But, I did my best

"You're not paid to do your best. You're paid to win." And that's what pays for this office... pays for the pro bono work that we do for the poor... pays for the type of law that you want to practice... pays for my whisky... pays for your clothes... pays for the leisure we have to sit back and discuss philosophy as we're doing tonight. We're paid to win the case."
Ed Concannon: The Verdict

Tinsel Tits are Awesome!

On Liberty (and economics and a bit of government I suppose)

"If socialists mean that under extraordinary circumstances, for urgent cases, the state should set aside some resources to assist certain unfortunate people, to help them adjust to changing conditions, we will, of course, agree. This is done now; we desire that it be done better. There is however, a point on this road that must not be passed; it is the point where governmental foresight would step in to replace individual foresight and thus destroy it."



Frédéric Bastiat, Justice and fraternity, in Journal des Économistes, 15 June 1848,

Oh? Have you not heard? It was my understanding that everybody had heard?

How do japanese multiply??

They're years ahead of us, years

From the Book of Ultimate Truths

Nah! When a man is tired of The Wrath of Sumoking, he is tired of life!
Paddington -  Rollonfirday.com - 13/12/10

You madam are some bad candy

Nearly half of solicitors are “impossible” to get hold of after 5pm

from Solicitors' Journal

A poll of 2,000 consumers found that 47 per cent of people were unable to contact their lawyer out of hours.

Only 38 per cent of clients said their solicitor was easy to get hold of in the evening, with the rest saying it was “rare” to get through after work.

Dan Watkins, director of the solicitors’ network Contact Law, which carried out the survey, said: “It is still a concern that nearly a third feel that they have to chase their solicitor to speed things up.

“Some clients are doubtless being unrealistic in this regard…but inevitably a good proportion of these instances will be down to solicitors genuinely being slow to respond.”

While more than half of clients said they were happy with the progress of the case, almost a third said they felt they needed to be “on their solicitors back” to make sure the case was being dealt with promptly.

 The point here is that if you are only doing the bare minimum and treating the profession like a 9-5 you will not compete with the younger generation never mind the rising world economic powers. 


I know a lot of cranky ancient lawyers believe that as time goes by generations are getting weaker and soppier but I look at my generation (graduating early - mid 2000s) and there is no contest. We have older lawyers who rely on secretaries, refuse to use tech, can't manage and just hope throwing money at people will get results. They still believe in the liquid lunch and the ability to knock off when they feel like it. 


The lawyers I work with hit the gym for an hour or two pre work get into the office at 8 and leave at 7-8, have blackberrys and smart phones and tablets crammed with kit and having gone through the hell of the babyboomers latest attempt to fcuk the world economy are under no illusion of what the alternative to being employed and getting work in from clients is. 


It's no contest. If you even can't be contacted after outside of 9-5 your client will come to me.

Tits are Awesome!

How Government Works

from The UK Libertarian Blog

From What about Clients, Is "Professionalism" a Smokescreen for Bad Lawyering?

What About Clients (Auld Alliance or no Auld Alliance i'm not calling it what about Paris!) is the blog you read if you want to be a good lawyer.

Professionalism--like good crops, the flag and motherhood--is indeed hard to criticize. It is also tough to define. Is it always good for clients? Can it even hurt them?

It's not about the lawyers anymore. In litigation, and in other contentious projects, does the practice of routinely and without question granting extensions, expanding deadlines, and saying "yes" to an adversary's requests for an accommodation really help clients? Or are such courtesies merely effete and provincial folkways that take the focus off the main event: solving problems for clients as expeditiously as possible? See "Professionalism Revisited: What About the Client?" in San Diego's The Daily Transcript of April 29, 2005. Has anything changed in five years?

On Liberty and Free Trade

How can protection, think you, add to the wealth of a country? Can you by legislation add one farthing to the wealth of the country? You may, by legislation, in one evening, destroy the fruits and accumulation of a century of labour; but I defy you to show me how, by the legislation of this House, you can add one farthing to the wealth of the country. That springs from the industry and intelligence; you cannot do better than leave it to its own instincts. If you attempt by legislation to give any direction to trade or industry, it is a thousand to one that you are doing wrong; and if you happen to be right, it is work of supererogation, for the parties for whom you legislate would go right without you, and better than with you.
Richard Cobden Speech in the House of Commons (27 February, 1846).

Tits are Awesome!

Australia's Outback Could Get Web Via TV Antenna

from Discovery News

With much of the UK, for whatever bizarre reason, choseing to situate itself in the abominable countryside there is much hand wringing and bleating about how bumpkins can't get superhigh speed broadband and thus struggle to order their Netto shopping.

