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Continue reading →: A pleasant afternoon
It was great to meet James Higham today, whose blog I have read for so long. His writing style is so intensely personal that I had the strange feeling of renewing auld acquaintance. James is in life as he seems from his blog; affable, erudite and articulate. It was good…
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Continue reading →: What rights are conferred by your son being murdered?
Jon Venables could be killed if his identity is revealed, key judge warns | UK news | The Guardian. Any parent feels for Denise Fergus. We can sympathise with her unabated anger against the two young children (now adults) who killed her son. But her insistence that as James Bulger's…
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Continue reading →: Violence, lies and manipulation
True scale of violent crime rise revealed – Telegraph. No-one of sound mind believed Labour's story that violent crime was falling. I don't believe they expected us to believe it, when it contradicted everyday experience. Like the tractor statistics of Soviet times, we were only required to pretend to believe,…
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Continue reading →: From the Despatch Box
Miss Paine the Younger gave us a tour of Parliament this morning. Your blogger stood at the government despatch box and did his best to dispel the aura of statist evil it emits. This is posted from the other despatch box though; the cafeteria in the atrium of Portcullis House,…
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Continue reading →: One law for them, another for us.
Labour politician resigned after admitting taking cocaine – Telegraph. If a dealer told the drugs squad that you were a user, how would you expect them to react? It seems that the answer is "it depends." Most of us could expect them to seek corroborating evidence and prosecute us. A…
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Continue reading →: A few days’ rest
It's been a fun, but tough, year so far. Just as the Asian working day comes to an end, the one in Europe begins and I have duties on both continents. I am taking a week's holiday in England to catch up on my rest before heading off to the…
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Continue reading →: Pot hole luck
Half of drivers crash or have a near miss swerving to avoid potholes, survey finds – Telegraph. ….and some of us have had a tyre so shredded by one as to be incapable of repair by the "gunk" kit provided instead of a spare tyre. I am happy to report…
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Continue reading →: The Love Police at work, again.
David Cameron thinks we need to set minimum educational standards for our teachers. Perhaps he should look at those for our police (and para-police)? This would be funny, if it were not so sad. Where are the robust English yeomen to tell these floundering, blundering uniformed buffoons where to get…
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Continue reading →: The true meaning of law?
I think this TED lecture is excellent (and equally applicable to Britain). What do you think? http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
THE LAST DITCH
Your blogger
Tom is a retired international lawyer. He was a partner in a City of London law firm and spent almost twenty years abroad serving clients from all over the world.
Returning to London on retirement in 2011, he was dismayed to discover how much liberty had been lost in the UK while he was away.
He’s a classical liberal (libertarian, if you must) who, like his illustrious namesake, considers that
“…government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”
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The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
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