Bon Vivant

A much anticipated day in court ends before it even gets started 

February 8 2013: “‘Twas a rough night!” - Macbeth  

It always is a rough night prior to the first day of an important case, particularly when it is a Sunday. There is all that coffee the night before, as you take a last (or sometimes first) serious look at the papers, together with cheese snacks and all available distractions competing to draw one’s eye from the dire events of the morrow. 

Lanying Burley and Mike Fosberry give a round-up of practical advice when investing for children  

If you are looking to put money aside for your children or grandchildren, whether it is simply for building up a savings pot for them or to pay for school or university fees, there are a number of tax saving investments and vehicles to consider. Each holds different attractions depending on personal circumstances and attitude to risk. This article looks at some of the options. 

Old friends lead to reflections and regrets about old times. 

January 12, 2013:  "Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be." - Peter De Vries  

The usual January panic is upon me. Returning to work in the first part of January is always depressing and I had some days to make up as a Recorder. 

Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future 
Richard Susskind
ISBN: 978 0 19 966806 9
January 2013
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Price: £9.99 

Richard Susskind, professor of law and sometime advisor to judiciary and government on computing and the law, thinks himself something of a matador, facing down the heavy, pawing mass of a legal profession that seems set to charge off on its own merry way. Rather than slaughtering the steer before him, however, Susskind wants to grab it by the horns and lead it out of the ring into sunny pastures new. 

“The lights are beginning to go out for some, including the most able, all over the Temple - and not just the Christmas ones” 

December 7, 2012: “A fool may be known by six things: anger without cause; speech without profit; change without progress; inquiry without object; putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends” - Arabian Proverb 

There is something wonderfully reassuring about public inquiries. First, we have a scandal; then we have embarrassed politicians who desperately want to kick the problem into the long grass; next there is the high-ranking judge lured into the public arena together with an army of barristers and solicitors; this is followed by months of public hearings where some advocates achieve minor cult status for a very short time and then, after a delay of weeks, months or sometimes years we get the report. Finally, we have the politicians’ response, in which they agree to do anything a clever civil servant could have told them to do in the first place and resolutely refuse to do that which they had no intention of doing from the kick-off. Predictably, whilst our courts fall apart around us and the facilities deteriorate below those of a run-down housing estate and the legal profession is squeezed and browbeaten, there is always plenty of money for these public circuses of utter pointlessness. 

Joseph Giret QC took time away from the Bar to compete in the Haute Route on behalf of Parkinson’s UK. He describes his journey ...  

Charity is a vital part of oiling otherwise creaking joints in our society and community at all levels, including bursaries on the one hand and the sick and needy on the other. Charity works with business today on an unprecedented scale; it is a valuable partnership for a business because of its positive projection. Charity begins at home for sure, but most assuredly ends with the business end of finding the cash. This is my story of a fundraising campaign I ran on behalf of the charity Parkinson’s UK. It was a season-long, full-on bike racing campaign to raise as much funding as possible and to raise awareness of Parkinson’s. 

Author: Nick Chambers QC
ISBN: 9780955657689
Publisher: OblongCreative Ltd
Published: October 2012
Price: £19.95 Hardback  

Alternative histories are usually gloomy affairs, the dystopic visions of writers in their garrets conjuring “what if” scenes of Nazis marching triumphantly up Whitehall, Czars enthroned in the White House or the lack of scientific progress under an all-powerful, unreformed Papacy. 

Sean Jones QC and Professor Dominic Regan review the wines on offer this Christmas.  

We are back with a range of recommendations again. Not a dud amongst them. Last year we saw every major supermarket chain run a “ Buy 6 get 25% off” promotion and the serious buyer should look to swoop on these deals. 

Chambers’ security arrangements come under scrutiny 

November 12, 2012: “James Bond: The writing is on the wall. Q: Along with the rest of him.” Ian Fleming  

After the magic of Henrietta Briar-Pitt’s wedding to Ernst Pennington, we have now all been brought back to earth by autumn rain and the start of the new legal year with even less work at even worse rates. All we have to look forward to is quality assessment where some old judge will extract his revenge for some ancient perceived slight in a Siberian robing room by marking you down as fit only to defend guilty shoplifters. I cannot work because Mrs Ernst Pennington (nee Briar-Pitt) has departed to the French Riviera on her honeymoon and some unknown person has locked away all the files pertaining to the case of R. v. Grimble, my next major outing in the Criminal Division. 

Sam Blom-Cooper and Francesca Delany escaped the Bar for a year to cycle across Europe and Asia to Cambodia. Here they report back to  Counsel 

“Don’t be ridiculous!” – Not the exasperated plea of a Head of Chambers nor the disapproving words of a concerned Senior Clerk, when informed of our plans to cycle across the world for a year, but the words of a somewhat over-sized and sweaty border-guard, patrolling the Iran-Turkmenistan frontier that marks the gateway to more than 500km of Karakum Desert sands. Our friendly immigration official seemed equally bemused, however, by our declining his offer of 8am shots of vodka as he was by our choice to head out onto the lonely and already melting desert highway. By 9:30am the thermometer would be nudging 50°C. Sticky tarmac and absurd heat notwithstanding, at least Francesca was now freed of the uncomfortably hot, conservative attire that crossing Iran had entailed.