A message to a 3rd yr law student

I met a girl this weekend who is a third year law student who wants to do the BVC.

She had evidently heard that I had completed it a little while ago and wanted to 'network' (well, that was what it felt like when she sought me out). It felt odd to be the object of a networker and is a salutatory lesson in remembering to be subtle in order to not instantly annoy your networkee.

She asked me how pupillage was and I informed her that I still didn't have one and I was looking. She looked at me in a 'oh, I thought you were intelligent but now you are stupid' way - in a similar way you would momentarily look at someone who you had presumed to be intelligent but who told you they could not read, but herr looked lacked the bit of sympathy I assume would be present in your look to the illiterate. So, to quote Tim Minchin(1), "my diplomacy dyke groans, And the arsehole held back by its stones. Could be held back no more"as I proceeded to go off on "one of my rare (2), but fun, rants" at her:

I might have said something along the following lines "No need to look quite so shocked, you realise, I presume, that only one in every five (3) people who complete the BVC successfully ever get pupillage. I have to assume you knew that because frankly, anyone who is idiot enough to shell out £10,000 without fully researching the odds obviously hasn't got the requisite judgement which would be needed to be a barrister anyway"

She continued to look shocked in a slightly different way and I suspect that she wasn't quite as aware of the statistics I as assume any prospective BVC student is and is now caught in a conversational catch-22 between admitting she is arrogant enough to think she will make it (and therefore implicitly telling me I'm rubbish for not doing so) or admitting she's an idiot for having no idea how competitive it all is.

I really hope that she now does go away and do some actual research. And, perhaps hypocritically given my lack of people skills in the rant above, learns how not to annoy people in under 30 seconds - surely that skill is an inherent part of any pupillage interview?

__________________________________

(1) He's very funny. Do go and see him when he next comes to your city.

(2) The word 'rare' may not be strictly accurate

(3) I tend to change this number for anything between 3 - 8 as it doesn't exist in my head as a 'real' number any more, it is simply there as 'only 1 in lots' or 'only 1 in many' (I feel like one of Terry Pratchett's trolls)

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.

One of Your Five A Day?

I've had a general background mistrust of the 'six litres of water/vitamin supplements/organic food/five a day" 'science' for a while. Too much seemed to be taken too literally with too few footnotes to seem wholly true.

I therefore found this article "Science and Pseudoscience in Adult Nutrition Research and Practice" by "CSI" (Committee for Sceptical Inquiry) quite interesting.

4 Environmental Heresies

I thoroughly recommend this TED talk:

On Mourning Celebrities

Yes, he was talented. Yes, he broke new ground. Yes, it's sad when anyone dies.

But really, unless you are a family or friend, why on earth are you in floods of tears/joining a support group/setting up a shrine?

"Oh no, that's a shame. I wonder if anyone will make a joke about [insert here]" would seem a far more usual approach.

JK Rowling dying before Book 7 came out would have been upsetting. Obviously, it would be sad that she had died (again, because she is a person and it's always sad when a person dies) but it would be annoying because we would never have known the end of the series.

I wonder if I am a bad human being?

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.

Debate on anonymity in rape cases

My post on 'what law would you change and why?' (I gave anonymity to those accused of serious sexual offences) has been picked up and responded to by Ms Marcella Chester in her blog abyss2hope.

She disagrees with me on a many issues. Her post is copied, in full, in italics below, followed by my response (in non-italics). As you can see, I take the view that many difference of opinion lie in the differences between the US and UK. After posting my response on her blog, I checked the US law and my assumption was right. Frankly, I find the notion of thinking its acceptable to force a rape victim to stand in court and give testimony the the defendants face appalling and a wicked example of reading the letter of the law over the spirit.

Comments are invited, especially from anyone who can correct me on Crim PR or anyone who knows the US equivalent of 'Daily Mail reader'.

M

False Allegation About Ease Of Making Rape Allegations

From This Side of the House:

Now, I think I might opt for anonymity for people accused, but not yet convicted, of serious sex offences.

