Morning music
On this day a year ago
The Bar continues to dig its own grave
This (read that report) is a trend that has been going on for 2-3 decades now. I could recount numerous examples from my own experience. One of the least egregious would be that involving a pupil in my own chambers in Exeter (in the early/mid 1990s, I was practising in London, but after working and living in various places overseas from 1996-2002, returned to the practising Bar in SW England in mid-2002).
The pupil to whom I refer (and who shall be nameless, partly out of courtesy but equally because I have actually forgotten her name), was from Northern Ireland.
Now I have to say that I find the Northern Irish accent one of the most difficult in the UK to understand easily but, in addition to that, the girl in question had a pretty bad speech impediment.
You might ask why on Earth someone with a bad speech impediment wanted to go to the Bar in the first place, or was not sidetracked into other career options at an earlier stage, but there it is. Of course, not all barristers spend much of their time in court.
Now, said girl pupil was, like many Bar pupils, far more obliging and pleasant when a pupil (and no doubt trying to get along pleasantly with members of chambers) than she was once taken on as a tenant or —as I think she was, cannot now recall exactly— squatter (a quasi-tenant but with no rights of tenure). I myself only saw her in passing, really, but did note that, once she was actually working as barrister, she seemed rather abrasive, judging admittedly by the very few times I saw her at (though not in) court. I never had any trouble with her myself, and in fact saw little of her.
Now the interesting thing was that not only did chambers (notably in the person of the main Clerk to Chambers) champion that young woman, but claimed that instructing solicitors loved her. Well, maybe. Seems strange to me that someone with both a speech impediment and an accent that was more like a gargle could be at the English Bar doing court work, but there we are.
I harbour a suspicion that people tend to bend over backwards to be nice, so to speak, to the physically-disabled, as many do also to some of the ethnic minorities. That is fine as far as it goes, but not when it amounts to a kind of lie.
Incidentally, I seem to remember that the person noted above returned, in the end, to her native Ulster, and maybe left the practising Bar.
Digressing further, I happened, out of curiosity today, to look at the website of the successor chambers to the one to which I belonged in Exeter from 2002-2008 (and which, an amalgam of two or three sets, is now the largest in the South West outside Bristol). I saw that several people that I liked are still there, and I saw that not only (as I knew already) is my old head of chambers now “His Honour” (a Circuit Judge) but that someone else I knew in chambers, a former magistrates’ clerk, with an encylopaedic knowledge of some aspects of (in particular) criminal law, is now also “His Honour”. Unless it is just someone with an identical name, but I think not.
That last was a nice little man, very polite and pleasant, who wore his considerable knowledge lightly. I seem to recall that he had written a well-received book on sentencing. Glad to see that his knowledge and diligence has been rewarded.
I was amused to see that two people who had rather more than a spat in chambers are now both members of that set. I liked both of them. One was a then-young man who was very eager to progress chambers (my wife called him a “Young Turk” for his enthusiastic diligence, but in these dumbed-down times, I suppose I shall have to explain that he was not a real Turk!). He was married to a pretty young woman whom I believe I met once at some chambers reception or other.
The other barrister, also young, was an ex-solicitor whose grandfather had founded one of the largest firms of solicitors in the South West. A very pleasant person.
Those people, with others in chambers, used to go shooting together, an activity of which I thoroughly disapproved. I disapprove of all hurt done to animals, particularly for sport or “fun”. I even disapprove of shooting humans, under most circumstances. Ironically, most of those I liked best in chambers were the shooters.
Anyway, one day, those two members of chambers were out shooting when a pheasant fell onto the head of the wife of the “Young Turk” and knocked her out in the field. Whether that preceded or not the affair that she apparently had with the other young barrister, I know not. It later transpired that, after much bad blood, I was the only member of chambers to be unaware of the feud that ensued, my mind being occupied by other matters (or as my wife would say, “in the clouds”) and, also, the fact that I was, by then, only spending half the month in the UK, the rest in France and some other countries.
I suppose that the two former antagonists have either buried the hatchet or (and/or) come to the realistic conclusion that that set is more or less “the only game in town” (in Exeter) now. Time heals all wounds, they say (though I remain doubtful of that, speaking generally). The events in question were after all some 15 or 16 years ago now.
Tweets seen
“and no need to mention the War (I mean ‘the vaccines‘)”…
Did that apply to freeloading “charity” bod Brendan Cox, and/or barrister and former scribbler Rupert Myers, or did their offences not even get to the stage of being investigated by police? See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5404241/Jo-Coxs-husband-admits-sex-pest-resigns.html; https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/rupert-myers-being-publicly-shamed-pushed-me-to-the-edge-a3702711.html; https://london-post.co.uk/sleazy-journalist-rupert-myers-sacked-by-various-outlets-amidst-sexual-assault-allegations/.
At last, a reality check in the otherwise useless and in fact often deliberately untruthful UK msm.
I was blogging months ago that the forces of the Kiev regime would soon be running short of military resources, particularly fuel and ammunition.
J.H. Brennan
I discovered today that J.H. Brennan, whose early 1970s books Astral Doorways and Experimental Magic I owned from 1978 (when I was 21-22 y-o), is still alive, now aged 81: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Herbert_Brennan.
A pretty good writer, in my opinion, with an easy-reading style (judging by the few books of his that I have read).
More tweets seen
Interesting analysis, and I can agree with much of it, though I do not accept that neurotic bighead, Gordon Brown’s, bailout of the bank swine was right at all— better to have let them go bust, imprison the wealthy bankers, then step in to help those with say £200,000 or less on deposit; and let the affluent and wealthy go smoke.
I agree that the “austerity” nonsense of the part-Jews David Cameron-Levita and George Osborne was disastrous, causing misery to millions without in any way dealing with the real problems of the financial sector and “national debt”.
As to cryptocurrencies, it is true that they are “without intrinsic value“, but that is also true of conventional currencies. I took a look at all that years ago on the blog: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2017/12/10/thoughts-about-bitcoin/.
If a sustained recession/slump/depression is around the corner, there yet might be time for social-nationalism to triumph. Remember 1929-1933…
Late tweets seen
That creature is Canada’s Minister of Justice?! He looks more like a refugee from the 1950s Phil Silvers Show.
Get Trudeau Out! Alternatively, just get Trudeau.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 