Jesus and Moses

I received this one via email recently:

A burglar broke into a house one night. He shined his flashlight around, looking for valuables when a voice in the dark said,

'Jesus knows you're here.'

He nearly jumped out of his skin, clicked his flashlight off, and froze.

When he heard nothing more , after a bit, he shook his head and continued.

Just as he pulled the stereo out so he could disconnect the wires, clear as a bell he heard

'Jesus is watching you.'

Freaked out, he shined his light around frantically, looking for the source of the voice.

Finally, in the corner of the room, his flashlight beam came to rest on a parrot.

Did you say that?' he hissed at the parrot.

'Yep', the parrot confessed, then squawked, 'I'm just trying to warn you that he is watching you.'

The burglar relaxed. 'Warn me, huh? Who in the world are you?'

'Moses,' replied the bird.

'Moses?' the burglar laughed. 'What kind of people would name a bird Moses?'

'The kind of people that would name a Rottweiler Jesus.'

Best Daily Mail headline

... is at Boing boing.

On a less sensational note, if you haven't seen the Daily Mail headline generator, check it out here.

Domestic abuse as a pre-existing condition

I tend to be in favour of parties being allowed to contract any which way they choose on most issues - and I think it's good that people should be able to pick and chose aspects of health insurance to find a policy that fits them.

However, I draw a pretty big exception line under the policies which are classing domestic abuse as a 'pre existing condition'. Whilst I can see it is perfectly logical from the company's point of view (people who suffer domestic abuse once are more likely to suffer from it again in the future), I just can't imagine what was going on in the mind of the individual who came up with this one in the first place.

Mrs Voldemort?

This post from Dizzy Thinks observes that of all the influential women in politics over the past century (according to a Government list publish recently), only one is listed without her name.

Check out 1979 by clicking on the picture to make it bigger.

French Lessons

Bonsoir!

Well, I start in French because The Boy and I have recently started private French lessons.

Mme V is very good and provides a two hour lesson at hour house followed by complimentary supplementary lessons over the phone.

The reasons for the French lessons are because we plan to hold the wedding in France. My French is inexact, but I am happy to muddle along until I find I forget a word so completely that I cannot even replace it with a similar word (for example, I may forget 'voir' (to see) and temporarily substitute with 'regarder' (to watch)).

I think the problem is coming, however, that whilst The Boy did French at GCSE and I did not, my 'comprehendable' French is far more fluent than his - partly t do with my ability to 'give it a go' with any language (French, German, Chinese, Dutch, Japanese, Turkish....).

Anyway, the point of this post is partly the apologise for the lack of recent update (sorry) but also to say that is anyone is looking for French tuition, I do thoroughly recommend my current teacher and please get in contact with me if you might be interested

Superfreakonomics - closer to publication

Ohhh, Superfreakonomics publishing date is getting closer and closer...

They've just shown what the front cover looks like, here.

The exploding Orapple/Apange underneath the suicide bomber question on the front tickled me.

Sound Advice

I received a message from my boss last night wishing me luck for today, with the following message:

"...

Same advice as to witnesses:

Listen carefully to the questions and be honest with them!

..."

I thought it was a lovely analogy (especially as much of my job is chatting/preparing the witnesses before they give evidence).

Now I just need to make sure I come up to proof :)

Ethics Questions

I'm busy cramming for the upcoming interview (having forgotten that areas such as 'contract' even existed) and so am sorting the legal knowledge for myself, have got my supervisor at work to run through with 'fluff HR questions' with me (eg: dinner party, biggest weakness, why the bar) but would like your collective opinions on two ethics questions. I don't think there is necessarily any 'right' answer, I would just like to know your thoughts.

1. You are prosecuting in the crown court. One of the jurors is wearing a 'I (heart) the BNP - whites rule' t-shirt (or similar). What do you do in the following scenarios (is your answer different in any of them):

a: A white man is accused of raping a white woman (ie: a crime with no race element and where a race element could not be perceived)

b: A black man is accused of raping a white woman (a crime with the potential to be perceived to have a race element)

c: A white man is accused of racially aggrevated assault towards his asian neighbour as it is said that he yelled a racist comment to his neighbour in the middle of a dispute in which he also spat on his neighbour. (ie: a crime where race is an inherent aspect of the offence).


2. You are prosecuting. The defendant is unrepresented. You have learned of a number of mitigating factors which the defendant fails to put forwards himself. To what extent are you obliged to put forward those matters on his behalf and how would you go about doing so?

Let's assume that 'asking a senior member of chambers' or 'phoning the Bar ethics hotline' are not options.

I know what I think my answers would be, but I would like to have them confirmed!


Thank you for your thoughts.

Applications

Well, it turns out not everyone hates me.

I have just been told I have been successful at the telephone interview stage for a job and have been invited to the assessment centre.

Fingers crossed.

That, and another pupillage form submitted. This one has been my favourite so far for ease of lay out - I was able to C+P my CV into most of it an the 'free writing' sections had suitably broad, yet sensible questions with no word limit.

Toes crossed too.

Points mean prizes

Well, I have accumulated 7 rejections over the past 2-3 weeks, a mixture of OLPAS and non-OLPAS.

Will review the rejections soon - some I genuinely like far more than others.

I think (though I seem to have lost track!) I have 9 applications outstanding at the moment. I also have two half completed which I need to submit.

How are you all doing on the win/lose/draw front? Many interviews? If so, at the moment, sod off and leave me (and others) to our collective misery!

The worst thing is the people who ask, and are trying to be nice, how the hunt is going. Damn them.

