Danny Alexander *Telegraphed*… Next please…..!

It seems that Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, does have practical experienmce after all…. of Capital Gains Tax and is, therefore, ideally suited to overseeing plans to increase CGT for mere mortals. Talk about Japanese footballers kicking balls into their own goal! Telegraph article… The claims appear to undermine repeated claims by Mr [...]

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Postcard From The Staterooms: Econocomical edition

Dear Reader, You will have heard that David Laws reported himself to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner and resigned yesterday as chief secretary to the Treasury.  While he accepts that he broke the rules, his sin is rather less serious than some who fiddled voraciously as they sacked John Lewis like Romans at an orgy. Some [...]

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We want LAWS!! not Law….

I write this week from a dark place, a place where the mob riots, pitchforks and flaming torches ready… a place where only the head of David Laws will assuage some.   The Telegraph outed David Laws – firstly as gay, in effect, and secondly for an expenses problem in connection with £40,000 worth of expenses [...]

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F**kART: *LAPIN*! (2010)

LAPIN!  (2010) Charon Acrylics on canvas board Lapin is a friend – a surrealist, photographer and voracious reader of books. I thought the PopArt style was about right and based it on a pic she took of herself recently. I still have to tart up the yellow border colour and sharpen up the highlights and [...]

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Just a few jottings…

I thought I would start the Bank holiday weekend early. It is unlikely that many of my clients, or potential clients,  will wish to be troubled tomorrow by phone, email or at all. I have, however, noticed that on the Friday of a bank holiday weekend people are remarkably industrious.  When, in the past, I [...]

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BabyBarista leaves The Times!

Tim Kevan is a good friend of mine – and a fellow blogger.  He has left The Times because of their soon to be implemented decision to hide BabyBarista and all their other content behind a paywall. This is good news for those of us who enjoy his writing and will, I hope, encourage BabyBarista [...]

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F**kART: Coalition! (2010)

Coalition! (2010) Charon 22 x 18 Acrylics on canvas board Cameron is portrayed as a Captain America pastiche and the deputy prime minister, Clegg, as a spiderman type giving the bird with both fingers. They stand on a sea of choppy yellow water!  The ‘bird’ motif is perhaps ‘inelegant’ – but some of his voters [...]

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Government in action….

Unfortunate juxtaposition (above)…. Bizarre… (below) …. Osborne meets US treasury secretary Geithner… Credit and props to Tim Montgomerie of Conservative Home

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Law Review: Queen’s Speech and matters of rape.

Parliament opened to great pomp and circumstance yesterday in a ceremony that has remained largely unchanged for decades. The Lord Chancellor, Ken Clarke, put the wig back on but did not back down the stairs.  He chose to turn his back on the Monarch and walk down the stairs sensibly after handing The Queen her [...]

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F**kART: Charon Self Portrait… in three colours

Charon Self Portrait (In Three Colours) 2010 Acrylics on canvas board 20 x 16 Charon, with new tache,  goes to a field in a yellow shirt and jeans (and a weird hat)  on a sunny windy day in May and paints a glass of red wine.  That is all.

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Postcard from the Staterooms

Dear Reader, I’m a bit late with my postcard this week.  This is largely because I had a most entertaining and enjoyable weekend chatting to great people.  On this day of CUTS announced by George Osborne and his ‘Igor’… David Laws, I thought I would do my bit for our country – see above. I [...]

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Excellent email from Peter Crisp, BPP Law School

I am delighted to be able to report…. Dear Mike Our QAA report has been published on our website since the end of last year (after we got permission from them to publish it): http://www.bppuc.com/documents/DegreeAwardingPowers_001.pdf Best Peter (just off to have lunch, probably not sausages) Peter Crisp Dean, Law School Chief Executive, BPP College of [...]

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Podcast for Inside Track: Ted Burke, CEO, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer – The Future of The Legal Profession

Today I am talking to Ted Burke about  the prospects for Freshfields and the legal sector in the short to medium term.  He looks at the increasing globalisation of legal work and the knock-on effect for younger lawyers going to work in the City.  He discusses emerging economies such as India, China and Russia and [...]

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Law Review: Libel reform, torture investigations, Guardian Law section

In a modern, free, society, freedom of speech is prized as a right but it is a right delicately balanced between the right to freedom of speech and the right of reputation. The civil laws of defamation, embracing libel and slander, are a powerful, blunt and ruthless instrument used by a very small group of [...]

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Rive Gauche:The Paralytic Olympics, conduct unbecoming of a barrister and the sun shines…

Taking breakfast after an extremely amusing dinner last night with my ex, I purchased The Times, The Independent and The Sun at the cafe in Battersea Square and settled down to read.  Clarkson in The Sun is usually good value and today his thoughts on the Olympics made me laugh out loud.  Missing a trick [...]

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Big Society: 6.05 pm – Iain Duncan Smith is in The Diary Room (with an exorcist?)

Big Society: 6.05 pm – Iain Duncan-Smith is in The Diary Room Big Society: Good afternoon Secretary of State.  Found any exorcists in your new department…?  I’m sure there are quite a few demons over there? Ian Duncan-Smith: hahaha… no, demons, yes… but no exorcists here. Big Society: So… you have the distinction of being [...]

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And now a little bit of light relief – fancy a sausage?

With the onset of summer, the work for the day done, I took myself  (and my slightly sinister new temporary  tache) off to a cafe in Battersea Square to sit in the sun, drink black coffee, smoke Marlboros and catch up on a bit of law news in The Guardian and The Times. After reading [...]

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Law Review: So why do 75% of Sun readers want to get rid of the Human Rights Act? What is there not to like?

The Sun had a poll this morning suggesting that only one in four people wants to keep the Human Rights Act. I carried out a very unscientific poll of my own this morning while I had coffee. I asked a few people having coffee at the cafe what they thought of the Human Rights Act. [...]

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Dancing penis escapes from Olympic designer’s office – Lord Sir Seb Coe isn’t fast enough these days to catch it.

Olympic mascots Wenlock and Mandeville branded ‘patronising rubbish’ Telegraph… they are not that different from the pic above… astonishing

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Actually, I take the “BPP is a sausage factory” criticism as a compliment – Katie Best, BPP Business School

Producing the highest-quality MBAs is the unabashed aim of ‘sausage factory’ BPP. Katie Best is proud to see it deliver My employer, BPP Business School, has been characterised by a number of critics as a “sausage factory”. It is believed that BPP represents the ultimate expression of the industrialisation of higher education. We are treated [...]

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