Gordon’s Dunkirk Moment

“. . . Britain at its best in the past 24 hours”, with the evacuation of the Royal Marsden and the splendid work of the emergency services in evacuating patients and staff etc. etc., according to the Dear Leader (a man so lacking in charisma and charm, that he makes the Vulcan ~ you know whom I mean: John Redwood ~ seem entirely normal. Mr. Bean? At least he was funny). Anyway, leaving aside that the evacuation (which undoubtedly was carried out superbly) is what the emergency services are for, try telling commuters on the Western Main Line that this past day has seen Britain at its best.

Bleak January

Reports in the legal press today, and the obituary in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, of the death of Nicholas Pumfrey. All praising him, rightly, as a one of the foremost judges of his generation. He was a year ahead of me at school, and the captain of our ‘Top of the Form’ team (we never made it past the regional heats, losing to the Girls’ High School in front of a dragooned audience in Big School). 56 is no age: so much ahead of him. And a bleak reminder on a cold, dank day that Death is no respecter of age, rank, or wisdom.

Happy New Year (II)

A postscript to yesterday’s comments on the London Eye fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Cost to the London council tax payers? £1.2M if the papers are to be believed; and I cannot think that there was much off set from letting the BBC film them as (a) the display was public and (b) the quality of the BBC OB was so indifferent that they must have been employing people on work experience. Or perhaps it was yet another case of “insufficient skilled people” (yesterday also saw a somewhat overhonest admission by Network Rail that the reason for the overrun in repair work this holiday is that they simply couldn’t get sufficient specialists contractors in; and why? Because having been kept busy the last five or so years over the Christmas break by Network Rail, they had all decided enough was enough and they were going to see Christmas and the New Year with their families this time.) Back to Ken and his fireworks: if you live in London I hope that you feel that you got your money’s worth.

Law firms; Don’t ya love them?

I missed the latest example of law firm meanness just before Christmas. HBJ Gately Wareing, according to Legal Week, asked its legal staff to contribute towards (I take it this means pay for) presents for the support staff. I love the idea that the firm stressed that the scheme was voluntary: aren’t they always! Must be the Scottish influence. Not surprisingly, the scheme was well received by secretaries and support teams.

Happy New Year too!

Reading Charon QC’s Blawg, he was “Impressed by the London fireworks and usually I have no interest in fireworks.” Perhaps he was in the crowd. If he had had the misfortune to watch them on TV (don’t ask: a sad admission that one doesn’t get out and about as much as others), he might have felt differently, not least because the BBC’s OB was very certainly not up to scratch. A banal commentary, camera angles that obscured the display, cutaways to unnecessary shots of fairy lighted pyrotechnicians in rubber dinghies, and no real sense of what any of this was about (other than to get across the subliminal message that this is Ken’s re-election year: but would you re-elect someone who authorised such a hideous waste of money? Thank God I live in the South West). They do it so much better in Sydney!