So there I was, woodbine in one hand, a glass of red in the other and I was thinking about cottaging and dogging. I wasn’t thinking about doing either of these activities myself, of course – but, for some curious reason, they came into my mind. Some senior plod earlier in the week had caused mass outrage among the outrageable classes by suggesting that when police officers went for a rare walk in the park together they should walk on by if they saw men shagging each other or groups of men standing outside a parked car watching the sex going on within.
In fact, so obsessed by these wonderfully British sporting activities was I, I had to bring it up on Twitter. Infobunny and Geeklawyer just happened, purely by chance, to be on Twitter at the time and the exchange went like this:
Charonqc @Geeklawyer May go out and look for cottagers and doggers….now that Police couldn’t care less….
Charonqc @Geeklawyer Not for me… you understand…. Just wd like to see what doggers get up to…. apparently they stand outside cars watching sex.
Charonqc @Geeklawyer Dogging seems most bizarre… watching chavs f***ing each other in a dark carpark… seriously crazy….
Geeklawyer @Charonqc wouldn’t be better to rap on the steamy window & say “Hey! That’s my wife!” and run away?
Charonqc @Geeklawyer Or… knock on window… “You need some Viagra, mate…”
infobunny @Geeklawyer @Charonqc or even better, knock on the window and say: “Hey, that’s my car!”
I’m afraid I tend not to use Twitter for serious research, networking or communication. It would seem that a few UK blawgers abuse Twitter as well.
RollonFriday reports that Clifford Chance is laying off 20 litigators from their New York office. This is rather curious given the ‘Tsunami of litigation’ currently washing through the legal profession in the wake of the banking collapse. RoF suggest that CC may just not be cutting it at the top of the US league of white shoe firms in New York?
Always being open to the human species’ ability to do strange and unusual things, my eye was caught by a story about a drumming cab driver on the News of The World website. 
I had a look. I played the video. He wasn’t a very good drummer and looked even more bizarre, clad in denim with a homburg hat on, when he climbed out of his cab and started vandalising his own cab with his drum sticks. If he goes on Britain’s Got Talent, I’d advise him to find a dog with a brain tumour and only five days to live.
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And so to the world of politics…. I have declared my blawg a PESTO FREE ZONE at weekends… so no talk tonight from Mr Pesto, Global Editor, Financial panic and hubris section, The British Broadcasting Corporation about PANIC and MELTDOWN… that can wait for post 21 October Lehman situation. It ain’t over yet….. but just in case you haven’t read it…. house prices are set to fall again this month. Look on the bright side if you bought a house at the top of the market and are married….. it means you can stay married. On that topic, I read the other day that meedja savvy journalists, with no time to follow the current financial situation, politics, war, global recession, human rights abuses et al…. are telling their readers to cope with the coming cold winter and rising fuel bills to make babies.
The tabloids may, take up this theme, but I suspect they will be less demure. “”COR WHAT A SHAGGER” as they report on the credit-crunch, global warming, immigration, energy prices” in one deftly crafted piece of journalism. [I am a great admirer of tabloid journalism. It takes real skill to simplify complex ideas and issues and make them understandable by people too hungover, self obsessed, thick, right wing, politically unaware to an absurd level and geezers who eat the same breakfast every day at their local caff.
If you are in the market to get married or divorced then I always recommend John Bolch over at Family Lore – who knows a thing or two. In fact… he has worked out how to film himself from his webcam and put these films on YouTube! His first sensible vidcast is about Family Law.. “The Week in View”. I shall leave you to discover his first….. most enjoyable… first vidcast.”
Two good articles in the press today – Lynn Barber interviewing Boris – and Rawnsley of The Observer. Barber’s article, if you are a Londoner and have not read it – is worth a read in full. Good stuff.
But it was Andrew Rawnsley, who I always read first as I light my Sunday woodbine at the caff, who entertained more, for me. Full Rawnsley article: “When a politician claims that he always saw the storm on the horizon, it is often more informative to read what he was saying when the sun was still shining.”
Rawnsley then provides some rather good examples: referring to Gordon Brown’s speeches at The Mansion House to The Great and The Greedy” …. Rawnsley writes: “Having hosed them with adulation every time he visited the City, Gordon Brown surpassed himself when he returned in 2007 to deliver his final Mansion House speech as Chancellor before he moved into Number 10. ‘A new world order has been created,’ he proclaimed. Britain was ‘a new world leader’ thanks to ‘your efforts, ingenuity and creativity’. He congratulated himself for ‘resisting pressure’ to toughen up regulation of their activities. Everyone needed to follow the City’s ‘great example’, emulate this ‘high value-added, talent-driven industry’. ‘Britain needs more of the vigour, ingenuity and aspiration that you already demonstrate.’ Thanks to their ‘remarkable achievements’, we had the huge privilege to live in ‘an era that history will record as the beginning of a new Golden Age’.
Yep…. goood stuff.
And finally for this weekend’s postcard – a short one, I know – but I did not have as much free time as is normal this weekend….
The 42 day victory hasn’t won the war
But the government’s attack on civil liberties is finally driving ordinary citizens to protest
Henry Porter has an interesting article…
Who knows what will happen on the stock exchange, house prices, recession, when the Christmas lights will be turned on.. oor if they will be turned on at all…. we shall find out as the week enfolds…
Regards as always
Charon QC 