However, rather than spaff a wedge on running cables upto every remote 13th century dilapidated, should have been condemned but old automatically = good in the UK, farmhouse the Aussies (the fcuking 'you just landed in Sydney set your watch back 50 years' Aussies of all people!) have come up with this plan.

Researchers in Australia from the government science agency CSIRO have developed new technology that could achieve connection speeds to compete with the best: through the tangled piece of metal already attached to most roofs.

"The basic premise is if you get good high-quality analog television you should be able to get reliable high-speed communications," project leader Ian Oppermann said.

The BBC (Britains taxpayer funded media company) pisses money away on telling us what we already know?

The dumbing down at the BBC really gets on my tits, it's bad enough being arse raped with the threat of prison by the taxman to pay for the shitt they habitually crank out but when they think "hmmmm world of warcraft is releasing a further update lets have a hysteria filled half hour on gaming" then I literally think I will bust a nut.

The conclusion of panorama was that addiction is bad, the games industry should fund research (are you fcuking mental? what like the tobacco companies and surprisingly they found out smoking makes you live longer and should be encouraged?)


There is much sinister build up of the 'secret techniques used to snare you into playing!' except these secret techniques turn out to be rewards. Not gold bars shipped round to your house but your Master Chief in Halo gets a new cool Mohawk helmet. You have dread what they think of books and their sinister and deviant use of narrative that propels you to the next chapter, or the cliff-hanger that makes you stay up late to watch just one more episode of Lost or 24. Anything that makes you want more and relies on the tiniest bit of will power to say "no its 4am time for bed" is obviously pure evil according to UK state media.


And then it stumbles across the crux of the problem. This seems to be the same problem behind much western hand wringing about the state of society. Some random kid called Chris has a fit and kicks in his sister's door when his internet connection gets pulled thus preventing him playing online as an elf or some shitt. Okay. Kid has gotten withdrawal, is a moody little prick maybe a case for saying he's gone a bit violent (although it's about as weak a case as you could have) but this is followed up by his mother stating "that's when we realised games were dangerous"


WTF?


This is a woman who has left her son unattended with no checking up to play in a fantasy world for 16 hours a day. This woman is a bad parent. The reporter, instead of nodding along in an "oh dear all TV is made for women better not upset target audience" fashion should have stopped her mid sentence and said "holy fcuk lady you are an awful parent! You abandoned your kid to suck on a surrogate robot nipple and now you want to blame it for him being upset you took robot mommy away?! Holy fcuk lady get a grip. YOU ARE A BAD PARENT! DON'T HAVE THE KID IF YOU CAN'T DO THE TIME!"


The whole shambolic mess, which coincides with massive student protests in the UK, financial crisis sweeping the EU, potential nuclear war in the Korean peninsula, just meanders through a half arsed attempt to pin societies illness of doing a half arsed job at raising children on entertainments and social media.


MCV sums up this appallingly bad "this is what you must think" investigation.


"People have addictive personalities. Said people can conceivably become addicted to games. As games become more popular that risk increases."

When faced with a client who wants to go to trial 'on prinicple' who hasn't used the Chewbacca Defence?

The Chewbacca defense is a fictional legal strategy used in episode 27 of South Park, "Chef Aid", which premiered on October 7, 1998, as the fourteenth episode of the second season. The aim of the argument is to deliberately confuse the jury by making use of the fallacy known as ignoratio elenchi or red herring: It starts by stating that Chewbacca lives on Endor and continues by unwinding a series of nonsense conclusions. The concept satirized attorney Johnnie Cochran's closing argument defending O. J. Simpson in his murder trial

Cochran



...ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!


Gerald Broflovski


Damn it!... He's using the Chewbacca defense!


Cochran


Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.

The City of London Law Society responds to MoJ call for evidence on EU green paper on European contract law

in short, not big fans, full text here

Whilst the CLLS are happy for the Results of the Expert Group to be published they do not believe that any of the other options put forward by the Green Paper are useful, appropriate or justified, given the paucity of statistical evidence and analysis identifying any problems or any need for action.

There is evidence that small and medium enterprises ("SMEs") who choose not to engage in cross-border trade within the European Union (the "EU") are more influenced by factors other than the legal system prevalent in different Member States, such as cultural and linguistic differences and transport costs.1


The very competence of the EU to act on this matter is doubtful. Even if divergent national laws could be shown to deter trade, it would be difficult to show that any of the options in the Green Paper would actually reduce such effect. This means that Article 114 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union ("TFEU") (formerly Article 95 of the EC Treaty ("TEC")) cannot be relied upon to provide a legal basis for enacting any of the options put forward by the Green Paper. It is also difficult to justify competence for action in this area under other legal bases in the treaties

Tinsel Tits are Awesome!

