Afternoon music
On this day a year ago
Interesting vlog
A few comments.
There have always been a certain, and in fact fairly high, number of foreign students qualifying at the Bar in London. Many go back to their own home countries to practise law. Some become leaders of those countries, one such leader having been Lee Kuan Yew, who “invented” Singapore as we know it today: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew. Others too became not only national leaders but also founders of states: Gandhi was called to the Bar in London, as was Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali_Jinnah.
In Malaysia, it is a tradition that those who can, go to London to study law, and they have a particular affection for Lincoln’s Inn (my old Inn, at which though, thanks to the Jew-Zionist lobby, I am now effectively persona non grata).
Lincoln’s Inn is, even today, the Inn of Court to which most if not all Malaysian students apply, by reason of the fact that the first Prime Minister of Malaysia was a member: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunku_Abdul_Rahman.
Many of the Chinese names read out in that vlog are probably from Singapore, Hong Kong, or Malaysia, where the legal system is a derivation from the English.
Having said that, it is disturbing that there are so few English names. It may be, in part, because most of the English students pass the exams and then are Called to the Bar in the Trinity Term (Summer), rather than the Michaelmas Term (Autumn).
I have to admit that, while I saw some very low-quality black and brown barristers when I was practising at the Bar in the early/mid 1990s and then again in 2002-2008, I also saw some pretty rock-bottom English ones.
I do agree with the vlogger, though, that all barristers who are practising in chambers in England should be English or (real) British.
Incidentally, for those readers of the blog unaware as to why I am now no longer a barrister, please read the following: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2017/07/09/the-slide-of-the-english-bar-and-uk-society-continues-and-accelerates/.
Tweets seen
Most of the push for censorship and repression comes from the Jew-Zionist lobby.
I favour the “free at point of use” principle of the NHS, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the NHS is just not fulfilling its proper role. It is no answer just to say that more money is needed. More money may well be needed, but the whole thing has become a bureaucratic mess which is delivering poorer and poorer outcomes.
The “panicdemic” and, overall, all the nonsense which the NHS espoused (the facemask nonsense being just one) has broken something in the connection of the people with the NHS.
Hollywood is another Augean Stables, which should be cleansed, no matter what.
I did not know anything much about Sean Penn until today, when I read a bit about him. Needs a good kicking. Horrible bastard, it seems. I was also unaware, until today, that he is a half-Jew.
Ukraine
The war would have ended some time ago without the huge arms shipments (and transfers of cash) from USA, UK etc to the Kiev regime.
The items referrred to are those that Americans call “potbellied stoves”.
The Russian side is probably looking now at a stable front during the cold weather, assuming that it becomes really cold, with renewed advances in summer 2023.
While the strategic view is superficially not good for the Russian side (most of Ukraine as a whole remaining controlled by the Kiev regime, and most of eastern Ukraine too), the fact is that Ukraine is on life support. The electrical power system is being reduced to rubble, industry is almost at a standstill, something like 10%-20% of the population has fled, and both the armed forces and civilians are being kept going by the vast influx of aid from Western states, NGOs, and private charity.
Russia continues to control most of the coastal areas of the Sea of Azov and Black Sea, as well as Crimea, and most of the Donbass region.
As blogged some time ago, Russia needs to cut the Gordian Knot of this bogged-down attritional battle/war in the southeast of Ukraine. It has started by applying “oblique warfare”, mainly by reducing the electrical power system throughout the whole of Ukraine, but that alone will not achieve a breakthrough. Kiev remains the main target. Somehow, Kiev has to be taken, something which would have been not too difficult 8 or 9 months ago, but is far harder to accomplish today.
The alternative is a peace treaty, or at least a ceasefire, but the Kiev-regime side will not agree one without a withdrawal of all Russian forces, as well as delivering the (almost all Russian) population of Crimea into the hands of the Ukrainian/Kiev side. Impossible.
There may be an escalation in 2023 by the Russian side, something on a large scale.
More tweets seen
As the above tweets imply, it will be interesting to see how many “socially progressive” (in their own little minds) mugs send money to “Dr” Louise Raw in order, supposedly, to sue msm loudmouth Jeremy Clarkson and others.