I think that rape is a very serious accusation to make, one of the most serious after murder. Why, therefore, would I argue to grant anonymity for rape and not for murder? Well, it's because the accusation of rape is far easier to make.

With murder, you need a body, for starters, and then there needs to be a plausible explaination as to how you saw the murder occur (you being the accuser in this case). Murder is a crime of action, more than anything else. If you kill a person, if you don't have the requisite mens rea, it is still considered a very serious crime indeed.

The very reason Miss Middle of Manchester claims that a rape allegation is easier to make is why in fact the accusation of the crime of rape is harder to make and why rape is so under reported.

This explanation does demonstrate why false accusations of, "she wasn't raped," against living rape victims are especially easy to make. For starters, there is no body to be disposed of.

False allegations in murder cases are made and often come from the murderer, who points the police toward someone who is innocent. Yet this fact is ignored.

Gerald Pabst is one example of someone who successfully pointed the police toward an innocent man who was wrongfully convicted and later exonerated. Pabst was aided in his lie, which helped wrongfully convict Clay Reed Chabot, by twice passing polygraph exams. Pabst was eventually charged after he was matched via DNA to the murder of Galua Crosby.

Since this type of false allegation is in fact easy to make, then, by her own logic all those accused of murder should have their identity shielded unless or until they are convicted.

If Miss Middle of Manchester is claiming that she would find making -- true and false -- rape allegations easy to do then she needs to state this directly rather than using a blanket statement to cast unfounded doubt on all those who do report having been raped.

As a volunteer victim advocate for over 9 years, and as an activist, I have never met or talked to any rape survivor who found reporting easy. Even for those who were determined to see their rapists held legally accountable, reporting was not easy.

However, I have seen how easy it is for accused rapists to make the allegation that they are the victim of someone who should face criminal charges. I have seen how easy it is for people who claim to be against false allegations to make the false allegation that a lack of charges, dropped charges or an acquittal are proof that the reported rape never happened.

A variety of excuses are used to deem certain rape victims non-credible and therefore never to be believed. It can be the victim's possible motives for lying, being drunk, criminal history, profession, marital status, prior reporting of rape, etc.

I've had a man leave a comment on my blog that an alleged victim wasn't credible because she is black and the alleged rapist is white with a link to a report that misuses US crime statistics to "prove" that white men don't rape black women.

The list goes on, but none of these listed items are a magical protection against rape. Yet in far too many cases they are a magical protection for rapists who make false accusations against those they raped.

The ease and success of these false allegations is aided by Miss Middle of Manchester's next paragraph:

With rape, every part of the act is legal, providing it is done with consent. Rape, as a crime, therefore depends on the 'more difficult to prove' issue of consent. The complainant and the accused can both agree that they had sex, the only fact in issue is whether she said 'no' or not and the evidence for that is almost certainly going to be less cogent than a dead body.

This allegation is older than I am and is no more true for the crime of rape than for any other crime. Punching someone is legal with consent and in fact people pay to watch people punch each other. Yet there is clearly far more than 'no" that separates a boxing match from a physical assault where the criminal uses his or her fists.

Few people would accept the allegation that the only difference between murder and assisted suicide is whether the alleged victim said "no" or not. We get that these 2 experiences are far different so that baseless claims that a murder was an assisted suicide won't be viewed as being reasonable doubt. If this excuse is widely accepted we understand how this helps those considering murder and how this endangers public safety.

"They had sex," is not what has been agreed upon as fact when an alleged rapist uses the defense of, "it was consensual." Yet this lie gets repeated by those who claim to be against false allegations.

"We had sex," is a counter allegation.

What the failure to see, "we had sex," as an allegation does is create the illusion that rape and consensual sex are indistinguishable by anyone who wasn't there and indistinguishable by the rapist who claims that "no" wasn't heard or understood. This is a very dangerous false allegation and too easily made.

We certainly would never believe that murderers who claim "assisted suicide" simply misunderstood the situation. We certainly wouldn't tell people in crisis that they must clearly communicate that they don't want to commit suicide as murder prevention.

