Moaning at the Bar

In my inbox this morning I found an email, offering to sell me a list of "150,000 criminal lawyers in the USA." Although why they shold think I have a requirement for a rogues gallery of such magnitude escapes me.

Had I thought about it, I might just have realised that the Legal Profession, even the American Legal Profession, would almost certainly harbour a few rotten apples, but 150,000 of 'em? And presumably that's just the confirmed criminal element - they don't mention those that are merely a bit iffy, or for that matter those that haven't been caught yet.

I think I'll write to Barak Obama personally and beseech him to do something about this scandal. We in this country tend to import American culture by default, and I'd hate to see a dramatic increase in the number of bent briefs here - we have more than enough already.

To continue briefly on a legal motif, I was in the foyer of the local Ploddery the other day – not because I’d done anything that might have necessitated the aid of one of the 150K mouthpieces as noted above, but because I’d had my mobile purloined, and I had to go in and make a statement. It’s a nice new shiny Nick, our local, with a smart light oak hotel-style foyer far bigger than our front room, and with various doors leading off it, to interview rooms, cells, torture chambers and such. One of these doors had a smart sign, in brushed aluminium, saying “Disabled Toilet”. What I don’t understand is instead of some expensive and permanent-looking signage pointing out that the loo’s broke, why they don’t just fix it and have done.

de minimis non curat lex, if it's alright with you.

The British Labour Party has been dreaming up 33 new crimes a month

Daily Mail 22/01/10


As I get older, there’s one thing I’m more and more sure of
It’s that legislation is what we need less of, and not, as we’re getting, far more of.

Spawned by the aptly named Balls, or that femino-fascist Miz Harperson.
(Whose reforming zeal is rapidly turning her into a mad-eyed take-it-too-far Person.)

We’ve a surfeit of statutes. A glut of rules, jurisprudence in superabundance
And bye-laws keep falling on my head like raindrops on Cassidy (or was it Sundance?)

But legislating for ev’ry misfortune of which anybody’s ever dreamt
Serves only to make us all treat the Law with contempt.

For if there’s one law the Bully State never learns
It’s the Law of Diminishing Returns.

Besides, if we deserve so much protection from ourselves
Then they might as well put us in cages, number us, and stack us in shelves.

We’re sufferning from teminal legislative overkill
So let’s suggest to the Mother of Parliaments that it’s time she went on the pill?

From today’s BBC website:

Whisky hangover 'worse than vodka', study suggests.

Drinking whisky will result in a worse hangover than vodka, according to research by US scientists.

No shit, Sherlock! I could have told them that, and for half the price. And during a controlled (-ish) experiment lasting decades I betcha I’ve done more practical research, than they have.

For another large wodge of greenbacks I’ll happily affirm that vintage Port gives you a far worse head than either of them.. And if (because it might seem a good idea at the time) you get stuck in to the Taylor’s 1960 on top of half-a-bottle of Bells, you’re topping the Premier League, hangover-wise. That’ll be loadsamoney, please, Brown University. Cash in a Brown Envelope will do nicely.

I can’t help wondering how many zillions of dollars this ‘research’ actually cost. And more to the point, why it was carried out in the first place. After all, it won’t make any difference to anybody’s drinking habits. Thems that have been hacking into into the Famous Grouse since it was an Unknown Egg will keep doing just that, while the Smirnov Brigade, having no doubt noted the pseudo-research, will neck an extra couple of large ones with a sigh of relief, a feeling of moral superiority, and a mixer to mask the taste.

As my Grandmother Pearl used to say (in Yiddish) – “Only in America!”.

A Well-spent Age.


What is it with doctors?

I went to see mine the other day, – I say ‘mine’, but round here we don’t have personal medics these days – the Surgery - sorry – Health Centre - consists of two Principal Doctors, with a consulting room each, (but to see either of them you need to book an appointment a month before you fall ill,) plus several part-time registrars box-and-coxing it in the third consulting room, with the result that you never know which one you’re going to get, until you’re told by the touch screen computer they’ve just installed just inside the door in order to book you in. This is presumably to save the Receptionists having to put their conversation on hold in order to talk to you, although this isn’t a bad thing, in practice – the computer has far more warmth and personality then the Receptionists ever managed to muster, and doesn’t look down on you like you were something it had just stepped in.