=

R v CHAYTOR & ORS (2010)

In considering whether actions outside the Houses and committees fell within parliamentary proceedings because of their connection to them, it was necessary to consider the nature of that connection and whether, if such actions did not enjoy privilege, that was likely to impact adversely on the essential business of Parliament. On that approach, the submission of claim forms for allowances and expenses did not qualify for the protection of privilege. Scrutiny of claims by the courts would have no adverse impact on the essential business of Parliament; it would not inhibit debate or freedom of speech or indeed any of MPs' various activities affecting their parliamentary duties. Similarly, expressions of parliamentary views of the ambit of art.9 did not support the suggestion that submitting such claims constituted parliamentary proceedings for art.9 purposes.

Full text avavilable from Lawtel

Robert E. Lee’s Chivalry

also from the Art of Manliness

General Robert E. Lee was on his way to Richmond, and was seated in the extreme end of a railroad car, every seat of which was occupied. At one of the stations, an aged woman of humble appearance entered the car, carrying a large basket. She walked the length of the aisle and not a man offered her a seat. When she was opposite General Lee’s seat, he arose promptly and said, “Madam, take this seat.” Instantly a score of men were on their feet, and a chorus of voices said, “General, have my seat.” “No, gentlemen,” he replied, “if there was no seat for this old lady, there is no seat for me.” It was not long before the car was almost empty. It was too warm to be comfortable.

The Warrior’s Guide to True Manliness

from the Art of Manliness

It was not long ago that men were born to be warriors and had no other obligations than to uphold the warrior code and to pass it on to their offspring. It was only during the past 500 years that man forgot this way of life and replaced it with a complacency seemingly suited for a new world of convenience.


A Warrior’s life was driven by his own survival instinct and his fear of death. It was this fear that drove him to persevere and constantly improve himself. After all, survival of the fittest was in full effect at this point. Without this fundamental understanding about life’s impermanence and an obligation to achieve greatness, we become complacent and unmotivated in life. If it is true that nothing defines manliness more than a motivated and inspired individual who lives with a quiet confidence and a zest for life, then the lessons we have to learn from warriors of the past will get us far on the path to Manhood.


For Teddy Roosevelt it was his childhood illness that gave him his first mountain to conquer, as well as his first taste of success. For Lance Armstrong it was his battle with cancer that gave him the strength to achieve his unprecedented success. For Martin Luther King Jr. it was the racist, segregated world that he was born into that lead him to become a force for change in the civil rights movement.



1. Master Your Body. Although most people associate being a warrior with fighting and hunting, these are the most basic principles through which a warrior’s strength is expressed. It is the mastering of your intention and strength to find discipline and power in every aspect of your life that distinguishes the warrior from the common man. The first conquest for any man should be the mastering of his body.


2. Use Death as your Guide. We all could die at any moment. It could be today, tomorrow, or next week. You could go and visit your dying friend in the hospital and then get hit by a bus the next day. Whether or not you have an existing condition is of no importance in your actual mortality. If this was the common outlook of today’s man, do you think we would sit around watching cable TV and spending our time worrying about how to afford the next big thing in consumer electronics? Hell no!
 
3. Choose the Path with Heart. All paths are the same. They lead absolutely nowhere. At the end of your life you will be in the exact same position except you will be able to look back with either regret or satisfaction on the choices you made.


4. Fight Every Battle as if it was Your Last. If you are using death as your guide and living in the present moment then you will naturally fight every battle in your life as if it was a defining moment to make or break everything you have worked for. When you have this mentality you are naturally doing your best at everything and your chances for success are greatly improved. This is the type of performance that we have come to expect from our great leaders and role models so why should we sell ourselves short of realizing such greatness? It is through this concept that you will truly be living to your full potential and increasing your likelihood of being the man that others look to for inspiration.

Theodore Roosevelt on Apathy

There must be an upturn in Legal Work.....

.... if Hill Dickinson is expanding staff benefits to people who actually do the work!


from the Lawyer 

Tits are Awesome

Anne Rivera of MMA Babe fame

Bluddy Fallout 3

will blog something soon

honest, just need to nuke these super mutants!

Reacting to the Ink Cartridge Bomb Fiasco....

