Author: wilks

I called myself wilks when I first started blogging. The idea was that it would afford a measure of anonymity. For much the same reason, there was no photo. Times change, hence the photo, but I decided that even when I changed the blog’s title at the start of 2009, I should remain wilks.

A cold churchyard but a warm welcome

The first Sunday in January saw us on the moor: not walking but taking my sister and her husband on a quick tour by Land Rover along icy roads. Not quite as bad as Christmas Day afternoon, when we drove to Hound Tor past Jay’s Grave and wondered if we would get back in time to pull the crackers, but still interesting.

Permanent four wheel drive is great, until you lose it. Then, as we found a few days later, more than a ton of metal takes some stopping.

Widecombe-in-the-Moor was all but empty of visitors. The National Trust shop, in what was once the Church House, offered a temporary respite from a bitter east wind, but we had come to see the “Cathedral of the Moor” and morning service in St Pancras was not quite finished. We loitered in the cold churchyard.

It was well worth the wait. We not only got to see one of the finest churches in our part of Devon (even though Pevsner wasn’t much enthused about it) but we were met as we went in with coffee and shortbread; and the suggestion that next month we arrive earlier to help with the singing!

A cold churchyard but a very warm welcome.

A moral profession

One (among a number) of the things you are not taught at Law School is the importance of morality in the practice of law.

Instead this is something that most lawyers learn later: whether during the training contract, or in legal practice. And some lawyers learn it better than others.  I have posted before, in Professional Unease, about what Bill Knight called the moral dilemma that most of us face at some stage or other in our professional careers, ‘when your client wants to do something which is legal, but which in your view is highly questionable’, and in the doing of it will be looking to you for help and advice.

Earlier in the week in the ft.com/managementblog, Stefan Stern posted about passing the parent test, referring to the remark by Stephen Hester, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, to the Treasury Select Committee: “If you asked my mother and father about my pay they would say it is too high.” Stern went on (and this is what caught my eye),

We should always be ready to explain to close family members what it is we do at work, and why. The FT columnist John Kay prefers this sort of practical morality to any sort of imposed code of behaviour. If you would be embarrassed telling friends or family about aspects your job, the chances are you should not be doing it, he has said.

This is the practical morality that Bill Knight was writing about.

The danger is failing to look beyond our formal Code of  Conduct; assuming that if our actions do not infringe the Code, they must be acceptable.  This ignores the possibility that certain behaviour may not be professional misconduct but may be professionally unethical. Having said that, the purpose behind Rule 1, as set out in the general guidance, was to ‘define the values which should shape your professional character and be displayed in your professional behaviour’: perhaps the intent behind Rule 1, and I was a member of the Committee that drafted it, has not translated into action as we had hoped. Finally, a formal Code is no guarantee either that lawyers will recognise moral dilemmas, or, having done so, will act ethically.

Should I just buy bigger glasses?

I sometimes wonder about the world our politicians and their advisers live in (although as reports of this alternative universe (nearly) always come to me through the media, perhaps a pinch of salt is a necessary accompaniment). I was much taken by this morning’s report (no online link available) G&T at home? Mine’s a double by Kate Devlin in the Telegraph (a quick read of the Telegraph is the alternative to listening to Today on Radio 4, if you like a little irritation to kick-start your day).

Apparently, according  to a study conducted for the Government’s Know Your Limits campaign, when pouring drinks at home, we get the measures wrong (i.e. we get carried away and end up drinking much more than we mean to).

What I most liked was the idea that if only we had this pointed out to us, we would start pouring the ‘correct’ amount. What’s the betting that we will soon be able to get optics on the NHS?

No more gunboats

China’s decision to press ahead and execute Akmal Shaikh is repellant : for once Gordon Brown speaks for us all when he says, “I condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh in the strongest terms, and am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted”.

But there are two things that have most forcibly struck me about this case: the impotence of the United Kingdom and its diplomatic effort, and China’s intemperate reaction to criticism.

From the FT.com report this morning

A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman said in Beijing that no country has the right to comment on China’s judicial sovereignty.  “It is the common wish of people around the world to strike against the crime of drug trafficking. We express our strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the British government’s unreasonable criticism of the case. We urge the British to correct their mistake in order to avoid harming China-UK relations,’’ she said.

There is no mistake; and, whether China likes it or not, any country has the right to comment on China’s judicial sovereignty.

Whether as at Copenhagen, or as in this sad case, it seems that the unspoken excuse of the Chinese leadership for the actions it takes, or more often does not, is its domestic situation. That should not deter us from condemning it.