The false allegation that rape and consensual sex are almost identical helps rapists rationalize their crimes because if there is no difference other than "no" between consensual sex and rape then there is no reason for rape to be a felony or even a serious misdemeanor.

This dangerous false allegation is why so many rape victims -- who are believed -- are asked by an investigator if they really want to ruin their rapist's life by continuing with a true allegation of rape.

This explains why so many rape victims face harassment, threats and assaults by those championing people accused of rape.

Those who report rape have been arrested on unrelated charges, murdered, and become targets of murder-for-hire plots.

Those who report rape have been falsely arrested for making a false allegation. This can happen because investigators make bad assumptions. Or because the investigator succeeds at coercing that rape victim into recanting without bothering to do an actual competent investigation.

Here are details from the false allegation in Pennsylvania based on bad assumptions:

The woman was working as a service station clerk in Cranberry on July 14, 2004, when a man entered the store, sexually assaulted her at gunpoint, then stole $606.73 from the cash register. She called for help from local police, but the responding officers were skeptical of her account. Ms. Reedy ultimately was charged in January 2005 for making false reports to police, theft and receiving stolen property. She lost her job and spent five days in jail while she was pregnant.

So what allegedly is an easy action for rape victims to take, for this woman turned into multiple false charges. These false charges would have likely led to a wrongful conviction if her rapist hadn't been caught raping another woman under similar circumstances in a different county and if that rapist, during the interrogation, hadn't confessed to committing the rape other investigations guessed had never happened.

The harm would be to more than this woman's reputation. Being convicted would make her much more vulnerable to being raped by those who know that a woman convicted of filing a false police report would be labeled as a serial false accuser if she rightfully reported rape a second time.

The township official shrugged this injustice off by saying that hindsight is 20-20. That makes as much sense as shrugging off amputating the leg of someone who went in for knee replacement surgery. Both are malpractice.

Hearing the equivalent of, "so sorry, the doctors here are doing the best they can," should send chills down people's spines.

This is the type of investigative practice which can also lead to wrongful charges against those who were not victims of rape and who were wrongfully suspected of committing violent crimes. However, many people who claim to care about dangerous underlying practices shrug these proven injustices off as acceptable collateral damage because the damage was done to someone who reported rape.

Most of those who spread this meme about the ease of reporting rape justify spreading this false allegation in the name of protecting people from false allegations. This is nonsensical unless you don't believe rape victims are innocent and don't care about false allegations made against those who are also raped.

It doesn't matter that Miss Middle of Manchester goes on to write that her gut tells her that false rape allegations are rare.

Her beliefs about rape will, as she notes, cause some jurors who know that the prosecution has proven the defendant guilty to vote for acquitting a rapist because the process of being rightfully charged and rightfully tried seems to be a sufficient punishment for rape. This belief is based on those jurors' minimizing beliefs about rape.

That this action will cause someone who was raped to be labeled by many as a false accuser will be of no import to those jurors since the only person's welfare they are thinking about is the rapist's.

Miss Middle of Manchester needs to educate herself about the full reality of false allegations and the reality that rape is not merely consensual sex with a, "no," preceding it.

__________

My response:

Dear Marcella,

Thank you for both taking the time to read my blog and providing such a considered response.

Firstly, by way on context (for those who just read this response), the question (and 'answer') was "what law would you change and why?" and the far more subtle sub context was that it was a question from a pupillage application form and so I wanted a somewhat more 'legal academic' argument than necessarily advocating something I am actually passionate about.

That said, I fear that my comments have been misunderstood - which is obviously my fault for being imprecise with my words.