Actually, I have just clicked the GoFundMe link posted by “Dr” Raw: in less than a day, she has raised nearly £6,000 of her £15,000 goal, from no less than —at time of writing— 125 utter mugs.
As the first tweeter, Barbara Rich, above, tweets, it is hard to see what could be the cause of action. Clarkson’s comments in the Sun “newspaper”, impolite though they were, do not amount to defamation (if I recall them aright), but are “mere vulgar insult”— not actionable. As to those remarks being “hate speech“, well that is not, in itself, actionable, and is also very much “in the eye of the beholder“, so to speak:
There is no cause of action here recognized by law, and not even (moving to the criminal realm) incitement. It is very doubtful that anyone would really be incited to chuck poo at Meghan Mulatta or to drag her through the streets (even were she in the UK, and even if she had no bodyguard force to protect her).
Most British people do at least distrust the Mulatta, and also despise both her and the “Harry Formerly Known As Prince”, but Clarkson’s remarks not only do not but could not amount to incitement of any kind.
As to lack of an identifiable claimant (“plaintiff”, as was)— that too. “Dr” Raw has no locus standi; who does? Only the Mulatta herself, were she foolish enough to get involved in “Dr” Raw’s hopeless idea.
I see that the GoFundMe says that “Although the legal route is expensive, I have received a lot of support already and have a team of lawyers who have agreed to review the case.“
Note “review the case“.
Of course. It is an easy few thousand pounds for any barrister or solicitor (perhaps a cynical one) who can see that there is no chance, but who will provide an erudite and beautifully-printed Opinion or Advice saying (with much citing of case precedents, statutes, and obiter dicta) that the claimant (if there is any claimant as such) has no case.
When I was a practising barrister, I not infrequently had to (try to) save potential claimants from themselves by formally/informally telling them that they would be wasting their money. Sometimes they listened, sometimes they did not (would not). Sometimes people simply insist on going to law.
Once, about 28 years ago, I was asked to advise on whether a matter, already considered more than once by the Court of Appeal, the High Court, and (originally) an arbitrator, might go to what is now the Supreme Court of the UK (since 2009: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_Kingdom; https://www.supremecourt.uk/about/history.html), but which was then still called the House of Lords (Judicial Committee). The brief was (literally) heavy, and the fee more than acceptable.
I found that there was no possibility of being able to take the matter to the House of Lords, and spent a couple of days writing a detailed Advice to that effect. That resulted in the potential claimant (already declared a “vexatious litigant” by the Court of Appeal) storming into my London chambers, storming past the Clerk and others, and demanding that I explain (again) why he could not take his —in any event, hopeless— case to the House of Lords. A colleague who was there was so concerned (that I might be assaulted by this large, heavily-bearded, and very angry, man) that he volunteered to help me elucidate the issues to the furious would-be litigant (who, after 20 minutes or so, stormed out and off).
There were several similar though less incipiently-violent incidents with other clients unable to accept reality. I expect that many barristers have had similar experiences.
Incidentally, the reason I call Louise Raw (who has more than once tweeted very silly things about me) “Dr“, in quotation marks, is that (as I have already blogged about in the past), in England, it has always been accepted that the title “Doctor” should not be used as a title by people who have simply had a doctorate, such as a Ph.D, granted to them after having spent a year on some course or other, and (presumably) written a thesis.
The title “Dr” should, as a general rule, only be used by bona fide academics, bona fide scientists attached to recognized institutes, persons in holy orders, or by medical doctors (in fact, medical doctors often do not actually have a doctorate— the “Dr.” is simply a courtesy title in their case).
There is no law about all that, it is simply custom; it is considered infra dig in England to use the title, usually. In Germany etc, no such custom exists. Thus Joseph Goebbels was “Dr. Goebbels” because he had a doctorate in Philology from Heidelberg [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels].
I have no idea from what university “Dr” Raw got her doctorate, which was apparently based around her thesis about the strike, in 1888, by women employees at the Bryant & May match factory in East London. “Dr” Raw has always been rather reticent about where she studied (though I have no reason to doubt that she has a “doctorate”).
