Monthly Archive for November, 2008

The Barristers — episode three

Published on 30 November 2008 in the Bar. 23 Comments Tags: , , .

Episode three makes Geeklawyer wish there were more than just four episodes to this series. The obsession with students abated somewhat in this episode and we actually got to see real barristers at play.

In some ways that wasn’t an altogether good thing. This weeks episode was partly focused on the changing face of the criminal bar. An hour program couldn’t hope to scratch the surface of what and why — the policy driven changes, so instead it just showed the differing lives of two criminal barristers on either sides of the widening chasm of criminal work at the Bar. On one side was Annie Evans who had taken her 30 pieces of silver to work in-house for the CPS and on the other was Dickie Bond (first seen in episode one).

Poor Dickie — probably the most charismatic of the barristers so far, since they didn’t follow Geeklawyer, is seen to bemoan his drop in income now that the CPS are redirecting their money to their newly acquired in-house barristers. His rather delightful children are seen frolicking at the bench of a Northern magistrates court on an Open Day. They were pretending to be magistrates and passing extreme sentences on the accused despite no understanding of the law and no coherent prosecution evidence. So, then, an uncannily accurate representation of real magistrate court life.

The CPS chief prosecutor in the Midlands, one David Blundell, was quoted on the changes as saying that the Bar needed to work in a competitive environment. His view was that it would have to get used to being “cheaper and quicker” The one adjective he conspicuously and tellingly failed to use was ‘better’. Geeklawyer feels that this was more than a mere accidental verbal slip and shoddy advocacy by a CPS lawyer (Who’d have thought that?). Rather, he thought it an unconscious expression of the values behind the in-house barristers of the CPS and their employers in the government: get everything done quickly and cheaply — quality work would be nice, but above all else make it cheap and fast.

Two nicely counterpointed scenes illustrated the difference between these diverging prosecuting colleagues: one was an encounter between independent barrister Dickie Bond in the robing room and the other was Annie Evans in a conference with her police colleagues.

In the robing room there was a full-on passive aggressive row between the mediocre defense barrister and our Dickie:

Defense Barrister: “are these additional evidence?” (Deep mocking bow by Dickie: i.e. ‘yes’)

Defense Barrister: “This no doubt assists me in what I need to do”

Dickie (to camera): “I anticipate a guilty plea change”.

Defense Barrister (overhearing discourse to camera): “you hope!”

Dickie (over shoulder): “because he’s stuffed”

Defense Barrister (whiney & defeated): “… reason why we are where we are is a tardy Crown … Can’t spend time discussing this nonsense — I need lunch” (Geeklawyer wondered whether criminal barristers ate lunch, surely they are too poor? Perhaps they scrape around in the bins behind the court?)

Dickie: “your client won’t think nonsense”

Defense Barrister: “my client needs [social lurve]’

To most this would sound an astonishingly tame dialogue, but for the robing room it was practically a knife fight, and most intriguing telly. The one thing you can say of the Criminal Bar is that while they may not be gentlemen at least they are not gentle men.

The wretched Annie Evans was held up as the vanguard of the Bar in-house at the CPS. Dear God, what a miserable image it was. We were told she is a barrister of some 24 years call. For all that, in a scene in the court, she seemed anxious to paint herself as some David against the Goliaths of the Criminal Bar: a weak, poor little state prosecutor against the overpowering wealth of lawyers for the defense. No doubt this angle would play well with David Blunkett, Jacqui Smith or any of the other authoritarian loons of Neo-Labour seeking to undermine the defences of the accused. One has to wonder what Ms Evans had spent her quarter of a century of working-life doing if combating such opponents was such a new and daunting experience. The reason became all too apparent later: she was a drongo.

The voice over told us Ms Evans earnings had dropped sharply since joining CPS but the benefits such as holiday pay & better briefings by ‘client’ justified it: yes, not at all defensive, we all believe you, really. And the fact that she was 50% cheaper meant she was determined, positively absolutely determined, to show justice was not compromised. Apparently this merely involved talking to victims in a Ruth Kelly style Basso Profundo voice and assuring them that all would be well. Superior advocacy and impartial case management didn’t get a mention. Of course, as the saying goes: “If you pay peanuts you get a monkey”. One can only hope Ms Annie Evans doesn’t throw shit through the bars too.

