CoffeeHousers' wall 18 August - 24 August

Frank Pulley

May I suggest that, either on the left hand margin of the CH webpage beneath the commercials, or on the right hand margin beneath the blog roll that a list of the previous 15-20 thread topics are displayed to enable us to reach an individual posting without plouging through a very slow progressive page flip-back? Likewise with the monthly archives. It doesn't seem to be beyond the wit of other blog sites, so I can't understand why it has defeated our techie. Others have already pointed out the pedestrian access to this blog's postings. Can we address this or not, Peter?

Angry of SE1

It may have been already pointed out by others but a good holiday game is to count the times BBC comentators at the Olympics use the word "English" to describe any competitor.

A number of team GB members are labeled as "welsh", "Scots" or "Irish" but if you come from anywhere between Hadrians wall and the Isle of Wight you are labeled as "British"

So far I have never heard the word English - have the BBC commissars banned it or do they just hate the English?

Verity

Frank Pulley - Seconded! Trying to plough back through the threads is torture and who has the time? I get through four or five then give up.

Sky Blue Peter

What happened to the Sunday Essay this week?

Chris Rose

What shall we do when we no longer have New Labour to entertain us?

After Matthew d'Ancona's article in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday 'New Labour Works Like Clockwork', in which he says, "From birth, New Labour was defined by the issue of timing.", what happens today? New Labour is in a stew about the date of next year's local elections.

With all that's going on in the world today, could you imagine a more important issue?

Tony

The search facility is pretty hot for locating stuff you want to go back to things.

Did anyone else see Channel 4 News on Friday (I know, sensible people would have been a the pub). Top story was how barristers are complaining about cutbacks in Legal Aid and Channel 4 gave them carte blanche to spin their case exactly how they liked it.

Criminal Silks now only get £476 per day. I know, get the hankies out.

Some barristers were working for less than minimum wage said the Bar spokesbod. Er, yes, they are if they’re in pupillage, the reason being that they will have huge earnings later on in their career once they have their own practice – but we didn’t hear that.

Then we heard about junior barristers – not pupils - who get £109 gross. Gross!

Booedy hooedy.

The truth of course is this is only at the bottom end of the scale for junior barristers who, if they are only a couple of years call and in their twenties, say, can expect that. If a junior barrister is 20 years’ call, though, they can expect between £300-£400 per day.

The other PR scam the Criminal Bar is pulling is getting top Silks to reject high-profile cases. The C4 story was based around the headline-catching idea that there is not a high-rank enough Silk for the chief suspect in the Rhys Jones murder trial because leaders in the profession are ‘on strike’, as it were. They’re self-employed, so a strike is not possible, but this is the Criminal Bar acting together for the greater good - oh, and the greater pay cheque out of our taxes.

All the other co-defendants have counsel but the Bar is never more adept at spinning a weaselly argument than when its own earnings are in jeopardy and they know the publicity on offer if there isn’t a Silk to take this trial.

I was delighted to open up my paper the next day and not see a word on the Criminal Bar’s attempt to drum up sympathy for itself. Presumably newspaper editors’ share our contempt for the pigs in wigs and know that stories telling a country in the grip of the credit crunch that £476 per day just doesn’t pay the bills won’t get much sympathy.

And why was Channel 4 covering the story – as a top story as well – anyway? Do they fraternise with human wrongs lawyers in the same bien pensant bars of an evening perhaps? The story mentioned the Human Wrongs Act’s right to a defendant having able counsel so I did wonder. These sanctimonious types do tend to cluster together.

Stuff Channel 4 News and stuff the Criminal (and Human Wrongs) Bar.

They can both hang for all I care. I want the greedy pigs in wigs squealing at a pay cut and I want Channel 4 to get a cut in public subsidy and then they can both self-righteously squeal together. Music to my ears.

Verity

Tony, No need for equivocation. You're among friends here.

Frank Pulley

Tony: great skit on greedy shysters. As for Channel 4 .....!!

On the matter of scrolling back: your 'search' solution doesn't help me much: at my age I have to be reminded of the topics that interested me. Short term memory loss obliterates all until it is prompted by the caption. All except Verity's posts that is, which are never to be forgotten. However I just entered "sassy, sharp and sophisticated shit" (which applies to all her posts - in the nicest possible way, of course) in the search facility and it turned up zilch. So let's have a topical roll for old farts, eh?

Tim Hedges

My problem with barristers isn't so much their earnings - for a GP's wage of 100,000 a year he'd have to work 210 days which would be difficult plus pay clerk etc. It is that when they negligently screw up landing an innocent with a 10 year jail term, you can't sue them

Talia

This hardly ever gets mentioned, but aren’t the Tories’ electoral prospects still quite precarious, despite their poll lead - as Andrew Gilligan recently said: “the Tories still have to climb an electoral Kilimanjaro, using constituency boundaries biased against them”. Can anyone explain how important this is?

Verity

Frank Pulley, the Sir Walter Raleigh of commenters.

I agree with Frank's idea of an index, because so many posts are on the same subject, or are very closely related, as in the endless entries on a Miliband. How are we supposed to remember the one that engaged our attention without ploughing through all of them?

For example, no problem with Fraser's unique Swedish post. But how to remember which particular post on Russia/Georgia engaged our keen participation?

keeneye

Has capitalism,as an economic gospel, been able to give,to borrow an expression from P.G.Wodehouse, uniform satisfaction to the world? Has it not helped to increase economic inequality among people everywhere, as many thinkers have said? A debate on this could be illuminating.