... The Home Office has announced tough new measures to prevent terrorists from not blowing up planes in a bungled half arsed fashion. From noon today there will be no passengers and no cargo allowed on planes thus ensuring that Britain is protected from all future terror attacks because we know the Home Office is the only thing that can protect us, yes it is, honest it is, honest

UK.gov plans net surveillance by 2015

From The Register

Government measures to massively increase surveillance of the internet will be in place within five years.


In its departmental business plan, published today, the Home Office said it aims that "key proposals [will be] implemented for the storage and acquisition of internet and e-mail records" by June 2015.

The plan is the latest incarnation of the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP), a much-delayed initiative, backed by the intelligence agencies, to capture details of who contacts whom, when and where*, online.

The Labour government shelved IMP before the election, but it has been revived by the coalition, despite a promise to "end the storage of internet and email records without good reason".

Confusingly, today's Home Office document says it will "end the storage of internet and email records without good reason" via "proposals for the storage and acquisition of internet and email records".

It also pledges to introduce legislation "if necessary". While in opposition the security minister, Baroness Neville-Jones, sharply criticised any move to gather more communications data without primary legislation.

I do like a bit of Ghost Dog

The Way of the Litigator is found in death. Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day, when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears, and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's client. And every day, without fail, one should consider himself as dead. This is the substance of the Way of the Litigator.

On Freedom

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.
Carl Schurz (1829 - 1906)

New Sucker Punch trailer, aww yeah

Halloween Tits are Awesome!

I am a culinary genius

Not only did I switch from my plan of pre prepared chicken to make an awesome chilli mainly comprising pork loin and baked beans. 


But


I also whipped up the grateful Mrs a deep fried and battered (beer batter of course) mars bar with dollop of ice cream. 


Yes, I am awesome.

The curious case of the people who hate doors

Mrs Sumo, being surprisingly sensible for a hot blonde, took advantage of the generous relocation package offered at Evil Pharma Co some 8 years ago when she joined. Granted this resulted in a poky 2 bed (or 1 bed and sizeable cupboard) in Hobo'sville Rural Cheshire. Nice if you want to send your braying sprogs to King's School but also mundane slow death to anyone under 80. 


On my quitting London and moving up to live with Mrs Sumo I quickly came to the conclusion that I would claw my eyes out with scissors than live in that bluddy place and so we thankfully grabbed the first Manchester flat we looked round. There being a credit crunch and all, afore mentioned poky terrace house could not be sold at serious profit so Mrs S rented it out. And being a fcuking sap/sucker for a sob story she rented it to random woman with two hyper kids and a cheque from the social. 


Having considered and reasoned that having the mortgage paid by HMG is comparable to a tax credit I ceased neigh saying the plan and went back to enjoying nationally recognisable chain stores and pubs.


Ocassionally Mrs Sumo has mentioned things like 
"That's the 3 time I've had to get a plumber out to fix that shower for them"
"They say the oven doesn't work but it's okay because they don't use it"
"They say a handle fell off the window and broke the inside pane of glass"
Normally I sort of grunt and go back to playing conquer the world/galaxy/shoot everything type games. Until this one started to frequently crop up. 
"They seem to have taken off the doors"


?


Now the tenants are moving out. (and as an aside Mrs S has shown her sappishness and is going to rent to a girl on DSS whose credit check came back bad and who wants to paint the house pink) Mrs Sumo has been round to take inventory and found that all but 2 doors have been taken off, at least 2 of which are actually missing from the premises?
2 dining room doors vanished
1 living room to hall door, taken off
spare room door, taken off
cupboard doors, missing
and then it gets even more weird because the two remaining doors, main bedroom and bathroom have had hook and latch locks put on them in the top corners. 


I don't understand what these people have against doors? I don't know if maybe it is a cultural English thing that I am not privy to, certainly in Scotland we value doors not least for their ability to keep the heat in a room during the winter, perhaps it's different down here because it is warmer but I suspect I am clutching at straws and basically a bunch of crazies with mental kids have stolen out doors. 

So? what kind of lawyer are you?

On Freedom

"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
James Bovard, Lost Rights. The Destruction of American Liberty

When it comes to wasting police time, the biggest offenders appear to be...the police.

From the Register


So, the Home Office has realised what everyone has been saying for years, that the Police power under S44 of the terrorism act is a fcuking joke and at best is used by the uppity thug fcuks we have for rozzers in the UK (well possibly the scumbags in the Met more than anyone else) to just hassle the ordinary person going about his business. 

When it comes to wasting police time, the biggest offenders appear to be...the police. That, at least, appears to be the conclusion of the Home Office. Its official statistics, published today, show that while police stopped over 100,000 individuals last year to "prevent acts of terrorism", there was not a single arrest for a terror offence as a result of these stops.