The down side of course, on the small matter of justice, was that while the Independent Bar was, mostly, treated with respect by prosecutors, their professionalism and skills at litigation management treated as unquestionable, the lot of the CPS Prosecution Monkey is very much a less happy one. We were treated to the sight of a ‘client’ conference where Annie was being second guessed and instructed in how to do her job by some toe-rag copper who asked questions such as: “Can you give us an idea of how you will use CCTV in cross examination? How much detail on CCTV  […]”, Do you intend to do X with all defendants? How do you intend to use the schedule?”. Frankly, Geeklawyer utterly cringed with embarrassment at her public humiliation. Any independent barrister would have slapped the filth down with a curt “Thank you for your advocacy advice but I believe that you know how to catch criminals better than I and I know how to prosecute them better than you.” Annie obviously appreciated how bad this made her look. Her response to camera, when the dominant copper was nicely and safely out of earshot, was:

“At the Independent Bar the filth let you get on with the job. I could have been more abrupt and told the officer that the examination of witnesses in court was my business, but I don’t want to run it in such a dictatorial style, I want to be as co-operative as possible, but it has got in the way a bit, especially today”

Bully for you Annie “The Doormat” Evans, what a credit you are to the Bar. Still, best to do as you are told by your owners: I suppose when the filth want to withhold evidence from the defense you will also be as anxious to be co-operative and non-dictatorial?

Most astonishing was Ms Evans joy and breaking down, tears for fuck sake, on being rung by her owners from court to tell her that there had been a guilty plea. This was appallingly unprofessional: her job is one of disinterested prosecution rather than personal involvement. Without knowing Ms Evans Geeklawyer is, based on the film, of the view that she represents the typical in-house CPS lawyer: bottom of the barrel scrapings who failed at the Independent Bar and then have to eke out the best living that third-eleven candidates can in a hyper-competitive profession.

We also got to see the lot of the charming pupil Kakoly Pande as she approached tenancy: this next great hurdle to the profession has not got much attention from the program makers, in their inexorable quest to follow Bar students. Kakoly was shown in rather Dickensian digs, so limited was her pupillage income it was all she could afford, while still being expected to turn up at distant and apparently randomly changing Inner London magistrates courts on weird days. Of course, having had a pupillage, the lot of a 3rd six pupil is, while still tough, not so tough as for a pupillage candidate. Despite that it was heartwarming to see Kakoly finally get a tenancy.

Which leaves us to wonder what will happen in the final episode? Hopefully Cat will get a deserved pupillage. We discover that Annie goes off on a sponsored secondment to Canada. According to her Inn, this is to see how another Common Law jurisdiction works and to tell them how our profession works: though as someone without any legal experience beyond applying unsuccessfully for pupillages one had to wonder if this wasn’t a shade speculative. Still, she will at least be able to post flames on this blog review from Canada if she wishes. Someone in Canada is, Geeklawyer just wonders who?

ID Cards introduced in the UK for (almost) the first time

Published on 26 November 2008 in ID Cards. 10 Comments Tags: , , , .

This is a low point in the civil liberties of the UK. This is a scheme introduced by the sleazeball Blair on the agenda of the civil service and perpetuated by the bland mindless Gordon Brown (whom Geeklawyer can scarcely even be bothered to insult he so tiresome) in the absence of any coherent thoughts of his own.

From now non-EU citizens will be targeted in a racist surveillance campaign. Airport workers will follow soon after. In 2010 it will be you. The government will acquire all information about you, your children, your friends, coworkers and make it available to hundreds of thousands of government workers nationally. They will do it in an expensive ineffective sham about terrorism prevention, illegal working or whatever other bollocks they can think up to justify an Orwellian surveillance society.

Leeds no2id’s take on it:

Join no2id.

