Question doesn’t arise. It’s history. One should strive to understand.

The way I see it, for a time being a western seaboard European nation conferred a temporary advantage with the advent of ocean-going ships. Britain had the added edge of being an island & thus not exposed ..

https://twitter.com/b4sed7/status/1844644790148735396

.. to the ravages of continental war, into which she could dip in and out at will, leaving her hands free for land & resource grabbing elsewhere. First with the industrial revolution (financed by trade?) she had yet another edge.

And then the advantages ran out & history ..

This might offer insight into an aspect of the Post Office scandal.

I had a case in the Court of Appeal once. Important client, commercially important point. We had lost in the County Court but I was pretty sure we would win the appeal as the judge had made a clear error in .. .. interpreting the law.

The day before the appeal hearing, my unqualified (but very clever) clerk came up with an inconvenient point no one on either side had thought of. Actually, it was more than inconvenient. It was a killer.

I had a choice. I could tell our QC or ..

My take on @Joey7Barton’s libel case.

He abused some female footballers & pundits in an offensive manner. Vine covered this on his show. Barton retaliated with a series of posts insinuating Vine was inappropriately interested in children. Vine now sues.

Barton, who learned .. .. his lessons on life in a tough part of Liverpool, thinks he cannot give ground as it would make him look weak. This isn’t a bad strategy in some situations but it’s fatal in civil litigation against an opponent who can afford it. It just means the eventual bill will be ..

A ramble down memory lane.

In the 1980s I worked for a leading criminal law firm, TV Edwards. They are still going now. I was based in their tiny two-man office in Harlesden, right across the road from Willesden County Court. Ours was very much a legal aid practise & me & my .. .. boss were quite successful, making most of the firm’s profit.

The main office was (& is) over on the Mile End Rd in East London, where the serious criminals operated. Consequently, they got involved in some big cases. They pioneered the technique of examining notebook ..

Civilisation collapse. (Let’s discuss something cheerful 🙂)

Been reading about the late Bronze Age collapse lately. Never heard of it until recently but it’s a very big deal. Somewhere around 1,200 BCE a whole bunch of highly advanced civilisations were .. .. wiped out & a dark age descended over the eastern Med & the Middle East. Among the affected were the Mycenaeans, Hittites, Ugarit & Amorite states & the Canaans.

Now these states formed part of a globalised world of interdependent trade. The shipwreck that was recovered ..

I was once told by a civil airline pilot that anyone from the lowliest mechanic right on up could point out safety concerns without fear of reprimand. The opposite seems to have applied at Oceangate.

Some parts of the design ..

https://t.co/hwYZZV6WlO

https://twitter.com/douglaskmurray/status/1672474905764327426?s=61&t=lBKB-bHoQL2Fh7fScrvraQ

https://twitter.com/douglaskmurray/status/1672474905764327426

.. were regarded as ‘non safety critical’ but I’ve seen a convincing explanation (involving a cheap pair of scuba diving flippers) of why, in a hazardous environment, everything is safety critical.

Those who know something of the engineering problems have identified the ..

I’m presently absorbed by the Bronze Age Collapse which occurred in the decades around 1200 BC. The eastern med & middle & near east then formed a globalised world of delicate interdependence which was swept away by a combination of drought, famine, invasion & natural ...

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1658577635482509314

… disasters. Entire civilisations were wiped off the map, writing & other skills were lost & a dark age of 300 years or so ensued.

We too live in a world of interdependence whose fragility is on display in the arcane world of trade, with its mysterious rules of origin, ..

Right! Fuck the EU, screw The Netherlands & a pox on all foreigners!

Popped out to snort some weed during today’s chess match & 2 gigantic Dutch policemen arrested me, presumably for smoking in a prohibited area while being British. They spoke no English, oddly, & failed .. .. to react as required when upbraided in loud, distinct English. ‘Unhand me you ruffians, or you’ll be hearing from my solicitor’ I said, to no avail. Nor were they amenable to reason when I conveyed by gestures that I was in the middle of a game & risked losing on time. ..

This is Henry, 6th Duke of Norfolk. He inherited property from his elder brother Thomas but refused to pass it on to his younger brother Charles, as had been stipulated by his father, the Earl of Arundel. Charles sued. In 1682 the House of Lords ruled against Charles, deciding .. .. that tying up property for lengthy periods (eg in deeds & wills) was ‘wrong’ (as Wikipedia puts it). Thus was born the so-called ‘rule against perpetuities’, still part of both English & American law & thus still baffling law students to this day.

Which brings me to ..

In Memoriam

Walter Medley was the managing clerk at the small law firm at which I took articles in 1979. A small, dapper man with a brush moustache, already 70, he had been in the law since the 30s. In an office in which everyone used first names, he was ‘Mr Medley’ & to him .. .. I was ‘Mr Wismayer’.

He was a kind & excellent teacher from whom I learned conveyancing, not the line of work for me but invaluable experience nonetheless (I ended up acting against other lawyers who had fouled up). He was full of stories about olden times, like the ..