This perhaps is the final nail in the coffin for the widely criticised section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which gives police forces powers to stop and search individuals – in so-called "designated areas" - to prevent acts of terrorism without the need for reasonable grounds of suspicion. According to today’s report: "In 2009/10, 101,248 stops-and-searches were made under this power.

What a fcuking joke!

Tits are awesome

Cameron picks winners to create UK growth

from the BBC


And yet I still you can still find idiot, battered wife, Tory loyalists telling me that are on the right and that there is some sort of ideological battle between them and labour. 


Looks like it is back to horrors of a planned economy in the UK. 

I will literally rip my own face off if I hear 1 more moron journalist bleating 'why do we need air craft carriers'

A navy with an arse-kicking fleet carrier always at sea is tremendously more powerful than one without: a two-carrier RN, should it be required to, could easily defeat the Italians out of hand - and the French too, by simply waiting until their one and only carrier is in maintenance. The number of floating tin cans (frigates as they are commonly called) possessed by either side is a complete non-issue.



A future non-carrier RN, wishing to send warships - or protect any sea lanes! - beneath the footprint of even a poxy little foreign air force would be dependent on the USN or France to guarantee their safety. You can't protect sea lanes with destroyers and frigates: even the £1bn+ Type 45 destroyer can only defend a piece of sea perhaps fifty miles across from low-flying or surface attackers*, as it is on the surface and thus its radars cannot see very far.
 
If you think you can protect trade with frigates then you pretty much have to believe that the Earth is flat.


Again in the case of non-nuclear submarines (the only kind we are ever likely to fight) the primary weapon is airborne radar scanning huge swathes of ocean. This forces the boats to submerge and pull down their masts - and thus in the case of conventionally-powered subs it blinds them, cuts off their comms and pins them to the map.


Fit them both with electro magnetic catapults and fill them with lovely cheap F-18s, and fob off the Pentagon (and the US anti-F35 lobby) by staying in the F-35 test programme and saying that we'll buy some F-35Cs at some undetermined future point, when they have become cheap and our current financial woes are in the past.

As Regards Cyber Crime

I am literally ready to shoot myself. This has come from nowhere to be the big mega issue of the moment, I do wonder if this is something to do with Cybercrime expert department (or GCHQ as you may know it) briefly furiously about the dangers of cybercrime and how if HMG is considering, oh I dunno, cuts? That any cuts to GCHQ would be a very bad idea, Cyber crime don't you know! It's hiding under your bed with Bin Laden and will get you!

Iain Lobban, head of the GCHQ, warned that the the UK government is targeted with over 1,000 cyber attacks a month.


Sean Sullivan, security advisor for F-Secure, commented: "Iain Lobban’s comments seem strategically timed to protect GCHQ’s funding ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review announcement on 20 October."

"One could even argue they are over-hyped because the sort of attacks or worms he refers to are very common and have been for some time. They are experienced by all sorts of different organisations failing to implement best security practices - not just Government agencies," Sullivan added.

F-Secure reckon the number of targeted email attacks has risen across all sectors of the UK economy. "The US's cyber command also recently spoke of worms 'targeting' them but, once again, most of these worms target everybody," Sullivan added.

(most of this is pinched from the Register)

In hindsight

Trying to sell the opportunity to 'get your picture taken with Jonathan Ross' while trying to convince the public of Manchester that my mate was Jonathan Ross, not such a goo plan. 

Battleships are cool

On George Carlin

Here's some bumper stickers I'd like to see:

• We are the proud parents of a child whose self esteem is sufficient that he doesn't need us promoting his minor scholastic achievements on the back of our car.
• We are the proud parents of a child who has resisted his teachers' attempts to break his spirit and bend him to the will of his corporate masters.
• We have a daughter in public school who hasn't been knocked up yet.
• We have a son in public school who hasn't shot any of his classmates yet. But he does sell drugs to your honor student. Plus he knocked up your daughter.
• We are the embarrassed parents of a cross-eyed little nit-wit who at the age of ten not only continues to wet the bed but also shits on the school bus.

From the Lady Sack (Patent Pending)

Sir Paul Stephenson in 'Police are entitled to be thugs and exempt from the law' non shocker

From the Solicitor's Journal

Sir Paul Stephenson, commissioner of the Met, has been accused of delivering a “distraction punch” after it emerged that he had privately lobbied home secretary Theresa May to make it harder for people to sue the police.