Correction: As Evil Dave points out it in the comments below, it isn’t the first time ID cards have been introduced: they were brought in during the First and Second World Wars. It is however the first time a surveillance database driven ID card system has been brought in. Hopefully it will meet the same fate as its predecessors.

The Barristers — episode two

Published on 23 November 2008 in the Bar. 16 Comments Tags: , , , .

This was, again, very enjoyable. Geeklawyer remains of the view that the series’ obsession with pretty young photogenic students like ‘Cat’ distort what might be a rather more informative documentary. Yes of course in terms of audience ratings this is needed, but is this a documentary or ‘reality’ tv?

Anna was seen to continue with her academic struggles and to have to undergo the traditional voluntary fingernail-pulling that is the pupillage interview. The interviewers at one chambers did not come across well: when asked one question, Anna responded with a mild imitation voice to add colour to her point — I’d not have done it but it hardly seemed a career killing criticism. The unnamed  interviewer (Bernard Richmond perhaps? the camera-work does not allow one to be clear) responds with “in that voice, do they?” Which shows how tenuous the gap between success and failure and how pathetic the rationales for rejection often are.

Catherine ‘Cat’ Pearsey was definitely a figure of huge sympathy. Having taken four years to get to the point of being called to the Bar the poor cow then suffers an entirely typical slew of mass rejections. She was nearly in tears on a number of occasions throughout the episode and even Geeklawyer’s normal proclivity to laugh at the distress of others was mostly ameliorated. Her unmerited failure was juxtaposed with the smug superiority & poorly based self-confidence of the dim slimey Ickbal who got a pupillage at some reasonable Northern set. Geeklawyer remains firmly of the hope she succeeds and that Ickbal fails to get a tenancy.

Paul Darling QC came across as a bit of a star, being almost improbably kind and helpful to benighted aspirants. He advised Cat she wasn’t good enough for certain chambers (“You’re going to have to be a little bit realistic, to be blunt, … the absolute stellar intellectual sets are looking for the absolute top first class degree… and you haven’t got one”) and how she could optimise her chances at others. This scene was probably not a “put up” job; the great thing about the Bar is that many senior members will indeed give up their time for free to help beginners. Geeklawyer can attest that when he was a pupil his pupil-master mentioned several times that it was a way of “paying back” the profession.

Geeklawyer is of the view that those with sufficient capability and determination can always get to the Bar: the ones who give up after a dozen rejection letter and become solicitors generally lack the resilience to failure to be suited to it. Cat must surely succeeds since she is capable, wants it badly and is dogged.

Geeklawyer did wonder why the program kept referring to pupils “getting jobs” at chambers. A pupillage is not a ‘Job’: it is training, or even a form of apprenticeship, and that word was improperly used in the program. The public very rarely understand that the Independent Bar is self employed, even when they are sharing chambers together: none of them has ‘a job’.

One of the terrors of the Bar finally appears: ‘The Clerk’. Here it was Mark Mansell head clerk at St Philips Chambers in Birmingham. The clerk is explained away as merely as a diary manager which is a short-falling of this episode. A truer explanation of the servile nature between a barrister’s clerk and the barrister would have been more exciting:

“Head Clerk: Mr [Geeklawyer] I understand your daughter is 16 today?

Geeklawyer: Yes Mr Clerk, sir.

Head Clerk: Excellent. Have her bathed, perfumed, dressed in suspenders and brought to me tomorrow. I wish to deflower her.

Geeklawyer: My family is blessed that you should choose to honour us so.

Head Clerk: Get out.

Geeklawyer: Yes Mr Clerk, sir.”

The program pieces with Birmingham family barristers Louise McCabe Alistair MacDonald were well done and showed pragmatic and unpretentious individuals with their feet on the ground. The difficult point for MacDonald was when his client finally admitted to unintentionally hurting his child, notwithstanding a prolonged denial. MacDonald’s justifications of his client sounded a bit thin and one could almost sense the audience saying “Yea but you knew all along didn’t you? So why play along. You barristers are always playing the system.” This is  standard criticism of all lawyers and it was one the program didn’t address, which was a shame and an opportunity lost since MacDonald would have had powerful responses to such populist jibes. MacDonald  asserted that the Bar was one of the last professions “where just plain hard work, wherever you come from, can get you were you want to go”. Which is, technically, bollocks.

