In wishing you all a Happy New Year it is impossible not to wonder how 2013 will turn out. We British tend to take a gloomy view, but look on the bright side - it can't get wetter (well if it does,I'm off to find a few cubits of gopher wood and a few pairs of animals) - we are getting used to the idea of having no money - we may wonder where to put our next two million incomers from the wider EU, but at least a hand car wash is still under six quid - and if court business continues its ten percent decline I shall be retired before the tumbleweed blows through the yard where the Serco vans used to park.
Always look on the bright side - yes, that's it!
Have a good one, and good luck for next year.
If the wind blows in the right direction, we'll be out of the EU eventually. What happens to all the migrants to this country? Do they immediately become illegal?
ReplyDeleteAnd what happens to all of us poor buggers in Spain? Will we have to come back and sit in the rain with you? Perish the thought. Smile through your snorkel, and have a nice year.
DeleteWe won't and they wouldn't. Just like when Pakistan left the Commonwealth here citizens resident here were not required to leave as aliens.
ReplyDeleteAndrew T : I have no idea whether we will stay in or leave, or reach some befuddled compromise. But I think it would be simplistic to assume that we will do again what we did before.
ReplyDelete60,000 on the Liverpool pathway?
ReplyDeleteSounds like Euthanasia for the sake of empty hospital beds?
2013: the year of yet more distractions while debt increases....
Unfortunately the great ship UK is being manned by Captain Pugwash and his unable crew, sailing in no particular direction,and no prospect of ariving in port any time soon.
ReplyDeleteOur legal system seems to be going down the pan faster that a rat up a drainpipe and the politicians dither. The complexity of it these days means that real summary justice is a thing of the past as it has been bogged down by relentless red tape that neither achies justice for the victim or effective punishment of the offender. It is now a political football with no party at all knowing how to score a goal.
The whole bloody mess is depressing.
Anyone any thoughts on the latest brain wave of apprentice lawyers? it would seem the wheel is turning again back to how it was in the dim dusty days of the past!
ReplyDeleteI fully agree with the comments of Anon at 9:32 above regarding the complete ineptitude of the JAC!!
ReplyDeleteBut my main reason for posting is in relation to the career path to the law, or perhaps more specifically the Solicitors branch to which I declare my membership!! For some time now Fellows of the Institute of Legal Executives have been able to qualify as solicitors, many of them very able lawyers but without the standard degree qualification. They do this while working at the coalface, learning about the law from a practical perspective and yes, having to pass exams but earning a living while doing so.
Sounds rather like an 'apprentiship' to me. So I fail to see what this new 'initative' is really bringing to the table.
Legal Week today sent out a survey questionnaire to its members on the whole issue of legal apprenticeships. It looks as if it may be an idea whose time has come round again...
ReplyDeleteThe ex-pat living in Spain commenting above and all this rhubarb about more immigrants coming to the UK reminds me of what an ex-pat I met at a bar said to me whilst I was on an extended holiday there this summer. He said that his reason for moving to Spain 8 years before was because there were too many foreigners in England. I had to laugh at this comment - his disaste for foreigners drove him to a place where he would have to spend more time among more of them than he ever would have in England. I then insulted his mother in Spanish in a congratulatory tone when he proudly boasted that he only knew about 5 words in Spanish after all the time he'd spent there, and went to talk to a much nicer Spanish bloke on another table.
ReplyDeleteI have known a number of solicitors who did it the slow way - five years in articles - rather than by having a degree. When I qualified in 1977 the fact that my degree was not in law effectively added six months to my articles and an extra batch of exams. Since then it has all been reworked but probably not improved.
ReplyDeleteAt least nobody seems to be buying into the preposterous proposal which came out of the College of Law a year or so ago that passing exams should be enough without what is now called a training contract. My American contacts all say what a good idea it is that you cannot just pass exams and then be let loose on the public as happens with them.
As for going to Spain to get away from the foreigners there is a serious side. A few years ago the British Consul on the Costa Fortune was on the BBC saying that he commonly goes to the funeral of a British resident when there is nobody else to go so that there will be somebody there. It sounds fine to retire into the sun, but if you don't learn the language you will be one of a group of expats, more or less contemporaries, who one by one will die or return to the UK, commonly after being widowed. And the last of the circle, older than newly arriving expats who have their own circle of friends and will be very, very lonely.
ReplyDeleteIf I ever do it it will either be somewhere where I know the language - or I will make the effort to learn it. Anon's friend with five words of Spanish is a bloody fool.