Before I address my main contention, it may seem relevant that I write from an English law background and our criminal procedure rules are somewhat different from those in the US. In the UK, as soon as a woman makes an accusation of rape, the presumption is that she is granted anonymity. From that point, she will be referred to as Ms A in every public document. The media is prohibited from ever publicly naming her, in the allegations she will be referred to as Ms A, throughout the trial, the public may be restricted, for her evidence, she does not have to be in the court room (and if she is, she will be behind a screen) and she will usually give her evidence via video link and therefore not see the defendant at all. I believe that the situation is very different in the US system where the legal injunction that the accused has the right to face his accusers is taken at its most literal. I believe, and please correct me if I am wrong, that when a woman makes an accusation of rape in the US that then goes to trial, she must then go through the additional ordeal of giving her evidence in person, whilst seeing the defendant in the court room. I don't make any claims that the UK system 'cures' the problems of reporting a rape, I merely think that the system, rightly, tries very hard to make a difficult experience somewhat easier.

So where do I, respectfully, disagree with you?

Firstly, I believe that implicit in the model that I gave (although, again, it assumed a reasonably degree of knowledge of criminal procedure) was not from the moment of the first accusation - as you rightly point out, all kinds of crazy accusations are made which have no substance or proof for all manner of crimes - but from a later moment. If asked to consider, I would probably say from the moment of arrest (or that the warrant was issued, where applicable) - ie: from the point at which it appears there is a prima facie case against the defendant, but before the media could possibly be interested (or know anything).

I agree that this would not assist in the example you refer to of Pabst - no law is perfect - but I believe that it goes to a deeper problem.

I don't believe that for a woman who has suffered a rape that reporting it is easy. I don't believe that the number of 'cry rapes' is ass high as the Daily Mail would like us to believe (Fox News is probably a reasonably equivalent here). However, I do believe that there is a higher incidence of women who have not been raped reporting a rape and it being taken to a higher level than of the same happening for murder, for instance. Even taking into account evidential problems of 'he says, she says' as well as the trivialisation of rape within the CPS (who decide whether or not to prosecute a case on the basis of 'reasonable prospect of success'), a reporting --> conviction rape of less than 2% in some areas of the UK has to invite some comment of this nature.

I agree that the 'she consented' defence is 'too easy' to make. Because the evidential burden rightly lies on the prosecution, there will always be a number of cases where this is a successful defence where it should not have been.

On the issue of 'consent' for assault, again, I believe there are differences between UK and US law. In order to consent to assault for sport, there are a number of criteria that have to be 'ticked' - a 'boxing fight' on the street at night where one party claims the other consented would not cut it under UK law.

I cannot agree with your example of assisted suicide as it is inherently a medical procedure and as such, as fairly explicit documentary rules for consent.

My point is that rape is a unique crime. 'Dark alley' rape may be easy to prove, but given that something like 90% of victims know their attacker and the overwhelming majority of rapes take place in private, within a dwelling, evidence of consent is obviously harder to obtain.

Equally, I stand by my statement that rape is a crime of Mens Rea. In the UK it is defined as "the insertion of his penis by A into the vagina, anus or mouth of B where B does not consent and A does not reasonably believe B consented" (Sexual Offences Act 2003)

The crux of the matter is therefore a reasonably belief in consent - ie: an issue of MR. I also cry scorn on the idea that 'no' is a minor thing in this instance. The very existence of that 'no' turns a generally mutually pleasurable act into a violation of the most severe kind. I have said why I think that your assisted suicide point was irrelevant in this context, but to return to it for an instance #9and to assume that we are working in a frame work where assisted suicide is legal) the issue of 'no' would again be the crux of the matter there. If AS is legal, then the giving of a lethal dose of (say) morphine is a neutral act. It is only where there is no consent that it becomes problem.

My final point was a more subtle one on the intricacies of popular perceptions on collective decision makig in a retributive environment - but again, I think the legal differences are so great that it would not necessarily apply in the US. In the UK there is a perception amongst the Daily Mail reading public that there is a lack of parity in rape cases and that proceedings are biased toward the complainant - one aspect of which is granting anonymity to Ms A but not to the D. It doesn't matter whether this is true or not, those people are making decisions based on their perceptions. If a change can be implemented that causes no harm to the case, but could easily have a wider social benefit, it is surely incumbent to consider the issue.