So the program continues to develop well. The balance is wrong but it is engaging TV anyway.

Court finds Viagra to be a famous trademark — and that sky is blue, water wet

Published on 19 November 2008 in trademarks. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

You might expect that as an IP lawyer Geeklawyer would note the news (via Class 46 blog) that Viagra has been found by the Spanish Supreme Court to be a well known trademark. Apparently:

“..the lower Court (High Court of Justice) failed to assess the well-knowness of the VIAGRA trade mark, which knowledge “exceeds from the field of pharmacy and is extended to the entire community”.

Yea, no shit Sherlock.

Apologies for doing a law story. And no, this is not a crude attempt by Geeklawyer to game his Adsense ads. Honest.

BBC TV series “The Barristers” — Episode one

Published on 16 November 2008 in the Bar. 41 Comments Tags: , , , .

The UK blawgosphere has not, yet, set itself alight (Reductio ad Absurdum & CharonQC notwithstanding) with reflections on the BBC’s new series “The Barristers” revealing the hitherto unknown workings of Britain’s second oldest profession: the Bar.

The four part series has spent several years following both barristers, and aspirant barristers, around to see how the profession ticks and to unlock the glamour: “the weeping behind the wigs, the ire behind the injunctions, the fornication behind the feenote”. The Bar Council has co-operated with the BBC in making this documentary, though who was holding whom’s cock is not yet entirely clear. Certainly the BBC wanted a good documentary and the Bar Council wanted a bit of publicity that differed from the usual tabloid “Publicly Funded Barristers Drink Champagne From The Corpses Of Orphaned Children Horror” that is its norm. Since the Bar Council is an organisation that could fuck up any PR story: “Bar Council rescues Jews from Auschwitz: receives condemnation from International Jewish Congress for heavy handedness against the Nazis” it leaped at this opportunity.

So the premise was clear: strip away the media cliches, the pomposity and the veneer of intellectual and social superiority and show the people behind the legend. A nice idea. Mind you Geeklawyer is well known for being a snob and a bit pompous, and was thus not entirely happy with the idea of being represented as a well educated plumber; albeit one with a vast IQ and an uncanny ability to know which fork to use when at a Royal Reception.

So then, how was it? The august legal commentator CharonQC has already excoriated it as the mindless and uninteresting perambulation of an institution best relegated to medieval England. Geeklawyer disagrees: a fly on the wall documentary with sympathetic characters and an oblique institution can make for good TV. So it was with Episode one. Well, OK, when one talks of ‘sympathetic’ Geeklawyer confuses that with ‘pathetic’. We had a broad selection of Ethnics, but just to prove that the profession wasn’t racist, because That Would Not Do. Then we had a huge number of Northerners from Leeds Salford and Hertfordshire, again to prove that this was not a Southern based profession.

What we did not have have was any Etonians, or God forbid, even Wykehamists since that would suggest the Bar remains an upper or upper-middle class game: and that would never do. And that would explain ‘Anne’, an Ethnic from the Caribbean, whose diction, judging by her mother’s presumably unwelcome appearance, had drifted from the patoise of Kingston (Jamaica rather than Surrey one would guess) to that of the recieved pronunciation of Chelsea. Heavens, it is almost as though she were putting on a posh accent to improve her chances of a pupillage. Has that ever happened before? No, Geeklawyer didn’t think so either.