Let’s juxtapose:

Exhibit A - Allegra Stratton in the £2.6M press room and (scroll please):

Exhibit B - an article in today’s Guardian about The Slob’s publicly funded legal expenses which contains this quote from him:

‘Anybody who thinks I was knowingly going to parties that were breaking lockdown rules in No 10, and then knowingly …

theguardian.com/politics/2023/…

Dear @BBCNews

As a concerned member of the public I’m interested to hear the railway bosses’ side of the pay dispute but I have yet to see any of them interviewed.

I’d like to know about:

• their own pay scales & of any increases, bonuses, share options etc.
• whether in .. .. all cases they are providing a reliable, affordable & comfortable service
• whether & to what extent they are conducting negotiations in good faith & entirely without influence from govt.
• the profitability of Network Rail & the operators
• how far they take ..

There was a report, or something, recently that said the BBC should produce more output for the working class. It confirmed my opinion that the BBC is institutionally upper middle class & regards the working class as interesting fauna. They empty the bins, drive the trains ..

https://twitter.com/basitmahmood91/status/1602595807932436481

.. & buses, make things in factories somewhere & are mostly best kept out of sight.

Now & then the BBC hits the streets, usually in Stoke for some reason, & takes the temperature among ‘ordinary’ people with a bit of vox pop. How revealing it would be to see what gets left on ..

On computing

I’m from the neolithic period of computing. In the palaeolithic I encountered my 1st computer at Leeds uni. I played poker against it. It was the size of a large fridge & had a ‘screen’ the size of that on a pocket calculator.

In 1989 we got a bunch of IBM .. .. clones networked to a server. It fell to me, somehow, to teach our highly resistant legal secretaries to switch away from their typewriters.

I recall one evening reviewing a long affidavit on screen, trying to work out why, when printed, its right hand margin was ..

@snb19692 @LindenLyn On which PPE Medpro dodged taxes. Funny thing is, HMRC’s winding up petition seeks only £800,000 or so. On £65M profit.

Let’s blame benefit fraudsters though. Be fair. @snb19692 @LindenLyn And just to add - it’s quite something that not only did Medpro not supply the PPE contracted for, it didn’t even pay its ridiculously low taxes!

In a proper system these people would be put in the stocks, jailed & then sent off for re-education upon release.

This obit of one of the Queen mother’s ladies in waiting is a hilarious insight into a world of fawning, vapid flummery. Her working day started with breakfast in bed, apparently (someone had to do it). Some quotes:

‘Early in her waiting life, ..

thetimes.co.uk/article/9a2ddd… .. while awaiting the arrival of German royalty, she asked the Queen Mother if she should curtsy to them. She retorted: “Curtsy? Of course not. They’re Germans.”’

‘Hugo Vickers, the royal historian, recalled of Campbell-Preston: “She was a brilliant person at ..

It’s weird that there is no mention in this article of the winding up petition issued against Medpro a couple of months ago. The petitioner is HMRC. Under fire yesterday, the govt. said it was in mediation with Medpro over breaches of contract but ..

thetimes.co.uk/article/670afc… .. that makes no sense to me - winding up trumps other dispute resolution activity. The amount at stake in the mediation is much greater than the petition debt. I guess the petition is on hold while negotiations continue.

It’s worth watching this closely because it’s big.

They always stress the urgency of acquiring PPE, as if that justifies the corruption, forgetting:

1 Hancock’s HoC boast in Jan 20 that the UK was the best-prepared country in the world
2 their initial strategy was to let Covid rip (aborted by Cummings)
3 the ‘urgency’ did not .. .. actually work, the UK’s performance being among the worst, as shown by this graph from mid-2020.

Still, at least their pals made a lot of money.

As he’s in the news, worth recalling a story about @MattHancock. You probably remember it. During the 2019 GE there was a scandal about a small boy having to be treated on the floor at Leeds General Infirmary, there being no beds. Hancock rushed up to put the fire out & .. .. concocted a story about 100 Labour activists showing up & one of his aides being assaulted. It was utter crap but the BBC peddled it anyway.

Also worth remembering Alison Pearson announced she had a scoop proving the little boy story was fake. She had to can it, though, ..

I believe in signs. Before the property slump in 1989 I used to see forests of ‘for sale’ signs when walking to work along Windsor Rd, Ealing (shown below). They disappeared almost overnight. The estate agents all went bust & solicitors’ conveyancing income dried up. Millions .. .. found themselves in negative equity.

An acquaintance has just had a fixed rate mortgage offer withdrawn by the Nationwide BS. That’s a sign. It portends uncertainty among home owners & 1st time buyers, natural Tory voters, one would think.

This effect of Kwarteng’s ..

We need a Conservative party, just not this one. A voice saying:

• there’s no free lunch
• over-dependence on the state is bad
• the surest route to self-fulfilment is hard work
• make the most of the opportunities you have
• ultimately, the prosperity of everyone .. .. depends on thriving business
• the monarchy & other traditions are important
• law & order must be maintained
• the countries of the UK are better together
• inward migration must be controlled
• the state does not excel at delivering services

Now, you need not agree ..