I hope you will not mind if I copy your original article and my response for my blog, as well as posting this response here.

________________

I should also note that I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to rehash the arguments and improve on their clarity before I ever have to do the same thing in front of a committee. I also recommend her blog for useful example in debates on this issue.

More unintended consequences

Cracked has an article on 5 laws with unintended consequences - Freakonomics style and worth the read.

Hat tip: Prometheus Titan (his blog here)

What law would you change, and why?

Traditionally, I've gone for my 'change maternity leave into parental leave' rant. Then there are all sorts of laws which are great to change in debate world, but less suitable to discuss in an interview.

Now, I think I might opt for anonymity for people accused, but not yet convicted, of serious sex offences.

I think that rape is a very serious accusation to make, one of the most serious after murder. Why, therefore, would I argue to grant anonymity for rape and not for murder? Well, it's because the accusation of rape is far easier to make.

With murder, you need a body, for starters, and then there needs to be a plausible explaination as to how you saw the murder occur (you being the accuser in this case). Murder is a crime of action, more than anything else. If you kill a person, if you don't have the requisite mens rea, it is still considered a very serious crime indeed.

With rape, every part of the act is legal, providing it is done with consent. Rape, as a crime, therefore depends on the 'more difficult to prove' issue of consent. The complainant and the accused can both agree that they had sex, the only fact in issue is whether she said 'no' or not and the evidence for that is almost certainly going to be less cogent than a dead body.

I also wonder whether treating a person accused of rape with more sympathy may improve the conviction rate. There can be no doubt that some women 'cry rape' and are lying, however, my gut feeling is that this is a very rare phenomenon which is exaggerated when discussing conviction rates. However, the perception that it is frequent does create a certain amount of sympathy for those accused of rape 'perhaps she's just being nasty - it'll destroy his reputation whether or not he is convicted'. I wonder if a jury, who are perhaps sure that he did it, but only by a narrow margin, might sometimes think that the accusation means that he has suffered enough, and acquit on that basis.

What are you views? And what law would you change, if you had the chance?

Japan and languages

Well, I got the Japanese tour so I'm very excited about that. I go in October, which is useful in terms of annual leave.

Decided that seeing as the Japanese are allegedly about as good at foreign languages as the English it would be a good idea to spend the next few months being able to read and speak some Japanese before I go.

Turns out, after a very brief bit of internet research, that having learned Chinese for a year is helpful when it comes to one of the three scripts that they use. More helpfully, Salford University offers evening classes which I think I might take up as they seem reasonably priced and I can (just) get from the office to the classroom by 6.

I have to say, I've missed learning stuff since leaving uni. The job has been quite good in that repsect as most of it is still new, but I like to learn for it's own sake and I think languages could be useful in this regard.

I'm too old to become fluent in another language - though I am encouraging the Boy to get work in Germany if he can because that would be my best bet for a second fluent language - but I think it would be good to have c250-1000 words in say 15-20 languages and a smattering of grammar. Means you can be understood literally anywhere in the world and could usually get around.

So far on that list I probably only have 4 - good German, basic French, very basic Chinese and very very basic Turkish. By very, very basic I mean I can count to ten, ask where stuff is, order various foods and drinks and haggle at a market as well as the various 'polite words' - it's all vocab, no grammar.

In non-Roman scripts, learning how to look a word up in a dictionary can take ages in its own right. Try "我是英国人" without using an online dictionary. And typing into a computer is also a lesson in itself (in this case, I typed the pinyin in making sure it was on Chinese input setting and the computer converted the pinyin into characters)

Home Schooling

I was reading one of NHS's facebook notes and so have directly stolen the following from him, needless to say, I like it. for those of you who do know him, the link is here . EDIT: Forgot he has a blog, the original post can therefore be seen here.

_____
The government loves micro-managing classrooms in the state sector. And why not, you might ask? It's their money, and if they want to decide what consitutes great literature, a major historical event or the right way to introduce literacy, then who are we taxpayers to quibble?