The only white person was a bit of totty whose name Geeklawyer forgets: really it doesn’t matter because she was only there because she was pretty and had nice tits that the cameraman zoomed in on all the time: a bit like the pupillage committees she stripped off for, one imagines (what? they don’t make them do that anymore? pfff, for shame). Was it churlish to giggle at the rather dim Ibrahim (or Chander or Ickbal or whatever his name was) blundering through a moot with a pair of size 12 wellies in his mouth? Yes it was, but one did it anyway. It was rather sweet to hear the moot judge utter, and the recipients believe, the traditional commiseration to a moot loser:

“This was a particularly difficult moot on a fine point of law that many experienced practitioners would stumble over. You were better than most of them and it was a finely balanced decision because team A had a black guy and team B had a Jewish guy. Phew! On balance we decided for team C, the pair of pretty white chicks with great tits because, well, of that really, oh and because, Iqbal, you couldn’t have persuaded us a light switch was on even if you licked your fingers and stuck them in the cunting bulb socket.”

So, if there was anything slightly repellent in this series it was the students. There, Geeklawyer said it. He says sorry to his many student readers but you have to understand how bad you look to a) outsiders and b) insiders. Really. One feels sorry to say it but the sight of grasping unquenchable ambition and striving is utterly repellent. Why? hard to say. One supposes that they have to do this to get on in life.

Of course in order to add a bit of Big Brother drama and keep the viewers hooked it was necessary to amplify how hard it was to be a barrister: 500 Oxbridge double firsts for every chamber’s toilet cleaning job etc. Not wrong, obviously, but a bit cynical.

Lovely was the Inn Benchers ripping the living crap out of students at an ‘away day’ near Windsor Castle, where, by tradition, some of the Benchers get to try and shag pretty young wannabe’s. Oh hang on, Geeklawyer has received a threatening note from the Bar Council. “They attend for the noble and selfless purpose of advancing students skills.” Bencher Master John Leslie, whose motives are beyond question, is seen telling one student that he really doesn’t give a flying fuck what the student ‘thinks’ when he is making submissions to the court: and thereby impresses some basic rules on him about advocacy in the English courts. Geeklawyer remembers with vast vast fondness his mandatory ‘Instructions to Counsel’ course taken while a pupil, and this coloured his positive impression of the piece.

For those of us who are hacks at the English Bar the other, non-studenty, parts of the film were of much hilarity and interest. Without doubt the star of episode one was Richard ‘Dicky’ Bond. A criminal hack in some Northern set who does criminal law. Those of us doing civil law feel pity (OK, yes, and a little contempt) for our bretheren at the Criminal Bar who spend a whole day in court for £50 and who then go begging outside tube stations for enough money for the fare home and cup of soup. Dicky was without doubt the star of episode one (@infobunny, an infamously licentious law librarian, on Twitter has expressed the desire to have his children for god’s sake). All in all a terrific and engaging first episode.

sleazy EU legislation shenanigans

Published on 14 November 2008 in Digital Rights and Uncategorized. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

Geeklawyer spotted Professor Lilian Edwards’ post on the shenanigans surrounding the “3 strikes and your off” legislation currently doing the rounds globally.

The US content providers are worried about online downloading and even though swinging and biased legislation has already been purchased by them to help them maintain a neck-lock on competition it is not enough. In the new era of the Intarweb just too many people are not playing their game: too many people have decided that there are better ways of doing thing. Yes, it does involve violation of copyright law: sometimes the good copyright laws but also, sometimes, the bad ‘We bought them’ laws of the RIAA/MPAA.

One of the things that irks the content industries is the need to prove to a court that someone has violated their copyright. Yes, it is such a fag, really; lawyers, courts, bills time. Boring, really really boring. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could have a system where we could just say we think you’re infringing our rights and move straight to fines or cutting you out of society by removing your ability to participate in online digital activity. Yes of course the pirates (e.g. teen children) will object and they will be supported by their digital civil liberty loons who will wank on about proportionality, due process and tiresome 19th Century concepts of legal justice and proof. Like, YAWN!

What to do? Well of course you do what anyone with fuck-loads of money does you go and buy the EU! But of course you don’t want to make it public in case of publicity so you sneak it in, through the back door, in otherwise boring and innocuous telecoms legislation. Natch you have to buy-off a few corrupt politicians like the sleazy retarded clothes-horse French President Sardozy who is more concerned with arranging threesomes with his whore wife than worrying where the bribes are coming from, or if the legislation is just.

