Podcast 62: A call to The Duke of Edinburgh on a premium rate line

The story about Dial-A-Royal fascinated me – so I have done a companion podcast version of “One just called to say hello” -  (complete with a special ringtone)  of my conversation with The Duke of Edinburgh – purely imaginary, of course…. *** Listen to Podcast 62:  In conversation with The Duke of Edinburgh on a [...]

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One just called to say hello….

Last month the news broke that Gordon Brown was making phonecalls to unsuspecting members of the British public. Yesterday, the News of The World reported that The Queen had been thinking about setting up premium rate phone lines to allow the British public to call and get a message from the Royals – to help [...]

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Podcast 61: With Chris Haywood – future barrister and musician…

Today I am talking to Chris Haywood who has just completed his GDL and intends to do the BVC in September. Chris has joined the UK blawgers with his new blog “RocknLaw”…. and is a member of the band – PIANO. We talk about the GDL, have a brief musical interlude with one of Piano’s [...]

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30th June: Daily news podcast and news

Daily News and podcast up on InsiteLaw magazine. Article by Justin Patten of Human Law mediation on keeping disputes out of court – Geeklawyer hosts Blawg Review – and general update. Coming up on Insitelaw today – a podcast with RocknLaw – and more updates to reports, Ministry of Justice and the Bar Council / [...]

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The pleasures of Twitter…

The pleasures of twitter. Just could not resist doing a screen grab from a Twitter reply from infobunny. And on that note… off to watch some news. Normal blog and insitemlawmag service tomorrow. Finger repaired. I am on Twitter – why, I have no idea – but can be illuminating.

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West London Man (15): 15 – love to George….

Audio version – West London Man (15) : 15 – Love to George The English summer continues. Ascot has, thankfully, passed into memory and George has two tickets to watch the Murray v Haas game at Wimbledon. Caroline has tickets for the second week. George, it has to be said, has absolutely no interest in [...]

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24th June: Daily news podcast and news on Insitelaw

Daily news podcast and news now up on InsiteLaw newswire A fairly big update, with links to law posts on blogs.  Normal service now being resumed and I plan to increase the coverage given to news and UK Law blogs.

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Podcast 60: Professor Geoffrey Alderman on why academic standards are declining.

Podcast 60: Professor Geoffrey Alderman on why academic standards are declining. Today I am talking to Professor Geoffrey Alderman, Professor of Politics and Contemporary History at The University of Buckingham and a former Chairman of the University of London’s academic council Professor Alderman wrote a fascinating article in The Times on 18th June A grotesque [...]

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A compliment indeed…

What About Clients?… now, calling itself “What About Paris?” is a serious U.S. blog about legal practice – but with a proclivity to go off piste in style. J Dan Hull and his co-bloggers / phantasms do much to promote blawging internationally and have a tolerance, some may say, appetitie, for UK Blawging. Certainly J [...]

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Weekend Review 20-21 June: Wimbledon edition

In but a few short days… tennis and strawberry fanciers will gather on hallowed ground to watch another game we invented, and go through between one day to a week and a bit of agony, gasping as Brit wild card players disappear fairly early and pin their hopes on a young Scot. Why we expect, [...]

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The summer solstice

And so the sun rose over West London, as it does every day, but this morning was different. It is the summer solstice. King Arthur Pendragon lives down the road. I know this – I have a few drinks with him every so often down at The Bollo. Today, King Arthur is, presumably, down at [...]

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On liberty…..

The Evening Standard reports that “Civil liberties campaigner Shami Chakrabarti threatened to sue Cabinet minister Andy Burnham today over “smears” about her links to Tory David Davis.” Story Briefly… Burnham, regarded as bringing a degree of humour to what seems to be an otherwise humourless Brown led Labour government, made unfortunate remarks about Shami Chakrabarti, [...]

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Royal Ascot: The Fascinator…

It is quite possible that some readers, following Royal Ascot in the press or on television, may have come across the “Fascinator”. I have to admit, as I have absolutely no interest in anything running along a track, whether olympic athlete, greyhound or horse, that I had no idea what a “fascinator” is. I was [...]

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Podcast 59: LLB Degree inflation with Norman Baird, QEDLaw

Podcast 59: LLB Degree inflation with Norman Baird of QEDLaw Today I am talking with Norman Baird about his extensive research into LLB degree inflation in recent years.  His findings are published on his QEDlaw blog and are well worth reading if you have an interest in legal education. Norman is keen to encourage debate [...]

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West London Man (14): Royal Ascot – First Day

Audio podcast version: West London Man 14: Royal Ascot The Summer Season progresses and today is the first day of Royal Ascot. George has taken the day off to take Caroline to the races. George did a great deal of research, read the website carefully, and decided to go with a black Silk top hat. [...]

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17 June: daily news podcast and news…

Independent: Lecturers ‘pressed to boost degree results’ The Independent reports that Degree standards in many British universities are in danger of collapsing because lecturers are under pressure to “mark positively” and turn a blind eye to plagiarism, the man who was in charge of safeguarding standards at Britain’s largest university will say today Daily news [...]

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Mea culpa… no blogging today…

Apologies…. haven’t had time to blog today. Got up, read the news for Insitelaw etc etc, and then found myself on a bus heading towards Windsor. Got on the wrong bus… clearly …. as I had intended to go to Hammersmith. Quite an enjoyable day out, as it happens. Met a few people – got [...]

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16 June: Daily news podcast and news…

Daily news podcast and news on Insitelaw newswire QED Law has a new blog prepared by Norman Baird. The first post is an exhaustive review of degree inflation covering all the major UK universities. It is a fascinating piece of research – well worth a read.

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Weekend Review 14-15 June: A week to remember for a very long time….

Having just done a podcast with LawMinx (infra and right), I was going to go and watch Ray Mears tell me how to survive in the outback of Australia on BBC. Having footled about in my youth making fire with stone age tools for real, collecting water in plastic bags from tree leaves and having [...]

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Podcast 58: The BVC, pupillage interviews and life.. with LawMinx

Tonight, as Brazilian live music plays in the next door garden, I did a podcast with LawMinx. LawMinx has finished the BVC, continues to work on her Ph.D research and is about to embark on the post OLPAS round of pupillage interviews. We do, actually, manage to talk about the BVC and pupillage…. but then [...]

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