But the government often tires of its own toys and experiences an irrepressible desire to reach out and play with the education of children who don't use state schools. This would seem not to be their business, until you remember this is the 21st century and they hold both the rights'n'responsibilities card and the child protection card.

The latest finger-dipping is yet another review into home education, the Elective Home Education Review, which will be the fourth review into home education since 2005. Education, education, education, education: if only reviews were outcomes...

Headed by Graham Badman, the EHER will consider
1) Whether local authorities and other public agencies are able to effectively discharge their duties and responsibilities for safeguarding and ensuring a suitable education for all children.
2) Whether home educating parents are receiving the support and advice they want to ensure they provide a good, balanced education for their children.
3) What evidence there is to support claims that home education could be used as a ‘cover’ for child abuse such as neglect, forced marriage, sexual exploitation or domestic servitude.

Allow me to translate.

1) In 2006, The Education and Inspections Act placed a duty on all local authorities to make arrangements to identify children not receiving "a suitable education". Without knowing what happens in your living room, they can't make that judgement. So inspectors need to be sent into people's homes to gather that information. But we don't know how many children are home educated - between 20,000 (DCSF) and 50,000 (Education Otherwise) - so expect a policy requiring parents to register their home-educated children with the local education authority.

2) Home educating parents often do not want or seek advice from the LEA: it is, after all, the organisation whose schools they are avoiding. Nor are they under any obligation to receive such advice. But as Mr Badman reminded the BBC "Legislation affords every parent the right to choose to educate their child at home but with those rights go responsibilities, not least being to secure a suitable education." Expect the word "suitable" to be defined by Mr Badman and the inspectors to have a strong mandate.

3) The child protection card. If the government can find a single example of neglect or abuse, it gives it the green light to investigateand regulate the lives of all home educators. You can only find a bad apple by checking all your apples. The government hasn't yet given an example of alleged abuse - Education Otherwise asked for the evidence and none was provided - but making the claim means that a claim has been made and must, therefore, be investigated.

Parents have a right to educate their children privately or using the state system. This private education can be in a school or at home. Parents who choose home education are often helping their children to escape the abuse of bullying, or get out from the anti-learning culture of their LEA schools. The government is heaping review after review on these people and branding them as potential abusers.

The government wants to control and regulate the education of every child. How else can it guarantee every child an equal start in life? Parents may play the freedom card, but rights'n'responsibilities and child protection will surely beat it.

Obama and the inauguration

I like Obama as a symbolic president, I think he's pretty to look at and nice to listen to but I cannot say that I like his policies and I would never claim to be a fan of his - unlike the many other 'Obamaniacs'.

Frankly, had McCain not gone crazy - and boy will I concede that he did, even before Palin - I would have voted for him over Obama (or Clinton).

So perhaps it's my instinctive dislike of over enthusiasm for popular ideas or my already existing apathy towards Obama but I didn't especially rate his speech yesterday. I kept on waiting for the line, you know, the "ask not what your country can do for you" moment - but it failed to materialise.

Prince Harry and wordplay

No, I wouldn't use the word. Yes, the world would be a nicer place if we were all nice to each other. On the other hand, he said it in private, to a person who hasn't publically objected. Frankly, what is the issue?

A word has no inherent value in its own right, it's just a sound. All words are context specific. "You bitch!" said to a woman is very different when the proceeding line is:
1. "Who was that man you were talking to? Were you chatting him up? I saw you flirting with him"
or
2. " OMG, I love your new shoes. I can't believe you managed to get a pair of Jimmy Choos for less than £50".

Yes, some words are more likely to be offensive, on average, than not but ultimately all are situation specific and it is that which must be looked at, not the word itself.

Unsurprisingly, Spiked takes a similar view point but articulates it far better than I can.

Grimm and Grimmer

Child abuse, abandonment, slavery, cannibalism and being burnt alive - the recipe for a good story, usually, as Hanzel and Gretel would seem to show.

