Education is a wonderful thing. Yes, at school you have to do fractions and you might have to go out on a wet and cold day to play hockey, but you also get to learn amazing things about the growth of volcanoes and Henry VIII’s appalling record on relationships and try your hand at writing poetry in French and making pretty pictures with iron filings. You might also, ahem, get a snog behind the bike sheds.
Read more...The conversation every parent dreads at this time of year starts something like this:
Read more...I am not good at packing. Actually that’s not entirely true because in fact I rarely forget anything and I have only had to reorganise my overweight luggage, to the consternation of others in the checking-in queue, about three times. On the first occasion, in a heaving departures hall at Johannesburg airport, I had to jettison some books to meet the baggage weight and be let on the plane.
Read more...All Olympic and Paralympic athletes are inspiring. The blood sweat and tears, early mornings and lack of booze and chocolate they must endure for years is something most of us don’t have anywhere near the willpower to achieve. But there’s inspiring and then there’s astonishing. Not only is South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius the first double leg amputee to compete in the Olympics, to do it he had to take on the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
Read more...Last night I went to watch Japan beat France in the women’s football Olympic semi final at Wembley. Like quite a few people, including, I imagine, some of the other spectators, I have never watched a women’s football match in my life, which is a travesty because it was at least as exciting and far less aggressive than the overpaid and overindulged men’s version.
Read more...They say the only things certain in life are death and taxes (unless of course you are one of the super rich and can effectively avoid the taxes). Most of us aren’t particularly prepared for either, although fortunately (or unfortunately) it is almost impossible to forget to pay your taxes.
Read more...Mercifully Danny Boyle’s astonishing opening ceremony to the Olympic games on Friday, in which I am proud to say my dad was drumming his heart out, neglected to pay homage to at least one great British institution: the law.
Read more...It’s miserable outside, seriously miserable, and with no sign of summer in sight. It doesn’t look much the arrival of the Olympics is going to bring much cheer either as the security debacle rumbles on and the brand police start
fining businesses using the words 'gold', 'summer' or 'London' in their advertising. You can’t even go and let your hair down for a weekend as music festivals are being cancelled all over the place and there is no chance of anything so traditionally summery as a picnic. So let’s all go on holiday.
I have just finished reading Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. If you haven’t read it, you really should, especially if, like me, you are a ‘humanities graduate with little understanding of science’ and who wears my ‘ignorance as a badge of honour’ (well, less so the last bit). It got me thinking, if it’s dangerous not to understand science (witness the MMR scandal) it must also be dangerous not to understand the law.
Read more...For a country that is getting increasingly large around the middle, we seem to have terrible trouble with fat people. How is it that almost two thirds of British adults are now either overweight or obese, a proportion forecast to increase, and yet a new report finds that one in five people had been victimised because of their body weight and that most of us are dissatisfied with our body image?
Read more...Yesterday I witnessed, and indeed was part of, something of a rare event. Over 6,000 people from organisations as diverse as Doughty Street Chambers, Allen & Overy, the Bar Pro Bono Unit, Buckinghamshire Magistrates, the College of Law, Islington Law Centre, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), Unison, KPMG and Network Rail (assuming they managed to get there on time) joined the London Legal Walk to raise money for the
London Legal Support Trust.
Apparently it’s quite stressful being a lawyer. This does not come as too much of a surprise because it’s pretty stressful doing any sort of job, although it’s even more stressful not having a job at all. Nonetheless, it would seem that lawyers have particular issues when it comes to dealing with stress at work, which are perhaps peculiar to the legal profession.
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