No surprise there, Cheif of the Met running to the Home Seccie to beg for a get out when his useless thuggish officers club innocent people to death.

Jules Carey, partner in the police team at national firm Tuckers said “With his budget under threat, this private lobbying of the home secretary is a high visibility attempt to divert attention away from his more vulnerable areas of expenditure and to a favourite national bogeyman and alleged cost driver – the fat cat lawyer.”


Carey said the annual cost to the Met of all lawyers representing claimants was approximately £1.6m a year, compared to the £6m a year the Met spent on its own lawyers.

Here we go the Met spends almost 4 times more defending it's shocking abuse of power than those who have been on the recieving end of a thug in a high vis coat? But of course it's not the Met's fault, poor Met, feel sorry for the Met.

Carey said questions should also be asked about the directorate of professional standards, responsible for investigating complaints against police officers. He said that of the 10,849 complaints lodged against the Met last year, only 152 were upheld.

0.1% of the 30 complaints a day against the Met have been upheld? And this fcuktard thinks he should be exempt from civil actions because it's too expensive for him?

NWA were right on.

On Freedom

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. 
Robert A. Heinlein 

Tits are awesome

Note to girls, those sleeve tattoos are slamming hot

On Liberty

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.
Robert A. Heinlein 

Oh Hell Yes

It's not liberal to cower

It is liberal to want freedom, freedom of expression, art, debate and the opportunity to grow. These things don't crop up from everyone holding hands and signing Imagine. These things come from conflict, from disagreement, from different views, cultures and ways of doing things bashing together. Variety is the spice of life. 


But it is not liberal to say nothing or fail to condemn things that you believe are wrong. You don't ban things, you argue that they are wrong, you sue for damage sustained by someone being an idiot and causing you harm. 


Sensible people who want to live their lives without party 1 or party 2 or party 2.01b (we've changed honest) 'speaking for you' and who want the idiots off their back to just get on with life need to speak up. Otherwise the nutters get coverage and win. 


Oh, also, I like John Stewart's rally to restore sanity. 

On Liberty

Stanley Goodspeed: I'll do my best. 
John Mason: Your best? Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen. 
The Rock 1996

On Litigation

Big Boss "Cheer up, you did what you could, the Client panicked"
Me "The day you stop taking it hard that you got fcuked at trial is the day you need to shoot yourself"


Seriously, it's not game, it's not a job, it's a profession and if you do it just because you can't sing and are shit at football but still want the money then you are wasting your time and you will have a breakdown. 

Tits are awesome

Price fixing in silicon valley?

Doing over start ups? Raping the US tech sector to get a quick buck? surely not. But that seems to be the gist of a piece done by Techcrunch here. 


Here are some snippets

This group of investors, which together account for nearly 100% of early stage startup deals in Silicon Valley, have been meeting regularly to compare notes. Early on it was mostly to complain about a variety of things. But the conversation has evolved to the point where these super angels are actually colluding (and I don’t use that word lightly) to solve a number of problems, say multiple sources who are part of the group and were at the dinner. According to these souces, the ongoing agenda includes:

• Complaints about Y Combinator’s growing power, and how to counteract competitiveness in Y Combinator deals

• Complaints about rising deal valuations and they can act as a group to reduce those valuations

• How the group can act together to keep traditional venture capitalists out of deals entirely

• How the group can act together to keep out new angel investors invading the market and driving up valuations.

• More mundane things, like agreeing as a group not to accept convertible notes in deals (an entrepreneur-friendly type of deal).

• One source has also said that there is a wiki of some sort that the group has that explicitly talks about how the group should act as one to keep deal valuations down.

At least two people attending were extremely uneasy about the meetings, and have said that they are only there to gather information, not participate.

So what’s wrong with this?

Collusion and price fixing, that’s what. It is absolutely unlawful for competitors to act together to keep other competitors out of the market, or to discuss ways to keep prices under control. And that appears to be exactly what this group is doing.

What a bunch of khunts

The next person who says simples

is going to be digging a toy meerkat out of their abused sphincter before they can say "I'm really fcuking sorry, I know it's not funny or witty, I just can't help repeating adverts from the idiot lantern"

Litigation is real law

I do not work late for my boss or to look good to my colleagues or even because I am some super conciousness swatty khunt. I work late because the simply fact is that in litigation if you have stuff to do and you head home without doing it then it will prey on your mind, you won't sleep, you'll less done the next day and you'll drop into a vicious cycle. 


Now, if you can't handle that, law is not for you. simple.

