Gutting the legal system

Tim Worstall flags up just how ludicrous this story is. 

Here's the story:

A convicted drugs criminal has escaped an order to have up to £4.5 million of his assets confiscated because no legal aid barrister would take on the case.

More than 30 barristers from London, Leeds and Sheffield were approached to represent the offender, but refused because they felt the new fixed-rate legal aid fees of £175.25 per day does not justify the complex workload that would be involved.

[I]n their mad urge to gut the legal system (one of the things that only government can do and therefore must do) to save money to be spent on outreach workers (something that others than government can do and thus government need not do) they entirely screw themselves: for the lack of a few hundred pounds a day they lose the £1.5

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More on Iran and Hillary

Oliver Kamm links to (indeed, takes part in) a post on the Indie's Open House blog by Anthony Painter on Hillary Clinton's comments about Iran:

When asked on ABC News about what she would do if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, Hillary Clinton was explicit, “…we would be able to totally obliterate them and those people who run Iran need to know that.”

Forget the fact that the latest CIA National Intelligence Estimate on Iran concludes that the Iranians have suspended their nuclear weapons programme.

[T]he NIE's definition of what constituted Iran's nuclear programme was heavily circumscribed. In a footnote, the authors commented: 'For the purposes of this Estimate, by “nuclear weapons program” we mean Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert

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Idiots and paint

I've just seen the weirdest thing. I was buying some paint in the DIY shop when, out of nowhere, bright yellow paint started flying across the aisle. I was lucky: it hit my fingers, jeans and shoes but nothing else. Those near to the epicentre, as it were, were not so lucky: some people were covered from head to toe in paint.

It seems that some moron was trying to prize open the paint container (heaven knows why) and it slipped in his hand, crashing to the ground and covering everything near it. It's no wonder we share so much DNA with apes.

I've no idea what the poor people covered in paint will do. Forget about their clothes, which are ruined. How will they even get home?

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Out foxed

BTW I couldn't agree more with Fraser:

Brown’s breathtakingly bad performance on Marr risks overlooking Liam Fox’s brilliant one. As Andrew Porter has said, word perfect. 

...The Tories badly need to hammer home this narrative – what I have called the “reign of error”. It’s happening to Greenspan in America already. Osborne is doing a fine job, but we need all the Shadow Cabinet rubbishing Brown’s record every chance they get, with the effortless and fluency which Fox managed today.

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They're doomed. Doomed.

Sorry I've not been able to post since Friday. 

Albeit unintentionally, I've had to look at the election results with some distance. To state the obvious: it's an unmitigated disaster for Labour. Worse, it's not Labour per se which has been clobbered: it's Gordon Brown.

Those of us who long argued that, pace Meghnad Desai, Brown was put on the earth to show how good Tony Blair was, can say 'I told you so'. But that doesn't get anyone very far. What's striking now is that the evidence is clear, overwhelming even. Brown is unelectable, and so long as Labour sticks with him it is finished. Over. Buried. 

As for the idea that he needs to change: purrrrrlease. Brown can't change. He hasn't morphed into a different Brown as PM: he is exactly what he has always been: incompetent, over-rated and barely...

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