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Continue reading →: Free speech
Is this what our law has come to? A Muslim extremist linked to Woolwich killer Michael Adebowale was jailed for five years and four months today (Weds) for glorifying the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in a series of YouTube videos. Royal Barnes, 23, was filmed by his veiled wife…
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Continue reading →: Breaking News
I have nothing constructive to say on Ukraine. You may imagine, given my years living in Moscow where this blog began, and given the news from former colleagues in my old firm's Kiev office, that I am pretty depressed by the news. I have spent my years since I left…
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Continue reading →: A British divorce
Judge overrides prenup as Bob the Builder tycoon's daughter divorces | Law | The Guardian. Frankie Limata married into the wealthy Luckwell family, which is in the film business. The marriage did not "work out" as people casually say these days. Love flew out the window in the course of…
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Continue reading →: Harriet Harman is being treated unfairly
Cranmer on Labour's paedophile problem I agree with Harriet Harman that she is being smeared, but I struggle to feel as sorry for her as I should. She who lives by the sword shall, with a bit of luck approximating to karmic justice, perish by it. It is simply delicious…
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Continue reading →: Human rights from the wrong humans?
Tory plans to axe human rights laws will remove obligation on state to protect its citizens, says Keir Starmer – Telegraph. Keir Starmer illustrates, all unwittingly, exactly what has gone wrong in Britain. Take his hilarious statement that: In the pre-Human Rights Act days, a civil liberties approach and the…
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Continue reading →: Get Well Soon, Tony Benn
BBC News – Tony Benn seriously ill in hospital. I rather like Tony Benn. He's a glorious English eccentric. He's an aristocrat whose attempts at working class affectation are so weak as to be hilarious. His patrician affection for the working class is, however, never in doubt. Say what you…
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Continue reading →: Rich List stats
My Way News – Class back on rise in UK _ but elite different. Apropos the Sunday Times Rich List; Philip Beresford, who assembles the list, told the BBC that "when I first started 25 years ago about two-thirds of the rich list were people who had inherited their wealth.…
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Continue reading →: A sustained sneer in The Observer
Meet Cody Wilson, creator of the 3D-gun, anarchist, libertarian | Technology | The Observer. I do enjoy a Guardian writer sneering at an enemy's arguments as those "you might formulate in a sixth-form debating society" and at his "19th-century taste for ideologies and theories". It's deliciously ironic when her own thinking…
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Continue reading →: A recipe for a poor nation
BBC News – Lord Smith: Environment Agency 'bound by Treasury rules'. Ingredients: One rich free-range nation, reared on fertile terrain Millions of productive citizens Thousands of intellectuals, incubated in ivory towers well away from reality Complacency Belief in the virtue of the state apparatus (common name: credulity) Problems (foraged ingredients,…
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Continue reading →: Of verbals and planted evidence
Downing Street police arrested over allegations of pornography exchange | UK news | The Guardian. When I practised criminal law in my youth, I was sceptical of clients who said the police had made up false statements or 'verballed' them – giving false evidence of oral confessions or remarks suggesting…
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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They are servants. Just not of the public. He gets a full pension because he did his job for his…
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The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
There are many reasons they’re not passed down, Tom. The Triune code, laid out in scripture in all reputable versions…