Fortunately the inestimable bundle of energy that is Professor Lilian Edwards of the University of Edinburgh/Southampton Sheffield and Simon Bradshaw were feeling a bit Aspergers; they trawled through the legislation to spot that there was wrong-doings afoot (my words not theirs). The full gory details are here on the Open Rights Group’s site.

What;‘s very contemptible is that changes in existing legislation have been disguised so that no-one, without close analysis, knows what has changed. Sleazy with a capital ‘vicieux’.

The proposed changes? For the full gory analysis look at the ORG brief linked to ante, but the Daily Star headlines are:

  • Any website in the EU can be compelled to cooperate with rights holders and to help with implementing a disconnection scheme;
  • The definition of ‘Security’ has been changed to include not just ‘viruses’ but bizarrely arguably, copyrighted material so that measures could be used to filter such material or throttle bandwidth;
  • the right to strike people off without due process was implemented and then removed (good, but leading to fears it is a ‘ping pong’ term that may be reinstated when there is no public attention).

For now this legislation is a work in process and it looks pretty sleazy and worrying. Geeklawyer will update as things develop.

Privacy? Fine, just not for publicity whores please

Published on 11 November 2008 in privacy. 15 Comments Tags: , , , .

The world and his dog have ripped into Paul Dacre of the Daily Tory for his whining about Mr Justice Eady’s decision to allow Max Mosely a bit of privacy. Dacre’s thesis comes down to this: Mosely was a pervert who liked to engage in Nazi themed orgies; exposing such behaviour was a just act because it exposed his moral repugnance, his unsuitability for the governance of motor sport, and, well, stuff. The fact it made a highly profitable headline for the Mail was, of course, by-the-by in its pursuit of the public good.

So Dacre & the Mail are dissembling cunts. Were they incorrect? Most of the legal blogosphere is of the view that they were. Carl Gardner did a pre-eminent job in kicking them in the nuts: characteristically forensic and on the mark in so far as it went. Astonishingly the Government weighed in with the remarkable statement:

“10 November 2008
Statement from the Judicial Communications Office — Speech by Mr Paul Dacre

“Judges determine privacy cases in accordance with the law and the particular evidence presented by both parties. Any High Court judgment can be appealed to the Court of Appeal”.

This comment was issued in response to a speech by Mr Paul Dacre, Editor of the Daily Mail, to the Society of Editors.”

Brief to the point of being almost invisible this was the governmental ‘raised eye brow’ and its brevity should not be taken as undermining its, remarkable, public disapproval of Dacre’s remarks. Other lawyers have weighed in to defend Eady. The essence of their defense was that:

  • Eady was reflecting the Human Rights Act
  • He was complying with ECHR jurisprudence
  • He was merely one of a series of judges interpretive the new privacy reality
  • The judgment didn’t give excessive protection to the amoral
  • the courts protected newspapers in a matching commitment to freedom of the press that Dacre didn’t complain about.

All true. And Geeklawyer despises the Daily Mail even more than Karl Marx. But even if Dacre is fundamentally misconceived in his objections to case law and statute, and he is, he points, albeit indirectly, at the larger and more valid issues about valid privacy policy objections to current law.

Traditionally privacy policy in the UK has been that you don’t, as a default position, have it. Sure, contractual reasons might create it or confidentiality rules might, under very limited circumstances, allow it but otherwise you are fair game. It’s the Anglo-Saxon/Common Law approach and it fits in with a minimalist libertarian approach to regulatory conduct. Dacre’s comments can be framed within that conception. Does Mosely have a right to privacy on such a matter? Or more precisely since the court has said yes, should he have such a right? Geeklawyer, regrettably, says, no.

A simple look at the law reports demonstrates that whatever the theoretical concerns of privacy activists the newspapers ae mostly concerned with scummy celebrities. Sure, there are occasional horror stories like the Sunday Sport’s repulsive abuse of Gordon Kaye while he was vulnerable and defenseless in hospital recovering from an awful accident. But for the most part it is celebrity cunts like Sienna Miller Russell Brand and Max Moseley, all of whom are well able to wield legal and PR resources in their own defense. And they all are the first to tip off the media when they are attending an event and want publicity that helps their careers.

