For the past four years, I have been involved in a dispute with a utility company over a sum that ultimately amounted to several thousand pounds. The company will remain nameless here because, today, thanks to the intervention of the relevant government watchdog, we finally settled without having to go to court. It is a […]
Slashdot links to a report in the New York Times about a project to combine genetic material from lawyering and fund management and create the highest hourly fee known to man.
Richard W. Fields says he has come up with a win-win financial strategy for the downturn. He is investing in lawsuits.
Not in trip-and-fall cases, mind you, […]
From a letter to the Halifax and Calderdale Evening Courier by Jason Smith, the Bradford Chairman of the UK Independence Party:
GREEN’S ARREST SHOWS WE ARE BECOMING DICTATORSHIP
As unaccustomed as I am to defending Tory MPs, I feel I must speak out about the arrest of Damian Green, who was apparently held for nine hours and his […]
If you’re over six feet in height, squeezing yourself into an economy seat on a plane can be torture, but if you’re seriously overweight and on a domestic flight in Canada, you get another seat:
The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld a regulatory ruling requiring the country’s airlines to provide an extra seat – at […]
I’ve been very busy this weekend, but here are three things that I enjoyed reading in between upgrades and back-ups: Minette Marrin on Jacqui Smith and UK prostitution1, Shuggy on Barack Obama and the US constitution, and an obituary of William Donaldson:
[Donaldson] first came to prominence in 1961 as the London producer of Beyond the […]
Perhaps you remember my posting about my little sister’s small claims case against Sky. I wasn’t surprised to receive an email from her on Friday informing me that, after months of time-wasting and attempts at legal intimidation by them—don’t get lawyerly with woman who teaches law—she has finally and comprehensively whupped their sorry asses.
My favourite of […]
Woman E, demonstrating again the superiority of film over digital portraiture
From the BBC News Website:
World motorsport boss Max Mosley has won a legal action against a Sunday newspaper over claims an orgy he took part in had Nazi overtones.
The High Court ruled the News of the World did breach Mr Mosley’s privacy, awarding him £60,000 in damages.
I […]
From The Daily Telegraph:
Less than 24 hours after both men responded to sleaze allegations against Mr Lewis by insisting he had done nothing to compromise his role as a magistrate, it emerged that there was no record of the deputy mayor ever serving as a justice of the peace.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said: “No, […]
Norm asks two questions:
People on the wrong end of social and economic inequalities don’t just experience health disadvantages from smoking, but disadvantages across the board - in every area of health, in life expectancy, in the pattern of life chances in general. Shall we impose compulsory legal norms about diet, about exercise, about whatever else, […]
This is simply wrong:
Harriet Harman has defended plans to make it legal for firms to discriminate in favour of female and ethnic minorities job candidates.
The equalities minister said firms should be able to choose a woman over a man of equal ability if they want to.
I had drafted a PooterGeek post of semi-exaggerated biographies of the actual candidates for the upcoming Haltemprice and Magnercarter by-election, but it all seems so feeble now that David Icke is in the running. Yes, Britain’s leading conspiracy theorist and retired messiah says he’s going to join the circus.
By the way, I think it reflects well […]
Another “shocking state of our universities today” story has appeared on the BBC news Website. A report from the Quality Assurance Agency says the degree classification system is broken. I smiled when I read this bit:
The reports from the QAA raise some worries about the effectiveness of the external examiner system, in which examiners from other […]
42 days is 42 times 24 = 1008 hours. That is, it’s just enough days to exceed the three digit maximum that can be shown in the hour segment of the giant red LED displays that all timer-controlled terrorist bombs use to count down to detonation.
In an effort to push through an extension to the number of days the police can detain you without charge (if you are suspected of being a terrorist), the government—sorry: “Gordon Brown”, because all current and future legislation is the work of a single overbusy Scotsman—is suggesting that it will compensate innocent suspects held under […]
For a long time, PooterGeek’s homepage has been decorated with a school photo of me shot in, I think, 1979. I’ve taken the sensible advice of one of my readers and moved it. It’s still here, but on the “About” page where it doesn’t unbalance the new site design.
