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.