Author Archive
Reader’s Feast At Middle Temple
Middle Temple Hall
My brilliant son, Richard, who is forging a glittering career in the law invited me to dine at Middle Temple, the Inn of Court of which he is a member.
The occasion was the Reader’s Feast and around 250 people gathered in the magnificent Elizabethan hall. Amongst us were the Attorney-General, several Supreme Court justices and many more lowly individuals, mere High Court judges and QCs. At the bottom of this august but friendly and good natured gathering were the humble ordinary members, students and their guests.
An extraordinary 360 degree view of the hall can be seen here
The Reader’s Feast takes place each term. It is a social event and an important part of the students’ education as a senior member of the Inn delivers a speech on a topic of current importance. Last night the reader was Professor Graham Zellick CBE QC and his topic was ‘Re-engineering Civil Justice’.
The food was spectacular. The wine was average. The port was superb. The occasion itself was a very special memory which I will treasure with great pride in my son.
Terrible Photograph. Wonderful Memory.
Anti-Dog Jobsworths In Weymouth
This gate opens onto farmland and scrub stretching just half a mile from the Jurassic coast, up and over the Dorset ridgeway.
If you head due east, maybe a touch to the north, you can walk with your dog (or dogs) for five or six miles and never come across a building nor even a road.
Yet Weymouth and Portland Borough Council choose to threaten us with a £5000 fine for not having our dogs on a lead, or £1000 for allowing them to, ahem, shit (for want of a better word).
The path leads away from the main road through Sutton Poyntz and the signs can’t be directed at people coming towards the village because they’re impossible to see from that direction.
Half a mile further west it’s the same thing on Chalbury Rings, the bronze age hill fort, which is as remote as anywhere. In five years, walking there regularly, I might have bumped into someone else once, perhaps twice.
The nasty, dog-hating, money-wasting, officious ‘little Hitlers’ that devise and operate this policy are the very worst of Britain. Local government seems to be infested with them.
The British Press Shamed By Prince Harry
I don’t know about you but I found the sequence where he is in the middle of being interviewed and then is ‘scrambled’ to take-off, WWII Battle of Britain style, extraordinarily moving.
He is right about the lowlife exploiters who work in Fleet Street. They are the very worst of Britain and need to be taken down.
Lincoln
Great movie. Hero worship of Lincoln. Daniel Day-Lewis is the greatest actor in the world. Reminded me of the West Wing in places.
Appalling Portrait Does Kate No Justice
What a dreadful result! It puts at least 20 years on her, captures nothing of her personality and beauty and deserves only incarceration in the Tower.
Perhaps, mercifully, the artist, Paul Emsley, may retain his head but have his hands removed so that he can never commit such an atrocious act again! The National Portrait Gallery should take it down immediately.
Not All Our Police Are Wonderful
Ex-Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn
Some are corrupt, self-serving scumbags who deserve exemplary punishment. See here.
Sixth-Form ‘A’ Level Course In PR Omnishambles
Utterly humiliating, amateur, empty, ridiculous, incompetent, shameful.
Barclay Bros Tax Avoidance Inc (Offshore) #taxcheats
Great Panorama expose on the scumbag Barclay brothers this evening.
The Ritz has paid no tax whatsoever in 17 years!
A disgrace.
Of course, Cameron and Osborne wouldn’t comment. They reserve their condemnation of tax avoidance for Jimmy Carr.
The Barclay Brothers. Tax Avoiders.
All Over The World The Media Are Self-Serving, Out of Control Renegades
‘Freedom of the press’ has nothing to do with the crass and irresponsible behaviour of two scumbag Australian DJs. Nor is it anything to with the Daily Mail’s intrusive and tasteless 20 page feature on the 12 week pregnancy of the Duchess of Cambridge. Nor has it anything to do with the Independent’s publication of false science and sensationalism about cannabis and exploitation of those with mental illness.
These are the self-serving calculations of an out of control media that has politicians in its pocket or terrified to confront its immoral and disgraceful practices.
It seems they can drive a woman to such international humilation that she takes her own life, a princess at high speed into the walls of a Paris tunnel or government policies in any direction they want based on their proprietor’s personal agenda.
They can break the law with impunity, bribing and blackmailing police to leave them alone.
Then, when their actions are challenged and they are called to account, they launch their well-oiled machine of deception, untruth and propaganda and try to seize the high moral ground as if they are protectors of freedom. In fact, mostly, they are exactly the opposite.
We need an independent media that is required to report truthfully, to moral standards that are enforced by law.
Nothing else will do. Dacre, Murdoch and their cronies cannot be trusted at all, anywhere. First we need freedom from the press enforced, strictly, by an independent regulator free from the state by force of law.
Peter Reynolds 