor, Milo­se­vich, Pres­i­dent Bashir  and the like. Oth­ers have had to answer to national courts. All this has hap­pened one way or another under the Fourth Geneva Con­ven­tion. Most of these ex-leaders, and their ex-states, then make the plea that this is biased West­ern Jus­tice that is only applied against Third World nations unim­por­tant to the polit­i­cal needs of the West.

Geeklawyer usu­ally huffs and puffs: dis­misses this as unat­trac­tive self-serving whin­ing. Usu­ally for good rea­son. Until now.

The recent out­rage of the Labour gov­ern­ment at a court hav­ing the temer­ity to issue an arrest for the war crim­i­nal Tzipi Livni has lead to sug­ges­tions that the sys­tem will be fid­dled changed so that it can’t hap­pen in future. The absur­dity is that there is a cred­i­ble case to answer under inter­na­tional law and a mul­ti­plic­ity of evi­dence of delib­er­ate and sys­tem­atic abuse of Pales­tini­ans by the ter­ror­ist IDF. There is evi­dence against Hamas also, it should be said, although less in quan­tity and sever­ity (though that is hardly an excuse). That there is such a case against past Israeli politi­cians and cur­rent ones is the result of inves­ti­ga­tions by Mr Jus­tice Richard Goldstone.

Rather than fid­dling the sys­tem to help out, in the words of US Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt, ‘our sons of bitches’, they should let jus­tice take it’s course.

What the Labour Gov­ern­ment should do is to butt out of med­dling in the legal sys­tem for polit­i­cal gain. Oh, was Geeklawyer stu­pid enough to just write that?

The down side of free speech.

Published on 3 January 2010 in Civil Liberties. 10 Comments Tags: , , .

The mod­ern age is made deeply per­plex­ing in some ways by mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. Imag­ine if you will being in Lon­don in 1915; imag­ine wit­ness­ing a parade by eth­nic Ger­mans crit­i­cis­ing the British army for fight­ing the Kaiser; imag­ine protests at the killing of Ger­man sol­diers and civil­ians. An odd image you’ll agree. And yet we are in that posi­tion now it seems: Mus­lim activists are propos­ing to under­take a protest march in Woot­ton Bas­sett (who’s sig­nif­i­cance is that it is near RAF Lyne­ham in Wilt­shire where the bod­ies of the fallen are returned by the RAF). The shock­ing thing is that not only will they be crit­i­cis­ing the war, but also crit­i­cis­ing the laud­ing of British sol­diers who fell dur­ing the fighting.

Many Brits would agree with the for­mer protest. The Iraq & Afghan wars are per­ceived by many as point­less, or even dan­ger­ously destruc­tive; wars whose only pur­pose is to allow self-deluding British politi­cians with large egos to play with big boys and kid them­selves they mat­ter a fuck­ing damn.

Where, for many, they cross the line is to besmirch the mem­o­ries of the fallen. Geeklawyer is not alone he sus­pects in draw­ing a firm dis­tinc­tion between the acts of politi­cians in start­ing a war and the poor dumb infantry in pros­e­cut­ing it. To be sim­plis­tic, the politi­cians are slimy manip­u­la­tive scum and our squad­dies are unques­tioned heroes who deserve our unqual­i­fied sup­port in doing the shit bit of wars. Obvi­ously it’s more com­plex than that: many politi­cians are decent and prin­ci­pled; and war-crimes against civil­ians are com­mit­ted by a small num­ber British troops who can’t merely be dis­missed glibly as “a few bad apples”.

Nonethe­less, Geeklawyer gives, nigh-on, unqual­i­fied sup­port to our troops. Which made his reac­tion to the premise of the march one of out­raged indig­na­tion and deep offence. Attack the war yes; attack our politi­cians? here — have a rock to throw; but attack our boys? Fuck. Right. Off.

He was not alone: Geeklawyer’s chum, ex-army offi­cer & prospec­tive lawyer, Oedi­pus Lex tells that ex-soldiers on Face­book are suf­fi­ciently unim­pressed that they have sug­gested dri­ving down to the protest march to make their feel­ings known. Calmer heads are sug­gest­ing that com­mon sense on all sides is the order of the day. Per­haps the police should ban the march on pub­lic order grounds, or the marcher should be per­suaded to be less provoca­tive and con­fine their invec­tive to the politicians.

And yet.