C'mon the Thrust Squad!

if you really want to see the original by Peer Preassure (better get your WTF bag out) then it is here

Tits are awesome

Here at Wrath we say yes to the fur bra and ears combo, when sending in your tits are awesome pics next week, netball outfits would be great

Wasp Rant

A wise man once said

When life hands you melons, make melonade

good advice

How do you tell if a purported Libertarian is so full of shitt they could turn the Sahara into the Amazon

You ask them about immigration. 


What you should get back is "nonsense concept, no boarders and no passports is what I want, free movement of people!" 


what you tend to get back is "I would like there to be no boarders or passports but" and they you get a frothing rant that anyone who tips up in the UK just goes round the home office and gets some cash, no NI number, no need for an address, no need for bank accounts which have been verified and scrutinised under the Money Laundering Regs. Which of course translates to anyone listening as "I want to go anywhere and suffer no inconvenience but I'm fcuked if some brown people are moving in nextdoor to me, doing jobs cheaper than the locals and thus oiling the gears of the freemarket!"


Or you get some variation of that, some bullshitt about infrastructure, the poor infrastructure won't cope! Think of the school overcrowding and the Police and all the public services struggling under the strain of hordes of people suddenly using them. Which gets zero sympathy from me because it's usually some dick with 3 kids whining this line and what that translates to in my head is "You, guy with no kids, you need to pay for the infrastructure to support my breeding, my 3 kids are going to use the schools and crank call the cops and fire-brigade and all my fcukin rah rah rah mates will do the same but there damn sure better not be anyone with a bit of an accent using them cause that, that would be theft, from you, guy with no kids, you need sub us"


It's bullshitt, it doesn't matter how people get into the country, across the border or out of your mrs slack vage at least show some fcuking  consistency and then we might not be fighting an uphill battle against the statists who can quite rightly shout 'racist and sink any discussion'

You Madam(s), are some Bad Candy

The Avellan twins as the Crazy Babysitter Twins from Grindhouse.  In real life they’re actually Robert Rodriquez’ ex-wife / producer’s nieces from Mexico.Who knew nepotism could be so sexy?

On Freedom

The freedom to make a fortune on the stock exchange has been made to sound more alluring than freedom of speech.

John Mortimer

Freedom For Sale

Extract From Freedom For Sale by John Kampfner, published by Simon and Schuster

I call it the anaesthetic of the brain. In the UK and US, much of this decade has been dominated by a low-tax and security agenda that saw unprecedented intrusion of the state into people's lives, from surveillance and eavesdropping to pre-trial custody and other curbs on civil liberties. How many people complained? In Italy, what mattered far more than his sexual antics was Silvio Berlusconi's assault on the independence of the media and judiciary. How many times has he been voted into power?

The model for this new world order is Singapore, the state in which I was born, and which has long intrigued me. I am constantly struck by the number of well-educated and well-travelled people there I know who are keen to defend a system that requires an almost complete abrogation of freedom of expression in return for a good material life.

This is the pact. In each country it varies; citizens hand over different freedoms in accordance with their own customs and priorities. Cultures and circumstances may vary; systems can be radically different. We have all colluded; in the West we have colluded most. Unlike Russia, unlike China, we had the choice to demand more of our governments, to rebalance the relationship between state and individual, but for as long as the consumerist going was good we chose not to exercise it.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Dear the Person on my facebook who has put 'Just running a bath' on their status update.

Holy shitt! really? you are going to attempt the mighty bath running? on your own?! Just hang fire a minute and let me get the Guinness records people on the phone! Clear a space on wikipedia! Laura is running a fcuking bath!

Dear Hooker that nobbed Rooney

First off, well done in proving Rooney is so henious looking he still has to cough up a grand for a blozza.

Second, yeah, I'm not buying that you 'never meant to hurt Colleen' not that I give a flying fcuk about chavette No 1 just if the fcuking news is going to be swimming in the pig swill of celebrity news mascaraing as real news I'd be grateful if maybe the reporters would CALL THESE VACUOUS FCUKS ON THEIR BLANTANT FANTASY WORLD BULLSHITT! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU MORONS! PRESUMABLY YOU WENT TO UNIVERSITY AND PASSED EXAMS AND SHITT LIKE THAT?! DID THEY NOT TEACH YOU TO SAY "SORRY LOVE THAT SOUNDS LIKE BOLLOCKS!"

YOU USELESS FCUKS! IF YOU CAN'T PULL UP A 21 YEAR OLD SCALLY HOOKER BAG WHEN TALKS WANK IT IS NO FCUKING WONDER THAT WONKS AND ASSOCIATED HANGERS ON A PLENTY CAN SAY WHATEVER VERBAL DIARRHOEA THEY LIKE AND GET AWAY WITH IT.