Bitter times.

OLPAS score 5.5.09

As I stayed up until 2 am on the original deadline date to finish my apps (falling asleep on the computer) I was both pleased and disappointed that the deadline was subsequently extended. By the time I fell asleep, I had done 8 applications. Luckily, I started with the ones I wanted the most as the final ones were not good!

The next day I was at a hearing which meant I did not have any internet access - hence what was for me the relative forward planning in finishing the majority the night before.

Midmorning, I then received a text from a friend telling me the deadline had been extended until the next day. I was then told that my hearing was adjourning until the next day to allow time for decisions to be made, so I went back to the office and filled in two more applications following recommendations from people in the office.

My slight disappointment with the deadline extension is therefore the idea that of the eight applications I originally made, I could have filled in the last 4 far better if I had not been so tired when typing - knowing about the extension earlier would have meant I would have left them for the next morning.

So, the OLPAS score currently stands at: 10 apps sent, 1 print off, 9 nil responses

New addition to blogroll

Pupilpedia's blog has now been added to the blog roll.

I firmly believe he needs a new name (and PP just doesn't sound good out loud). Perhaps on the PP theme, I want to call him Pingu (no, I don't know the link either - it's just a worrying insight into my mind. Take an aspirin, it'll be over soon!).

Thoughts?

To OLPAS or not to OLPAS, that is the question

Damn, 4 whole days off work and not a single word further into my OLPAS app. To the extent that I didn't actually log into OLPAS all weekend. Double damn.

Oh well, can feel marginally virtuous on the grounds I have now chosen the 12 sets I want to apply to. Some progress, I guess.

Does this apply to pupillage applications?

BVC provider query

I have just been asked the following by a friend, and would be interested in your opinions:

He has applied for the BVC and has offers from MMU, UWE and City.

He did his undergraduate at MMU.

He cannot decide between MMU and City. The course fees for MMU are c£9,500 and the course fees for City are £14,500. He has applied for an Inns scholarship but does not know if he will get it. He has to make his choice on BVC provider before he will know this information.

I told him that knowing what I do now, I would probably still choose MMU as it looks after its students more (for all its flaws). OTOH, City has a higher pass rate (though having seen a sample exam and heard about the teaching, I think it may be due to different exames) and he wants to avoid being 'just' MMU all the time.

Your views? City or MMU?

Books

Well, this seems to be a more intellectual version of the '25 things' meme going around Facebook:
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
5) Tag some friends


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowlin x+
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible - x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman x+
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x+
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare x (done enough, anyway)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk x
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffingber
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams x
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy x
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x+
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x+3
7 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini x+
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres *
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x+
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x+
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x+
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy x
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood x+
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan x
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel x+
52 Dune - Frank Herbert x
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth x
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon x
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x5
8 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon x+
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov x
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt x+
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold x+
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x+
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 7
2 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x+
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson x+
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome x
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell x
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert x
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom *
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton x+
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 9
2 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks *
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

TotalRead: 44
Loved: 19
Want to read: 3

I'm somewhat hindered by the fact I dislike most 19th century literature - if I could count the ones I've watched the BBC adaptations of, I'd be sorted :)

Ironically, I would guesstimate that I own at least 85% of these....

Scrabulous

Scrabulous is back on Facebook, though it's renamed to Lexilous (or similar) and has 8 letters.

I'll admit to being a little OCD on scrabble, I like it and I'm good at it - not the least because I learned the two letter word list a loooong time ago.

It's quite amazing how much harder the game is when you have one extra letter. All the bingos which usually fall into place fail me utterly.

Nevertheless, I battle on. Mr Zero, it's your go.

Coupling

Just spent most of the weekend watching coupling.

I'd seen the first series before, but not seen any of the others and had forgotten how funny it was.

I do recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it.

My only problem is how much sense Jeff makes. Ahem.

Riding out a recession? Training contract

Well, it seems the best way to ride out the recession is to be a trainee in a law firm as they are almost completely unsackable - even for gross misconduct, let alone minor details like profit margins.

In order to sack a trainee, you need the permission of the SRA....

More here.

Dreaming of Galbraith

Goodness knows what was going on in the depths of my subconscious last night but I merrily dreamt all about Galbraith submissions. That and images of plums and little piles of dust (representing duff, I imagine) were floating in an out... I think I need to drink more and eat less chocolate!

My only possible reason for this is that the case with Scary Defence Barrister has finished and in the last two cases against her, she has made submissions of no case to answer (and she was successful on one but not on the other, if you're interested in the record) at half time.

The way that hearings work is that, unlike criminal trials where there usually aren't too many allegations, there tend to be a great many made. It is therefore possible to have withdrawn, admitted and lost 50% of these at half time, but still have enough left to make up a case which could potentially lead to impairment. By way of example, the case that is starting on Monday has about 80 allegations (from memory).

However, many allegations aren't in themselves perjorative, it is only when they are added together that they may become so.

Whilst I'm on the theme, the hearing process is also different from a normal criminal trial because there are three stages rather than 2. Obviously, in a trial the facts are decided upon and then it is sentancing. At a hearing, the panel firstly decides which facts are found proved. They then decide whether, on ther basis of the facts found proved, that the practioner's Fitness to Practice is impaired. Finally, if they have decided that there is impaired FTP, they decide what sanction, if any, is appropriate.

Ok, a very boring post and possibly the most detail on my job that I have ever - or will ever - blog!

Needed to get it out of my system less the crazy dreams start again!