What of free speech? Real free speech. The speech we hate, rather than the speech we con­sider accept­able. As Oedipus_lex said on Twit­ter: “What did these guys die for if not free speech?” One of the issues that causes rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion of young Mus­lims is the unequal treat­ment they per­ceive them­selves to receive in this ‘mul­ti­cul­tural’ soci­ety: this may be real or imag­ined. What they do see is dozens of mus­lim civil­ians slaugh­tered by Black­wa­ter mur­der­ers, who are then acquit­ted. They see one hun­dred thou­sands Mus­lims killed with noth­ing but croc­o­dile tears shed by the politi­cians and modern-day ‘Cru­saders’, as they put it, of the British army. They may be entirely wrong about this or they may be entirely right. But what they should be able to do is to protest and to make these claims.

Of course doing it in a mil­i­tary town is provoca­tive and some say “Use a lit­tle com­mon sense”. But what is ‘com­mon sense’? And why should one not be ‘provoca­tive’? Should the protest be arranged to hap­pen in the mid­dle of nowhere so o-one see? What’d be the point of that? And if one is mak­ing the point they wish to make, why not make it directly to exactly the peo­ple who are doing what causes one offence? Aren’t they the best peo­ple to receive the protest?

As a nation we’ve seen this repeat­edly in the March­ing Sea­son in North­ern Ire­land, for exam­ple, and it is fre­quently a bloody expen­sive and tire­some busi­ness. It’s also the price of democ­racy. All that aside Geeklawyer imag­ines that the local police will find a com­pelling rea­son to block the parade.

The Bar as a career

Published on 26 December 2009 in legal profession and the Bar. 5 Comments Tags: , , .

Geeklawyer was drink­ing with young LP : a delight­ful young stu­dent doing the GDL, or BPL, or MFI, or what­ever they are call­ing the law con­ver­sion course this year. Of course she was inter­est­ing for any num­ber of rea­sons: female, pretty, 22 and posh. Her large brain and incli­na­tion to dis­pense inci­sive opin­ions were not enough to put Geeklawyer off her, even though it is as desir­able for a woman to have an opin­ion as it is for her to have a penis (not at all).

No, the abid­ing impres­sion was that for all the uncer­tain­ties of the Bar it’s aspi­rants remain as buoy­ant and opti­mistic as ever. We griz­zled old hacks look in awe at youth. We see a call­ing (it’s a ‘Call­ing’ not some mere bour­geois pro­fes­sion like solic­it­ing) suf­fer­ing under a lead­er­ship appar­ently deter­mined to  fix it in Aspic: who ignore the rival­ries and encroach­ments of solic­i­tors, at the junior end of the legal world, on the one hand, and a deeply cor­rupt abu­sive gov­ern­ment deter­mined to under­mine fair tri­als and inde­pen­dent legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for those they per­se­cute, on the other.

Young LP  was well aware of this. She was also well aware of the hor­ror sto­ries of hun­dreds of appli­ca­tions per pupil­lage, with each appli­cant hav­ing an Oxbridge dou­ble first. Such war sto­ries will become her stock-in-trade when she starts on the BVC and becomes immersed in the whole bloody process. Of course she is an impres­sive high achiever: past pres­i­dent of her Uni­ver­sity Union, Good degree (albeit only Eng Lit) and win­ner of GL’s heart. Lofty achieve­ments indeed. But as she is well aware her peers and com­peti­tors will also have  sim­i­larly good CVs despite which she remains undaunted.

Ms LP was equally undaunted even by the real­i­ties of new entrants to the Bar: last minute instruc­tions for a hear­ing 100 miles away requir­ing overnighter prepa­ra­tion and for a fee that barely buys a starBucks.

Geeklawyer pointed out there were two fast routes to poverty at the Bar: Gov­ern­ment funded fam­ily law and crime; Miss LP’s career pref­er­ences. Daunted and deterred? Not even a lit­tle, both admirable and wor­ry­ing. Miss LP’s response was that she had heard that these sto­ries and prophe­cies of the Bar’s doom went back 30 or 40 years. True, but Geeklawyer remains of the view that recent trends are accel­er­at­ing the decline of the Bar in its tra­di­tional form. Miss LP says “Meh, Twas ever thus, tell it to the hand” .

Her final response was: “What I really need, there­fore, to sus­tain me is a rich hus­band”. And she caressed GL’s hand and flut­tered her long dreamy eye­lashes. There is ambi­tion and over–ambi­tion: madam is hot, but is she that hot?