So sure if it were the weak defenseless and vulnerable falling prey to the press then Geeklawyer would be sympathetic. Were it possible to draft privacy laws to address the much much bigger threat of governments amassing huge databases on our private lives so as to control us then, again, Geeklawyer would support them.

The sad truth is that privacy laws mostly, in practice, protect the powerful and the rich against the media. Geeklawyer would be content to see media rights strengthened against whores like Britney Spears, JK Rowlins, Naomi Campbell, Victoria Beckham etc so long as such media protection extended merely to exposing people such as them.

Random Fire 15

Published on 10 November 2008 in Random Fire. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Those of you thinking that Geeklawyer was going to abandon blogging because of his obsession with Twitter and the decline in posting frequency will be disappointed. Twitter is spiffy, utterly utterly spiffy and having 144 characters to play with does wonders for developing the capacity to strip long sentences of asides irrelevances extraneous vowels verbiage ponderous interminable metaphor diarrheal prolixity and, erm yea well, you get the point. The blog remains until twitter ups the word count from 144 to 14,000 words.

First off, well done Osama: it is terrific to see a black man in the White house and taking the rattle away from Dubya. Though, in truth, if Attila the Hun had won then Geeklawyer would have cheered. Someone said it was 30 years since a member of a US political dynasty has been in power. Geeklawyer is taking bets on how long Osama remains wholesome and pure before possession of the Ring corrupts him and he starts bombing civilians and torturing like the old nut-jobs; even if he is currently talking about reversing Dubya’s idiocies. Wouldn’t it be weird if the rest of th world had to find someone else to hate? Ah! The French. Easy, there’s nothing good one can say about the French.

In blighty we have still not achieved liberation from our own authoritarian oppressors: it will be 2010 before we can exchange one lot of wankers for the next. In the meantime Neo-Labour, still not aware that the tide of history is sweeping it out to sea, is looking to press gang universities into spying on their students to see if they are genuine students or actually illegal immigrants. A while ago they were suggesting teachers should grass up any coloured youths displaying doubts about our magnificent free land and chav kids doomed to grow up as lawbreakers unless they are ripped from their parents arms and put in caring children’s homes. Already Geeklawyer’s sources say that some bolshy foreigners are complaining about doing their duty to the glorious Supreme Leader by cooperating with ID cards for instance.

In their ongoing campaign to integrate criminals into society and teach them social responsibility the Government is giving prisoners the vote. Nah, just kidding. If you’ve been caught shoplifting you don’t deserve a say in how your country is run. But it seems the ECHR has another view. Geeklawyer has never entirely understood the logic of this. Sure, once convicted, you deprive them of something: liberty money or freedom, so why not the vote? But it seems to me this is not so much about that as about politicians worrying that that may have to answer to the people they put in jail. They aren’t that keen on doing so when it’s law abiding voters, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that they hate it when it’s criminals.

When it comes to booze Geeklawyer is somewhat conflicted: he has the traditional and flawed British love of getting loaded. However he only approves of such behaviour when it is he and decent folk doing so; when it’s chav scum, he loathes it. Not surprisingly therefore he half supports the Government’s desire to reduce chavs overloading tax bills with the police and hospital costs associated with alcohol abuse. On the other hand, it’s chavs and the Government. One answer government solution is to raise the price of alcohol so they can’t afford it and the middle classes just about can. Bad idea: why should we pay more? A better and more innovative idea of Geeklawyer’s is to have education tests for buying booze: if you have a professional qualification you can buy whatsoever you wish; a crate of Absinthe if you desire; if you did a degree you can get 21 units a week; if you got no qualifications at all you get to buy diet Coke.

The CPR rules were supposed to reduce the exorbitant costs of discovery. Ooops, £2,000,000! Haha. Not a surprise to American readers perhaps but for us a tad amusing.