However, these sorts of tales are now 'too scary' for children, apparently.

I remember as a child, one of my favourite books was a complete collection of Grimm's fairy tales. There were loads of stories in there that aren't in the 'usual' fairytale collections, which I loved. Might get the copy which is at my parents house and see if it is still as good today.

Shame that some parents are so good at projecting their own fears onto their children that a generation will lose out.

Prague

Just got back from spending a weekend in Prague (with the Boy, not debating).

Was great fun :)

If you go, I do recommend doing one of the walking tours for one of the mornings, our guide was fantastic and it meant we got lots of extra anecdotes.

Hotel was great (5 mins from Josefov, the Old Town Square and Wenceslas square) and I hava e anew found love for Bohemiam Sekt and Moravian red wines... I'm not a beer drinker or I would have stayed on the Pilsner, I'm sure :)

Weather was fantastic (it was colder in Manchester when we arrived back yesterday!).

I wasn't so impressed with the Chirstmas markets. Whilst the ones in Germany are, of course, the best, the ones in Prague had piles of tat a lot of the time. Though the hot mead hit the spot as did a funny curly cake which was grilled over an open fire on a wooden rolling pin, not baked (trdlo - though God only knows how you pronounce that!) I was far less impressed with most of the other things on offer. that said, we did get an angel for the top of our Christmas tree, so it ca't have been all bad!

The Barristers (and other pupillage matters)

I watched The Barristers last night on the i-player and enjoyed it very much.

By the end of it, I remembered quite how badly I want a pupillage and consequently wandered off to pupillages.com to look at the newsflash. Well, one more application in the post....

It was slightly nice, actually, I was re-reading my covering letter and whilst it wasn't bad it didn't flow especially well. Having spent the past few month paralegalling and writing (seemingly) hundreds of letters, I was able to edit it into something much better, reasonably easily. Nice that my job isn't just giving me money and the legal experience box on the CV but actually helping me. Now I just need to complete that training contract application form so I have a back up.

I've also decided that I will apply to some chambers in London. I enjoy the work I do at the moment and I know we instruct a fairly narrow range of chambers. I'm therefore going to go onto the system on Monday and find the list of who we do and don't instruct and apply to them when the time comes. I note that the Nursing and Midwifery Council were also offering a pupillage last year. I didn't apply as it wsa London based but having now talked things through with the Boy a little more, I think if it comes up again, I'll go for it.

Talking of pupillage, a person came into the office the other day who had also completed the BVC. He had been searching for pupillage for a few years, but without success. It's alright for him though as Daddy is a barrister and so he starts his pupillage in Daddy's chambers in January. As he was telling us about it, he didn't seem ashamed in the slightest. He pointed out he had applied for a couple of years without success. It makes me so cross. If I apply for a couple of years and fail, I will accept that I am not good enough compared to the other applicants. I don't have Daddy to rescue me. So not only is the Bar not getting the very best people, this person has also 'stolen' a pupillage from someone else. Good Lord I was furious, I could scarcely speak to him - at the very least he should have been utterly ashamed at what he had done. Ethics my arse. Given that applications for pupillage have fairly strict guidelines, why on earth doesn't the Bar Council ban people from applying to chambers where they have a relative working there? Fairly simple, I would have thought!

Amazon (rant)

As I had recieved money for my bitrhday with the instruction to spend it on books, I decided to poodle along to Amazon as I had a fair idea of what I wanted as was sure it would be cheaper (it was).

When it came to shipping, I typed in my home address figuring that even if I wasn't there, it would be delivered to the Royal Mail depo which is around the corner and I could pick it up later, after work, or at the weekend as the dep it a 5 minute walk from my house with heavy books, as opposed to a 35 minute walk.

Turns out Amazon doesn't use Royal Mail, but a courier company who is based in Warrington. 23 miles from Manchester. The courier company phone me and say they haven't been able to deliver the package (note that this is not a criticism of the couriers - yet) and that they would hold it for 5 days before returning it.