Geeklawyer saves the Temple Libraries

Published on 10 December 2009 in the Bar. 3 Comments

As a deeply, and unjus­ti­fi­ably, mod­est man Geeklawyer is too often loathe to accept the praise rightly due to him. Per­haps on this one occa­sion he may ascend to the stage to receive the bou­quets of roses from a grate­ful legal librar­i­an­ship com­mu­nity. It seems that Inner and Mid­dle Tem­ple have decided that merg­ing the two libraries is not as attrac­tive a cost sav­ing option as ini­tially thought. Geeklawyer has posted on this topic before in unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally intem­per­ate terms.

Geeklawyer pre­vi­ously said “[the merger] does smell awfully like a plan being towed behind a very large fast mov­ing steam-roller.” Per­haps the cyn­i­cism was uncalled for or per­haps the stiff oppo­si­tion was effec­tive. As a firm dis­be­liever in the util­ity of democ­racy Geeklawyer really can’t accept that it was the latter.

The state­ment is:

After lengthy delib­er­a­tions, the Inner Tem­ple and Mid­dle Tem­ple have con­cluded that none of the avail­able options for a merger of their libraries and cre­ation of an advo­cacy and edu­ca­tion cen­tre is suf­fi­ciently desir­able to war­rant fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion and imple­men­ta­tion.  We have there­fore agreed to bring to an end the nego­ti­a­tions which have been tak­ing place under the aegis of the Joint Col­lab­o­ra­tion Committee.

We are aware of the great uncer­tain­ties these nego­ti­a­tions have caused to our library staffs and the Trea­sur­ers of both Inns would like to thank them for their pro­fes­sion­al­ism and for­bear­ance over the last nine months.

Geeklawyer will now be able to con­tinue his sec­ond career of sup­ply secret gins at work to the lady librar­i­ans, in exchange for sex­ual favours and being able to steal Halsbury’s laws.

American Bar Association blog awards. Geeklawyer nominated

Published on 6 December 2009 in This Blog and blogging. 0 Comments

To the not incon­sid­er­able amuse­ment and per­plex­ity of your scribe the Amer­i­can Bar asso­ci­a­tion added Geeklawyer’s mag­nif­i­cent blog to their can­di­dates in the IMHO (‘In my hum­ble opin­ion”) sec­tion of their annual award scheme.

The ABA did ask the top Brit blogs (Geeklawyer and CharonQC) to take part but, to be frank, nat­ural Brit mod­esty pre­vented us from engag­ing in the vul­gar self pro­mo­tion that falls so nat­u­rally onto Amer­i­can shoul­ders: we declined. We were, of course, hop­ing des­per­ately that they would ignore our affected ret­i­cence and put us in any­way. They did; thank heav­ens for Amer­i­can arro­gance towards Brits for once: at least this didn’t involve us invad­ing someone’s sov­er­eign ter­ri­tory on their behalf.

At the moment, to his shame, Geeklawyer is sec­ond from bot­tom out of a field of six. For good­ness sake we are even run­ning behind a woman; some­one called Alt­house who shame­fully pon­tif­i­cates on the law, instead of cook­ing and doing house­work. Top run­ner is some­one called Ran­dazza,from whose name we imag­ine him to be a stage magi­cian johnny.

Of course if Geeklawyer is opposed by con­tenders then he is des­per­ately ham­strung by his friends: The shock­ing wicked Scott Green­field (him­self stand­ing in the Crim­i­nal Lawyer blog vote) is a firm sup­porter, as is noto­ri­ous phi­lan­derer Brian Tannbaum, the infa­mous drunk­ard and ser­ial online groomer.

Despite being, self-evidently, bet­ter blogs we Brits are run­ning behind the Yanks due to their well known zeno­pho­bia and resent­ment at los­ing the War of Inde­pen­dence in 1776. We would urge you to reg­is­ter to vote. For us, obviously.

