Laughing all the way to the bank?
Possibly not, if Gordon Bore gets his way. Lord Falconer of Thoroton, past Minister for the Millenium Dome and former Lord Chancellor, is not at all happy with the pension arrangements being offered by Bore. Having left practice at the Bar (reputedly on earnings of £500,00 p.a.) Falconer took a massive reduction in salary to be Lord Chancellor. (£104,386 salary for Cabinet members in the House of Lords, despite being entitled to £232,900) The pension offered is £52,193. Lord Falconer believes it should be double that. The Telegraph has the full story.
One of the problems faced by Lord Falconer is that he cannot go back to the Bar. He appointed many of the judges and cannot now appear in front of them. I hope he does sue the government.
It is well before lunch and I have not drunk any Rioja yet…. so I haven’t got to the stage of thinking that I might start a “Save Charlie’s Pension” campaign… Bon chance, Charlie… shall be the cry from the hills of Perthshire. [Charlie Falconer and Charon were held at the same detention centre in Scotland – at the same time, bar one year. One of life’s strange coincidences. He was not, of course, Lord Chancellor then. That came later.]
Gordon Ramsay, in The Times today, started off yet another tedious article on recipes with the words: “There’s nothing more annoying than watching your own fireworks display as you struggle to get food ready.” F**k off, was my first reaction. My second reaction was slightly more focused. Is there really nothing more annoying than that?.. I asked myself. As it happens, there was an article of “100 most annoying things” in The Mirror today and I could not see Ramsay’s one on the list. It doesn’t make me a bad person, but I actually find Gordon Ramsay particularly annoying, especially when he pretends to be an ‘action man’ and catch his own fish on yet another cookery programme – yet another bit of television trickery, apparently.
Bloody Relations says there ought to be a word for: “A particularly unprofessional pleasure you get at winning a case against a singularly obnoxious and difficult opponent who comes in for heavy criticism for the judge for the precise same things that you have found so obnoxious in the seemingly endless months you have been dealing with them before the case gets to a final hearing .”
ConflictofLaws.net, created and produced by Martin George, is now sponsored by Clifford Chance LLP… deservedly so. Family Lore has a rather horrific story about marital revenge. Head of Legal picks up on the House of Lords ‘control orders’ decision with a wry comment.
Legal Lass grumbles about her BVC tutors… and adds… “Also, it does not instill any confidence in tutors to have them read everything they are supposed to tell us from a pre-planned tutorial sheet; especially things like “from this lesson you have learnt the following…”. It is especially bad if the tutor doesn’t look up once as they are reading and speaks either in a bored or slightly hysterical tone..”
This is ludicrous. Formula teaching gone mad. Maybe this law school wants to produce formula lawyers? … now that will be really useful to the profession. If a tutor at a UK law school is doing this, we really ought to know. Any guesses about which law school Legal Lass is attending? I have a pretty shrewd idea from anecdotal information I receive by email – and I receive a fair bit. Pupilblogger has a tenancy (Congratulations) and seems to have become an ex-blogger. Darwin seems to have been right. Survival of the fittest? The band of UK Blawgers is becoming smaller by the week… I trawled every blog on my blogroll. Quite a few have not blogged for months! C’est la vie…. Geeklawyer continues to enlighten… awf with his head.
Good to see that our Lawmakers are obeying the law. Home Office Minister, Liam
Byrne, was fined £100 yesterday for using a mobile phone while driving. The irony? Mr Byrne has campaigned in Parliament for tougher sentences for dangerous driving. Excellent example Mr Byrne. Go to the top of the class and hand out the pencils. (Times and Sun have the story)
Chief London Plod, Sir Ian Blair, has the ‘complete confidence’ of The Home Secretary following the jury decision that the Metropolitan Police were guilty in the Menezes shooting. Two weeks before he goes? I cannot now recall if the Home Secretary had ‘complete confidence’ in the immigration figures released last week or ‘no confidence’, or perhaps somewhere between the two?
The Sun has a snippet about a Catholic school headmaster being arrested ‘for trying to sell himself for sex dressed as a woman. Cops found Dr Paul Schum, 50, wearing a black leather bondage outfit with fishnet stockings and a pair of fake breasts walking in a red light area.’ Dear god…. I mean, 50? Well past it, mate, for that sort of thing.
Charon QC 