Readers of this blog will be familiar with McMillan v Hummingbird Speedway. It was a case in the US last year where a court ordered a claimant to release his user name and password to a Facebook site where it was thought he had posted comments about injuries sustained in an accident for which he was now claiming damages.… Read More: I told you so »
Is this the correct advice to businesses which are now subject to the Bribery Act 2010? After the thousands of words written about it over the past 18 months, the Bribery Act has now come into effect. As from July 1st 2011, British business has to face up to the reality of doing business under a… Read More: Fasten your seat belts »
There is a view often expressed that the law is failing to keep up with developments in technology. You only have to read the papers (if anyone still does) or read what people are saying on a myriad of social networking sites of which Facebook and Twitter are the most often quoted. Occasionally the law… Read More: Twit, twittle, twit. The long view of e-disclosure »
Of all the poems I was made to learn at school, few have remained with me as much as Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur. I cannot help but be moved by the opening lines: “So all day long the noise of battle rolled, among the mountains by the winter sea”. Lovers of legend will remember how the fatally… Read More: The old order changeth »
My favourite misquotation is “money is the root of all evil” or for those of you with a Latin bent, “radix malorum est cupiditas.” The correct quotation of the words from the King James Bible, 400 years old almost to the day, is in 1 Timothy 6.10. “For the love of money is the root… Read More: Misquoted »
On 12th March 1829 undergraduates at the University of Cambridge sent a challenge to their counterparts at Oxford and started a tradition which continues in more or less the same form to this day. If you missed it last Saturday, imagine 16 heavy athletic men, plus a smaller man and a girl, afloat on the… Read More: Dines with dinosaurs »
Have you noticed how Network Rail persists in the use of the unfashionable word “alight” when talking to its “customers” ( I always think of myself as a passenger) about getting off a train? Have they got a secret supply of 1920s signs or tapes recorded in a different era which they continue to use… Read More: Out of kilter »
It is nigh on impossible to open a serious newspaper or magazine these days without finding an article on the Bribery Act 2010 which was supposed to come into force in April 2011, after publication of the guidance promised by the Government. I recall that such guidance was to be published three months before the… Read More: Bribery, corruption and the free lunch »
In 1807 England was at war with Napoleon. In the graveyard of St Laurence’s Parish Church in Stroud, Gloucestershire a plain stone carries the inscription: Here lie the remains of Lieutenant Joseph Francis Delmont, of His Majesty’s 82nd Regiment, born November 25, 1785, died August 18, 1807. On August 14th 1807 Delmont and Lieutenant Benjamin… Read More: Pistols at dawn »
One of the best loved stories of recent years is Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman with its music by Howard Blake. In case you are not familiar with the story (and surely everyone has heard the main theme tune Walking in the Air) it concerns a little boy who makes a snowman one day. Unable to sleep… Read More: Snowman theft armless say police »