The original print from which the image is […]
…Mr Adams, the court has been presented over the course of these proceedings with a stupefyingly lengthy and diverse catalogue of wrongdoing. I restrict myself now to only a handful of the most appalling examples.
We have heard from one of your clients, Mr Barry “Knuckles” Law, that, on the 7th of May 1998, he hired you […]
Congrats to my sister, Clare, and my brother-in-law, Steve, who are, according to the schools inspectorate, teaching at one of the best of the best of the best in the country.
(PooterSis versus Sky update: it’s already looking bad for Murdoch’s empire. Once the dust has cleared, I expect to be appointed Head of Programming.)
I’m busy catching up after my cold so it’ll be quiet here for the next few days. Read this excellent post by Paulie. Read this and imagine Oliver Kamm throwing a custard pie in Neil Clark’s face forever.
Blogger Mr Eugenides displays courage to rival that of Leonidas (the chocolatier rather than the king of the Spartans) as he takes on intellectual giantess Polly Toynbee in the argument over government surveillance and points up classic fallacy after classic fallacy in her defence of ID cards and CCTV cameras.
What case does Mr E offer in […]
Norm writes:
Defoe appears to bite Mascherano, and Martin Jol says it’s only a nibble. And that’s a defence?
Surely a man of Prof Geras’s erudition has heard of “the Chew-backer defense”?
I was having an argument in the pub today with a blogger who’ll remain nameless, but only if he now sends me a grovelling email. He said we should be grateful that Britain doesn’t have a written constitution because if it did the lawyers would be in control. I pointed out that they already are: […]
I don’t know if anyone from Sky’s legal department is reading this, but I thought I ought to warn you that my darling little sister is preparing proceedings against you because of the problems she’s been having with your domestic phone service.
Please, for your own good, send someone round in a van to fix her installation […]
Welsh non-dragon Suw Charman doesn’t write very often, but she’s interesting when she does and she fought my corner against ruthless streetcorner pushers Antoine and Jackie in the 2006 drug wars. Now she’s joined the other newcomers on my blogroll.
Following this news, I’d just like to point out that the photograph of Ms Knightley accompanying this PooterGeek post should have been captioned “Keira—who ate all the pies?”
The Anonymous Economist sends me this fascinating article from the New York Times:
LAST week, New York’s highest court voted 4-to-2 that a legislative ban on same-sex marriage did not violate the state Constitution. In doing so, it added to the patchwork of state rulings on the issue, including those of Indiana and Arizona (which similarly upheld […]
Apple Computer has won a major legal battle today when a High Court judge in London ruled that the company had not breached a trademark agreement made 15 years ago with the Beatles’ Apple Corps.
…
The 1991 Trade Mark Agreement gave Apple Corps - owned by Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the widows of John Lennon […]
Today, 13Apr06, we—bloggers, academics, campaigners, writers, scientists, journalists, citizens—launch the Euston Manifesto. With this document we hope to publicly assert our progressive, democratic, egalitarian, internationalist principles in the face of recent attacks upon them from the Right and, to our dismay, the Left.
Many of us are of the Left, but we come from across the range […]
There’s a fascinating rumble going on at Tim Worstall’s place about legal status of certain battlefield practices. Here’s the quote from a Telegraph article that Tim set it off with:
Lt Col Glyn Harper, a professor at the New Zealand army’s Military Studies Institute, who co-authored the book, In the Face of the Enemy, said that on […]
Via Instapundit I came upon this unfortunate opening to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram report on the release of Abdul Rahaman:
KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan court on Sunday dismissed a case against a man who converted from Islam to Christianity because of a lack of evidence and he will be released soon, officials said.
Let’s hope the Star-Telegram’s […]