After the usual 25 minute delay, sat on what must be the most uncomfortable seats this side of Death Row, the computer paged me to go into the consulting room. Today’s incumbent was young, female, and pleasantly ethnic. I’d not seen her before.

I was there not because there’s anything particularly amiss – I’m in rude health, other than the usual list of minor ailments and annoyances that septuagenarian flesh is heir to, but because they’d asked me to come in for what they call ‘a medication check’. I don’t know why they couldn’t just look at their own notes, and read the list (unchanged for the last ten years at least) of pills they prescribe me. These must be working – I’m still here.

Anyway – the consultation consisted of a blood pressure check (passed with flying colours) and a two minute conversation to establish that the prescription needed no re-adjustment , and as far as I’m concerned was a complete waste of time, both mine and hers. But I suppose it keeps the paperwork straight and the NHS computer up to date. So that’s alright then. Admin, having stolen an hour or so out of my day to no purpose, can breathe easy.

But, seeing as how doctor’s appointments are supposed to last the full ten minutes, regardless of how many people are kicking their heels in the waiting room outside, I then had to be treated to the statutory inquisitorial lecture to fill the time in.

“Do you smoke, Mr James? “

“Omigod – here we go again”, I thought, and pointed out that her colleagues had asked me that question every time they’d clapped eyes on me over the last twenty years, and by now it must be engraved ineradicably on just about every page of my notes. Unclean! Unclean!

“Yes”, I said. “not cigarettes any more, though. I smoke a pipe.”

“You really should think of cutting down an bit,” she said, in her best headmistress to recalcitrant schoolboy voice (and of course without taking the trouble to enquire as to the level I was expected to cut down from, or for that matter to inform me as to how much I should cut down to. The theory presumably being that no matter how little I smoke, the Nanny State still requires a decrease.)

I pointed out that over the last decade or so I had voluntarily “cut down” dramatically, from the 4 packs of Benson and Hedges a day which was my norm for about 40 years, to about an ounce-and-a-half of pipe tobacco a week. That’s what I’d call fairly serious pruning, but somehow she seemed less than impressed. “Sniffy” comes to mind. “Did I want a leaflet?”

No – I Bloody Didn’t! Why is it that everybody in a position of little brief authority these days thinks that every problem can be solved by stating the obvious in a turgid multilingual folded a4 pamphlet?

“And I really do think you should start losing some weight”, she went on, waving a diet sheet under my nose. A diet sheet, let me tell you, describing meals of such an awful grey, puritan bland institutional dullness that I wouldn’t impose them on my worst enemy. Not even on the local VAT inspector. Not even on Wee Gordy McBroon, although he’d probably think them irresponsibly hedonistic. No fats, no sugar, no starch, no alcohol, no red meat, no dairy products except the abomination known as skimmed milk, no chocolate, no biccies, no salt, no nothing. No nothing, indeed, in several languages, including Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic, Polish, and various scripts I didn’t recognise. I thought of asking for one in Hebrew, but bottled out.

“I want you to stick rigidly to this for a month, and then come and see me again”.

It was at this point that all diplomatic niceties deserted me.

“For God’s sake, woman! I’ve been fighting my weight since I was fifteen. I’ve tried more diets than you’ve had hot dinners. I’ve variously starved myself, purged myself, bored myself titless, and stressed myself out. And my weight hasn’t altered a jot.

Just answer me one question. To quote the Good Book, the days of my age are threescore years and ten. So at what point will the National Health Service say to me “Phil – you’ve reached a ripe old age – now eat what you like, smoke when you want to, have a few drinks if the mood takes you, sprinkle a bit of salt on your veggies, in fact stop trying to give up, or feeling guilty about not giving up, all the things you enjoy.” Against all the odds, I’ve reached seventy, for God’s sake. What age will I have to achieve to be allowed to do as I please, without having somebody haranguing me on the supposed evils of all the minor pleasures of my life? ? Eighty? Ninety? A hundred? “

And do you know – she had no answer to that.

By any other name……..


We were in Sainsco’s – not our local bandits as it happens, although I guess they’re probably all much of a muchness, but another example further afield. We only wanted a couple of bits and pieces rather than the customary over-indulgent truckload, and it happened to be on the way back from where we’d been to pick up a load of books.

The store was quite busy – it was after all Saturday lunchtime - but we weren’t that fussed – grab a basket - nip round – pick up the few odds and sods, and straight to the quick checkout..

Except.