Having been told where they are based, I ask their opening hours. 9-6, Monday through Friday. That's no use to any person who either
(a) works normal hours not in Warrington
(b) doesn't own a car and so can't drive to their depo

They said they would normally leave the package with a neighbour. Unfortunately, I live in a secure block of flats which means people cannot get access without being let through and there wouldn't be a neighbour with whom it could be left, anyway. I ask if they could redirect it to my place of work.

They can only do that with Amazon's permission. I couldn't find any way of contacting Amazon through their website so I can't change that.

Luckily, the Boy's sister and her partner live in the same block of flats and the couriers were nice enough to let me re-direct to them. The package should be delivered today or tomorrow.

Fingers crossed, eh?

Spooks, Heroes and Desperate Housewives

New series of all.

Loving it.

Season 2 of Heroes suffered not only because it was weak in and of itself, but also by comparison to season 1. Season 3 looks better by far. Plus, as the BBC is only a week behind the US and showing episodes on the i-player, I'm probably going to stop downloading them and watch them legally instead - what a novelty! It's marginally more inconvenient to me, but as I'm a firm believer in 'rewarding' good behaviour in the hopes they will do it in the future....

...And the same reasoning means I will probably watch DH on Channel 4 as well. However, this is more problematic because their 4OD is crap (I've not managed to watch anything on it despite several attempts) and I have all the self will on a hungry 5 year old next to a bowl of sweets so I am likely just to gorge myself on all of them via the internet rather than pace myself over a few weeks.... I'll give 4OD a go again, but if it fails, I'm not sure I can be bothered in the future. BBC has shown it's obviously not a hard piece of software to get right.

I have none of these dilemmas for Spooks as it'll always be shown on the BBC first, I can only 'gorge' myself on one episode extra (on BBC three) and the i-player actually works as it is supposed to.

All fun and games :)

Any other recommendations for TV series out there? I heard that there is now a Season 3 of Dexter (which I would watch for the theme tune alone) so I may well check that out

Buy-to-let

There seems to be a huge amount of vitriol going around targeted at buy-to-let investors and I just don't understand it.

Yes, I would like to buy a house one day when I am secure enough to afford it. By secure, I mean borrow no more than 2.5 times our joint salaries and be geographically fixed in terms of career for a while. So, perhaps in 3-5 years, a house would be good.

In the meanwhile, renting is a boon to us. We can live in apartments far nicer than those we could otherwise afford, we can move every 6 months if we want to, if something breaks, someone else pays to fix it for us...

And I don't think there would be half as many nice properties out there if it wasn't for the buy-to-let market. If it wasn't for the investors, we would be in a tiny studio flat somewhere grotty or forced to buy a flat which means we can't be as flexible with our careers.

People complain that they can only rent because they can't afford to buy and that this forces them to be far less secure. I can understand that to an extent, but given that a lease can be for any length of time, why don't these people arrange with their landlord to have a longer lease? The landlord gets the guarantee that the property isn't sitting empty and the tenants get greater security - a win/win, surely?

Yes, to an extent, buy-to-let increase demand for property and this leads to a rise in price. on the other hand, I wonder how many of the new apartment blocks which are going up would have been built at all if it wasn't for the increase in demand for property caused by buy to let.... In addition, rises in houseprices in parts of the country such as London cannot be placed wholly at the door of the buy-to-let investors. London is an attractice city for many people to live, or they are forced to live there because that's where their job is, either way, it leads to an increase in demand for property in its own right - independent of the buy-to-let market.

The same people who complain about buy to let seem to be the same who would be willing to spend 5,6,7 or even 8 times their salary on buying - they are therefore hardly the people we should be turning to for considered, intelligent property advice, surely?!

Supermarkets sell alcohol?

A Saudi man who came to work in the UK is taking Tesco to an employment tribunal because - in his role as forklift driver - he hadn't realised the job would involve handling alcohol and so is claiming religious discrimination.

Let's hope that the employment tribunal kicks this one out before it hits the front door.


[edits: to remove the excessive use of the passive.]