Likewise, I have no reason to suppose that “Dr” Raw intends to keep for her own use the monies raised by her GoFundMe appeal. It does occur to me, though, that the appeal raises her (?) faded political profile on Twitter. Perhaps that is her motivation, or part of it.
I might add that some MPs and others, meaning some (other) odd types seen on Twitter, also misuse the “Doctor” title.
Late tweets seen
Hard to believe that the editor of a major trade publication could be so unaware.
Christmas University Challenge
As on previous occasions, I have to say that I scored far better than the teams of alumni (Durham and York) this evening, all or almost all of whom were possessed of professorial status (if not knowledge— at least outside their narrow, mostly scientific, specialisms).
A few tweets make the point:
Very true. Tends to be, or so I was once told, the place for people who wanted to go to Oxford or Cambridge but were rejected. I once, in the late 1980s, met an entirely ridiculous man at a dinner party in Blackheath. I was at the Inns of Court School of Law at the time, belatedly; he was a barrister, possibly already QC. No doubt competent in the law, but otherwise a complete idiot. Durham graduate. Later, he was not only QC but also a Recorder in England and, I believe, a civil/commercial judge in Hong Kong, among other things. I believe from what my then girlfriend told me that his family were prominent in the (English) Civil War. Is that typical of Durham University? I do not know.
I see from Twitter that I am not alone in finding the teams on Christmas University Challenge egregiously ignorant. This evening, one team did not know the (old-style calendar) month of the Bolsheviks’ 1917 Revolution (i.e. October Revolution); they, or the other team, also not only missed the Second Symphony of Shostakovitch but (one of them) thought that Tchaikovsky had written it! In 1927!
Another fairly easy question that seemed to puzzle the teams was the name of a famous “female Anglo-Iraqi architect” (Zaha Hadid, now deceased). I mean, how many can there be? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaha_Hadid.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
Hello Ian: What a nasty piece of work that fellow Sean Penn is! Having said that I could not care less about his treatment of Madonna, a most hateful person and a total degenerate to boot. In fact, he would have done a great service to mankind if he had … her (LOL)
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Claudius:
I certainly hear what you say…
Madonna used to live quite near my old home in Little Venice, London, though in fact a few years after I departed. I believe that I read that she would complain to her then husband, film director Guy Ritchie, that they could be living somewhere like Malibu, so why were they stuck in London? I see her point, but both places have good and bad aspects.
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I agree with you. I have been to Malibu and to London and I understand what you said. In Argentina a similar case would be Mar del Plata vs. Buenos Aires; the former is a beautiful city by the sea; the latter a great cosmopolitan city; if I could I would spend the summer in Mar del Plata and enjoy the best of both worlds.
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Interesting observation of yours regarding titles. Here in Argentina, the custom is to call all lawyers “Doctor” which seems logical to me. On the other hand, dentists here are usually called “Doctor” which I thought it was not right; however, I have just found that the Royal Spanish Academy (the institution that decides what is correct and what it isn’t in the Spanish language) has now ruled that “a doctor is a medic or any other professional specialized in some kind of therapeutical technique, as a dentist”.
In Argentina the level of competence of dentists is very high and I have just found that they have to study 6 years to graduate, the same as a medical student; therefore, I now believe they fully deserve to be considered doctors.
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Claudius:
A friend of mine (though not seen for about 15 years) and I believe still at the Bar has a brother who is a dentist; he decided to join the Royal Army Medical Corps on qualification. He started as Captain. I believe that I last heard, 15 years ago, that he had eventually been promoted Lt.-Colonel. Maybe higher by now, if still serving (I think the highest in that branch is Brigadier but I may be wrong).
Dentists are reasonably good here, though the competence varies. The UK was traditionally rather behind Germany, Scandinavia and the USA in dentistry.
Incidentally, barristers who join the Army Legal Services start off as Captain, usually, on pay of £45,000.
My complaint about stray people such as “Dr” Louise Raw using the title is that it devalues the status of it, and is contrary to what at least until very recently were British cultural norms. Indeed, I had a judge complain to me once, about 15-20 years ago, and in informal conversation, that someone in my chambers who had been a consultant (i.e. senior medical doctor) in the NHS should not use the title “doctor” in his practice of the *legal* profession, though that seems to be taking things rather far.
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