Tits are awesome

Why the Ipad will never, ever replace Newspapers

The One Show, the BBC's answer to sitting at home hitting yourself in the face with a hot iron

Tory view of Libertarian Doctrine

From Douglas Carswell

When examining a public policy problem, BBC reporters almost always appear to presume that state action is the solution.  Too many folk drinking too much booze?  New laws to decree minimum pricing for everyone, rather than existing laws to enforce individual responsibility.  And how many items on the Today programme boil down to a vested interest of some kind demanding state intervention or favour?  

I'm not entirely sure what the difference is in demanding that making new laws are bad on the basis that you could just the nice existing laws? It doesn't seem to be individual responsibility if you are forcing it with weight of Parliamentary decree. 


Either way the state/society seems to be stepping in to force some social engineering. Why can't you just leave people alone to do what they are going to do, let the barman decide if he wants dead people/drunken riots that wreck his pub and put him out of business. 

Accursed Hull and his gang of vagabonds strike again!

If you've never heard the name Dan Hull whispered by a scowling professional who then adds a list of inventive expletives then you probably don't know who Dan Hull is. Long story short Dan is trying to derail the gravy train of bamboozlement, self entitlement and wankspeak that has kept lawyers kidding themselves that they are some sort of indispensible service. Kind of Jimmy Stewart meets the 4 horsemen, in legal sector terms.


Anywhose, at the risk of inflating his big square he has a great post here about the horrors of legal education and how this feeds into the profession. It's American centric and while systems are different to qualify into the profession in the ungrateful colonies and in the UK the issues remain. I've stolen the punchy bits for would be lawyers and young lawyers to consider, learn and take on board on the off chance they want to get anywhere and be know as a 'good lawyer'.

We wish that law schools could convey a few truths, and what might be called "old verities", to part-time clerks, summer clerks and grads:

1. Even for the most brilliant, motivated, resourceful and ambitious people, law practice is time-intensive and very hard--especially in the beginning.

2. Graduating from law school with top grades and willing to give practice the old Siwash try is only the beginning of your travail. Again, practicing law is hard. Even harder to learn how. And hard to maintain as years roll by at a comfortable and honourable level of quality. You don't get to say this much: "Sorry, Jack, but I'm on my break."

3. Real-life client problems pose extraordinary ambiguity and complexity (you can't "Google" the answers; you may fret over some projects and have to stay late; at first, it may interfere with your relationships and your "real life").

4. Maybe you'll find that private practice is not for you. It's not about the lawyers, courtliness, lawyer-centric cults of "professionalism", bar associations, wearing cool suits, prestige, money or being in a special club. If you stay in it for all that stuff, even if you make big bucks, you will regret it. No, you will hate it.

5. Clients. Talented people with JDs are legion. It's really about those you serve: the gritty details, hardships, and joys of "getting it right" for them.

Tits are awesome (as are burgers!)

Colonel who slammed Afghan HQ PowerPoint culture is fired

from The Register, speaks volumes of the gangfuckery that is the Nato Afghan mission. Yeah, support the army, support the army, don't question anything.

A US Army colonel who published a splendid attack on top-heavy bureaucracy and PowerPoint culture at NATO's top headquarters in Afghanistan has been sacked.



Colonel Lawrence Sellin, in his critique of the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command (IJC), suggested that the IJC exists primarily "to provide some general a three-star command", and that it will soon be enlarged because "an officer, who is currently without one, needs a staff of 35 people to create a big splash before his promotion board".


Sellin's article said that NATO staff officers in Afghanistan do little else but prepare and sit through "inane" and "useless" PowerPoint briefings and meetings. "Cognitively challenged generals", he wrote, listen to the PowerPoint presentations "in a semi-comatose state".


"I have not done anything productive" in two months' service at the IJC, he added.


Reportedly there was a good deal of support for Colonel Sellin's views among middle-ranking officers at the headquarters such as majors and lieutenant-colonels (junior officers and enlisted personnel are seldom seen in such places). Other colonels were less sympathetic.


"I have marks all over me from where they have been touching me with ten-foot poles," he told Wired.


We here on the Reg defence desk believe that the US Army and NATO in general could use more officers like Colonel Sellin - though much fewer officers overall. But that's exactly what the IJC won't be getting.

On Liberty

At least black people knew when they were slaves, you remain clueless.
Doug Stanhope - No Refunds

Tits are awesome

On Liberty

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. Henry David Thoreau