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Continue reading →: Could we really be this lucky?
Labour MPs may sue over expenses | Politics | The Observer. If these aggrieved gentles act on their threats, the effects will be wonderful. Some lawyers will make an honest living. The corruption of our members of parliament will be kept in the public gaze throughout the next election campaign.…
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Continue reading →: Tom’s day of heavenly peace
[Click on pictures to enlarge] It has been a strange week. A few meetings in Beijing, but mainly I have been on conference calls with Europe, lasting – because of the time difference – into the late evening. It has been oddly tiring, although not unusually busy. Today, however, was…
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Continue reading →: Trafigura releases report
Minton report: Carter-Ruck give up bid to keep Trafigura study secret | World news | The Guardian. So Trafigura has given up its counter-productive attempts to suppress the Minton report. We can all read it if we wish. It's a dry technical account of what happened, setting out the possible…
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Continue reading →: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers
Carter-Ruck in new move to stop debate in parliament | UK news | The Guardian. I understand all the concern about injunctions preventing the reporting of Parliament, but why are the lawyers at Carter-Ruck the villains (and partner Adam Tudor in particular?) There have been flash mobs outside their offices…
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Continue reading →: The Boys Who Cry Racism
The Boys Who Cry Racism by Harry Stein, City Journal 15 October 2009. The linked article is an excellent piece about how the once-serious issue of racism has become a casual political smear. …the charge of racism is invariably a crock; indeed, that more than simply an expression of (often…
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Continue reading →: The worst “reform” of modern times?
I was brought to blogging by a shocking piece of Labour legislation, but I am coming around to the view that the worst legal "reform" of my life was carried out under a Conservative government. In 1986, the Crown Prosecution Service opened for business. Before then, the police officers who…
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Continue reading →: Pay it back, Ms Smith. It’s not yours.
Jacqui Smith Request for Payback. The Sunlight Centre for Open Politics has written a very fair letter to Jacqui Smith. Ms Smith has cheated the taxpayer and an apology will not suffice. If you or I cheated our employer of £4,000, let alone £42,000, an apology would not absolve us.…
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Continue reading →: Lies, damn lies and government statistics
Children educated at home at severe disadvantage, study shows | Education | guardian.co.uk. These conclusions are based on a sample of just over 1,000 children. Who selected that sample and on what criteria? Have children who are simply absent from school (because their neglectful parents can't be bothered to send…
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Continue reading →: Innocent until proven guilty? Not in Hampshire.
Dead surfer had been held over child porn | Metro.co.uk. Apart from coping with the sudden death of their husband and father, "…wife Diana and daughter Sofia…" must now also live with the shame of his alleged crime. Have Hampshire Police never heard of "innocent until proven guilty?" There is…
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Continue reading →: Chez Madame Mao
钓鱼台国宾馆. The best part of forty years ago, denouncing the Gang of Four as a fervent young Maoist, I could never have imagined that I would ever spend the day in Jian Qing's (Madame Mao's) then home. It's a beautiful place. I slipped away to take a business conference call…
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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There are many reasons they’re not passed down, Tom. The Triune code, laid out in scripture in all reputable versions…
I’ve always tried to live my life doing no wrong but life isn’t like that so you make compromised but…
Hate to tell you this, but it’s not going to end until you end it. You think people to whom…
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First post (in case you want to read it from the beginning)
The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
A little bird tweeted in my ear that it was time to come over and see how things are.