Xmas shopping online: a gothic horror

Published on 4 December 2009 in Random Fire and humour. 4 Comments Tags: , , .
Dear Mr Davies
Per­haps you will allow me to put you straight?
Irre­spec­tive of any prob­lems you have with credit card providers by get­ting on your high horse too quickly you have fallen off the other side from a great height.
I was polite­ness itself on the phone to your till-monkey, par­tic­u­larly given that it was I who was the vic­tim of an incom­pe­tently man­aged trans­ac­tion. When I asked your job­sworth employee for ‘some­one to speak to about this prob­lem’ it was in the knowl­edge that most com­pe­tent e-commerce com­pa­nies, even the credit card com­pa­nies, pre­tend to be inter­ested enough to pro­vide it. Like you they aren’t really inter­ested of course, but they are clued up enough to under­stand cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion even if the don’t care about it. So, when I asked for cus­tomer ser­vice per­son to speak to I was slightly sur­prised to get the ‘com­puter says no’ response. I did say “Are you sure? Is there no-one?”, and with hind­sight this was a shock­ingly impo­lite thing to do I’ll agree. I can under­stand your out­rage at this cus­tomer insolence.
I may or may not blame you or the credit card for incom­pe­tence in address ver­i­fi­ca­tion or mer­chant poli­cies in response; what I do blame you for is hav­ing inept snotty staff on the phone and a com­plaints han­dling pol­icy of a whiney hyper­sen­si­tive email to a crit­i­cal email.
If you object to the use of the infor­mal and casual lan­guage “screw up” in an email then, Dear Rev­erend Doc­tor Sen­si­tive, I do apol­o­gise and I wish you luck liv­ing in the 19th Cen­tury, since I’ll guess the 20th & 21st will be a shock. Give my love to Char­lotte Bronte and Queen Victoria.
For the avoid­ance of any doubt, yes, I have can­celled my order.
2009/12/4 Fairy­Goth­Mother <info@fairygothmother.co.uk>
David,
We have done noth­ing wrong here, and we are get­ting these vit­ri­olic com­ments from you via email and over the phone which are unacceptable.
Firstly, your card declined, and you can check that with your card com­pany. There­fore we could not take monies, as your card com­pany declined. WE DID NOT!
Sec­ond time , WE DECLINED, as YOUR card com­pany did not ver­ify the address you gave us as the card hold­ers. We have taken no funds from your account, and this can be checked again with your card com­pany. I have explained in my pre­vi­ous email how credit card address ver­i­fi­ca­tion works. We again, have no say in this, it is the banks/card com­pa­nies processes, not ours.
We have not been at fault at any stage of this order to date. If you wish to can­cel, it is your pre­rog­a­tive to do so, but please don’t blame us for prob­lems and issues with your credit/debit card!
John Davies
FGM UK Ltd
Fairy­Goth­Mother / Lulu and Lush
Web:  www.fairygothmother.co.uk
Shop:  Lulu and Lush, 15 Lamb Street, Old Spi­tal­fields, Lon­don E1 6EA, United Kingdom
Tel:  +44 (0)207 377 0370
P Do you really need to print this email?  P
DISCLAIMER:
This email is intended solely for the addressee(s). It may con­tain pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion. If you are not an intended addressee, please take no action based on it, nor show a copy to any­one. In this case, please reply to this email to high­light the error. Opin­ions and infor­ma­tion in this email that do not relate to the offi­cial busi­ness of FGM UK Ltd shall be under­stood as nei­ther given nor endorsed by the company.
FGM UK Ltd has taken steps to ensure that this email and any attach­ments are virus-free, but we do advise that the recip­i­ent should check that the email and its attach­ments are actu­ally virus free. This is in keep­ing with good com­put­ing practice.
From: David Har­ris [mailto:david.harris.uk@gmail.com]
Sent: 04 Decem­ber 2009 17:13
To: Fairy­Goth­Mother
Sub­ject: Re: Order 30160
Hi
This is the sec­ond rejec­tion. I have spo­ken to Visa who say the pay­ment for £20 was *approved* at 16.23 today. Some­one is screw­ing up I dont know who. I am also con­cerned in the light of the screw up that you also took £20 on the first occa­sion you said it was rejected. Can you ensure that a dupli­cate pay­ment wasn’t taken?
Fur­ther­more It isnt helped by you giv­ing a con­tact num­ber of the shop whose stock reply is “Com­puter says ‘no’ ” or a surly and dis­in­ter­ested “sorry you must use email to deal with this.”
Rest assured next time a lady asks for a present from Fairy­Goth­Mother they’ll be dumped.
Please sort this out.

Geeklawyer had the recent mis­for­tune to deal with a stu­pid com­pany sell­ing ladies frip­peries and naughty acces­sories. He was doing this to get an Xmas present for a glam­orous meeja laydee friend: the Guardian Jour­nal­ist, sex god­dess & TV pun­dit Kate Bevan. The trans­ac­tion failed because of credit card prob­lems, and a hilar­i­ous Brian Rix style farce ensued. Each side blamed the other and an increas­ingly unchuffed Geeklawyer was stuck in the middle.