Except why is it that supermarkets – they all do it, no matter which flavour – why is it they always station the slowest dimmest, most gormless checkout girl, or the one who speaks the least English, on the quick checkout line?

And why is it that there’s always some female (they’re always female – it’s obviously a Girl Thing.) in front of you with about forty money-off vouchers to be fed one by one through the system, whereafter she’ll check her bill, item by item, with Ms Dimbo Snailspace al Raschid at the till, and then, and only then, she’ll spend ten minutes going through all her various pockets, handbags and shopping bags trying to find her purse, thereafter counting out the cash, more often than not in large quantities of coin. Grrrrr!

So I’m standing at the checkout behind her, with thoughts of slow torture and bloody homicide running through my head, and the Tannoy erupts into life.

“This is a Colleague Announcement. Would all checkout colleagues please assemble at their checkout points. “

“A Colleague Announcement” ?

A What????

Why, for God’s sake?

Is plain English really no longer good enough? OK – “workers” is probably pushing the Trades Descriptions Act envelope a bit, but why is the word “Staff” suddenly unacceptable? And why do they have to “Assemble”? A simple “All staff to the checkouts, please” would be so much easier to understand, and so much less intrusive to pedantic Linguaphiles like wot I am. Besides, who do they think they’re trying to impress? The place is almost entirely staffed by ethnic minorities, most of whom wouldn’t know a colleague from a cauliflower. And as far as the customers are concerned, providing there’s somebody they can ask where the Orange Squash lives, or if they sell paper plates, couldn’t give a toss whether they’re speaking to staff, colleagues, workers, esteemed employees, the Board of Management, the Archangel Gabriel, or the Great Panjandrum Himself.

Anyway - eventually, we manage to dump some of our hard-earned on an undeserving Sainsco, and head for the exit. I’m surprised they don’t call it an egress – it sounds so much more superior. Except that the customers (how long will it be before we’re “clients”, I wonder) probably wouldn’t recognise it, and they’d spend all afternoon asking some ‘colleague’ or another for the Way Out.

On the wall above the door to the Car Park I noticed the following rubric:

“Sorry you have to go. Come again – see you very soon. Drive safely.”

So not only have I spent half-an-hour buying such comestibles as would have taken me five minutes in an old-fashioned grocer’s shop, but now I find I’m being commiserated at for leaving their premises, being ordered when to report back, and by implication having my driving criticised.

By a Wall, no less.

Sorry, Sainsco, I shan’t be coming again. Soon or otherwise. On me, you shouldn’t rely, if you aren’t prepared to eschew all this fake posh and verbose rubbish and tell it like it is.

Or in the case of the Wall, preferably not at all.

Babes and Sucklings………..

This morning, I find myself at a loss. I don’t know whether to be amused, amazed, embarrassed, or just plain touched. All of them at once, probably.

We have, included in the eight lovely grandchildren Susie and I share between us, a little lad called Rhys. Second son of Sharon, Susie’s younger daughter, and her husband, Mark.

Rhys is about 18 months old, and at that fascinating stage where he’s beginning to turn from a mere blob, noisy at one end and insanitary at the other, into an individual person in his own right. He’s quite articulate for his young age, but he obviously tends to think in generics, rather than specifics; for instance to him all dogs are called “Gemma”, after our younger rough collie, with whom Rhys has an ongoing love affair. Which is mutual - they adore each other.

Now, as anybody who knows me will attest, I’m not exactly noted for a slim trim figure. Lithe, I’m not. I have an extensive (and expensive, come to think) tum-tum. “Stout” will cut it. Or “Corpulent”. Or any other euphemism for “fat” you can think of. I don’t mind. I like me as I am.

But why am I telling you all this?

Because Sharon has just texted, to tell us that young Rhys has taken to pointing at a statue of the Buddha that she has on her shelf, and proudly declaring “Grandad”.

Just wait till I see the little sod. I’ll give him “Grandad”.

Missing the point.

I was speed-reading the headlines on the BBC website over coffee the other morning, and had almost reached the end when I realised that I’d glossed over something interesting.

“ASDA sees total eclipse” impinged on my early morning half-consciousness.

Bloody recession!” I thought. “Bloody Gordon Brown……..!. ”

And clicked on the link.

Then realised that it wasn’t about my favourite( ie nearest) supermarket going down the tubes, but an astronomical phenomenon in the Far East.

I really should get a life.