Verity

Does anyone else feel a niggle of unease about the enthusiasm displayed Jacqui Smith for making up law on the hoof regarding Paul Gadd?

He is an unappetising specimen, to be sure, but he served his full sentence and has been deported from Viet Nam and will shortly be forced onto a Britain-bound flight from Bangkok. By the Thais, who don't want him. Every government to which the Thai authorities, with a view to getting him out of their sight, have applied has refused him a visa.

So he'll be back in Britain in a few hours, where he will encounter a bunch of new laws Jaqui Smith has made up, without the formality of debate in Parliament, just for him. For example, can she decide, all by herself, that convicted paedophiles will have to surrender their passports for good? Is there such a law? Isn't this false imprisonment?

The socialists' instincts to control without reference to any kind of consent or debate is truly horrifying. What will Jacqui Smith be confiscating passports for next? How about that "couple" (who had just met that afternoon at an all-you-can-drink Champagne brunch) having sex on a beach in Dubai?

Paul Gadd should not come into unsupervisd contact with children for the rest of his life and he is a sickening individual, but can you just make up a new law to place someone under what is, in effect, countrywide house arrest? Without it being a formal, legal law?

Couldn't airport authorities in other countries simply exchange the names and passport numbers of this type of offender (which they now do anyway) so they'll refuse them entry? And give the same details to the airlines, who will refuse to board them because they would be responsible for their flight back when they were refused entry.

This would seen to more rational and measured than making up laws on the hoof without even debating them in Parliament. Of course, it would mean trusting to the intelligence and efficiency of other countries' border controls, but they seem to do all right without Jacqui Smith's assistance over there in England.

I haven't seen any other comments on this.

I am finding the grandstanding nauseating - not because of the tiniest scintilla of sympathy with Gadd, but because she appears to be taking it upon herself to place people on countrywide house arrest. Next step, enemies of the state - i.e., right wingers - kept in the country under permanent supervision.

Maria

Verity I feel the same as you. Perhaps it is Labour's SUN agenda.

Tiberius

Frank P: other forums have facilities which show whether a thread has had an additional post since you last visited, and which show threads to which you have contributed, both of which would be useful on CH. I'm not sure if there is an effective way of avoiding trawling through pages of old threads when you want to catch up, for example as I just have upon returning from holiday.

Verity

Tberius - That sounds ideal. Coffee House is an excellent blog, but there is a bitty feel about it and so many of the items are similar, or at least have very similar photographs that it becomes too dense to bother with.

Verity

Another day, another long-lost half-brother of Barrack Hussein Obama surfaces in Kenya or somewhere. (A half-sister and a couple of half brothers surfaced in Indonesia a few months back.)

Anyhoo, this one's name is George Hussein Obama. The last one who surfaced in Kenya was, if memory serves, Obongo.

Verity

The Long-Lost Half-Siblings of Barak Obama Hawaiian Chapter has yet to report.

Insider

OBAMA VP CHOICE

IT IS NOT CLINTON, BAYH OR KAINE. CLINTON WAS NEVER EVEN ON THE LIST AND BAYH AND KAINE HAVE BEEN TOLD IT'S NOT THEM.

IT IS...............JOE BIDEN!

OBAMA WILL TXT HIS SUPPORTERS 10am EASTERN TIME, SATURDAY 23RD AUGUST. That is 3pm UK time.

You heard it here first, I posted this comment at 2.35am UK time.

Verity

I heard on on Little Green Footballs first and I've already watched the commercial John McCain has put out.

So now, we've got running for President of the United States and Vice President, someone whose entire experience in national politics spans two and a half years, and Joe Biden, who has been in Congress for longer than most Americans have been alive.

Verity

Paging Mr Obama. Will Mr Ukelele Hussein Obama please report to the white courtesy phone.

Pete Hoskin

Apologies for my absence from the Wall this week, and for any delay in replying to your e-mails - I had a brief holiday, and only got back on Friday.

Right, now to business...

Frank Pulley and Verity: I'll see what the techies can do on the 'recent posts' front.

Tiberius: I agree with James; that sounds like a great idea. Do you know of any blogs taht have done it? I've only ever seen it on web forums, which users need to register for and sign into etc. Not that that means we can't adapt it for Coffee House purposes...

Tiberius

Pete; no I haven't seen those facilities on blogs. The web forums do indeed require you to register, but a switch to that format, if necessary to achieve the objectives, would mean posters not having to type in their e-mail address after every post, and would guarantee the integrity of each user name.

Verity

I will not register.

Tiberius

I'd be interested to know why, Verity.

Verity

Because I won't, Tiberius. I had this ongoing discussion with Iain over at his place and a surprising number of people will not register.

Anyway, forget registration! Let's get back to Obama's long-lost string of half-siblings. Just in time for the Convention, here is what the Washington Times wrote today ...
http://washtimes.com/news/2008/aug/26/the-inconvenient-obama/

The inconvenient Obama is the latest half sibling, this one living in a shack on a dollar a month. Obama's met him a couple of times but didn't seem inclined to ask him for a vacation in his $4 million mansion ... First, today, we had Joe Biden's son and the credit card company and Biden's lobbying activities, now we have another Obama turnng up ... where will it all end? Hint: not the White House.