It may be that being tee­to­tal for the past three months has made GL a lit­tle grumpy because in con­trast to his nor­mally kind benign and gen­er­ous dis­po­si­tion when deal­ing with fuck­wits he was a tad sar­cas­tic. For your amuse­ment the email exchange is echoed below.

From: GL

To: Fairy­Goth­Mother

Sub­ject: Re: Order

Hi

This is the sec­ond rejec­tion. I have spo­ken to Visa who say the pay­ment for £20 was *approved* at 16.23 today. Some­one is screw­ing up I dont know who. I am also con­cerned in the light of the screw up that you also took £20 on the first occa­sion you said it was rejected. Can you ensure that a dupli­cate pay­ment wasn’t taken?

Fur­ther­more It isnt helped by you giv­ing a con­tact num­ber of the shop whose stock reply is “Com­puter says ‘no’ ” or a surly and dis­in­ter­ested “sorry you must use email to deal with this.”

Rest assured next time a lady asks for a present from Fairy­Goth­Mother they’ll be dumped.

Please sort this out.

—————–

Dear [GL],

We have done noth­ing wrong here, and we are get­ting these vit­ri­olic com­ments from you via email and over the phone which are unacceptable.

Firstly, your card declined, and you can check that with your card com­pany. There­fore we could not take monies, as your card com­pany declined. WE DID NOT!

Sec­ond time , WE DECLINED, as YOUR card com­pany did not ver­ify the address you gave us as the card hold­ers. We have taken no funds from your account, and this can be checked again with your card com­pany. I have explained in my pre­vi­ous email how credit card address ver­i­fi­ca­tion works. We again, have no say in this, it is the banks/card com­pa­nies processes, not ours.

We have not been at fault at any stage of this order to date. If you wish to can­cel, it is your pre­rog­a­tive to do so, but please don’t blame us for prob­lems and issues with your credit/debit card!

Fairy­Goth­Mother / Lulu and Lush

Web:  www.fairygothmother.co.uk

—————–

Dear Mr X

Per­haps you will allow me to put you straight?

Irre­spec­tive of any prob­lems you have with credit card providers, by get­ting on your high horse too quickly you have fallen off the other side from a great height.

I was polite­ness itself on the phone to your till-monkey, par­tic­u­larly given that it was I who was the vic­tim of an incom­pe­tently man­aged trans­ac­tion. When I asked your job­sworth employee for ‘some­one to speak to about this prob­lem’ it was in the knowl­edge that most com­pe­tent e-commerce com­pa­nies, even the credit card com­pa­nies, pre­tend to be inter­ested enough to pro­vide [cus­tomer ser­vice]. Like you they aren’t really inter­ested of course, but they are clued up enough to under­stand cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion even if the don’t care about it. So, when I asked for cus­tomer ser­vice per­son to speak to I was slightly sur­prised to get the ‘com­puter says no’ response. I did say “Are you sure? Is there no-one?”, and with hind­sight this was a shock­ingly impo­lite thing to do I’ll agree. I can under­stand your out­rage at this cus­tomer insolence.

I may or may not blame you or the credit card for incom­pe­tence in address ver­i­fi­ca­tion or mer­chant poli­cies in response; what I do blame you for is hav­ing inept snotty staff on the phone and a com­plaints han­dling pol­icy of [merely send­ing] a whiney hyper­sen­si­tive email to a crit­i­cal email.

If you object to the use of the infor­mal and casual lan­guage “screw up” in an email then, Dear Rev­erend Doc­tor Sen­si­tive, I do apol­o­gise and I wish you joy liv­ing in the 19th Cen­tury, since I’ll guess the 20th & 21st will be a shock. Give my love to Char­lotte Bronte and Queen Victoria.

For the avoid­ance of any doubt, yes, I have can­celled my order.


Grrr.


Geeklawyer up for American Bar Association blog vote

Published on 1 December 2009 in This Blog. 3 Comments Tags: , .

Appar­ently the ABA have never heard of Geeklawyer before. Well, Geeklawyer has never heard of them either, so it’s evens. They have, nonethe­less, been gra­tu­itous gra­cious enough to allow their read­ers to vote for this blog as the Best Weirdo Gonzo Blog Out There Writ­ten By A Limey Bar­ris­ter.

So then, the field is thick with com­pe­ti­tion and Geeklawyer must observer the finest tra­di­tions of democ­racy by ask­ing his friends fam­ily acquain­tances and ene­mies to vote for him, so as to skew the poll in his favour.

You must vote for Geeklawyer or Osama wins and free­dom dies. While you’re at it vote for some fel­low called CharonQC too.

 

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