An email to me from Lawyer2B. A top City law firm is promoting a (paid - laudable) work experience scheme.The text starts: 'You have ambitions to be a world-class lawyer'. I jumped, but then thought it's a bit late.
The language is interesting. It could have started as a rhetorical question, but the drafting team went for painting a word picture of how a person might see themselves and their potential - classic aspiration marketing. Hopefully it will result in plentiful applications, though one should always be chastened by 'Many are called.....'.
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I have just written a short piece on LinkedIn, recounting travel journalist Simon Calder's interview with the new Eurostar CEO, where Calder gleaned that the company has to leave 350 out of 900 seats vacant on any peak time departure from a major hub, as immigration facilities are not designed for a hard border ie there would otherwise be queues out into the street.
The EU status of the UK now as a third [world?] country was rammed home to me through a piece by Tom Chessyre on the revival of sleeper trains, which whizz around Europe offering a civilised and environmentally friendly alternative to short-haul air travel. And as an alternative to cryptocurrencies, consider the Italian Credem Banca, which gives customers the option of depositing Parmesan wheels (20 years to maturity) as collateral.
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There is a journalist called Boudicca Fox-Leonard. You cannot fail with a name like that. I assume she must be be a kick-arse against men type.
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What is your diagnosis of Dominic Raab's character. I infer insecurity over competence, causing passive-aggressive behaviour on a grand scale. But what do I know?
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Manchester City (they play football) have engaged Lord Pannick to advise them on defending charges over allegations of financial irregularities. The Daily Mail reports Pannick as charging £5,000 an hour. Which is a lot of money.................but chicken-feed compared with what their First Team players are paid per hour (annual remuneration divided by time per year on the pitch). Make it even more fun by substituting time touching the ball, for time on the pitch.
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A pleasure to be taken by a 7 year-old and 5 year-old on Mail Rail, that runs underneath the former Mount Pleasant Sorting Office. The experience was enhanced by Mail Rail's museum not being Disneyfied, showing genuine heritage engineering and other artefacts.
One thing that struck me was the historic collegiality of the Post Office employees, focussed on the imperative of getting the post transmitted through the underground network on its journey to ultimate destinations (remember that this was before Royal Mail became a separate business). Some jobs, such as keeping the electrical network maintained, were skilled, but there were also semi-skilled and unskilled jobs. Unskilled roles should not be demeaned; you could be the one doing the backbreaker of humping heavy mail sacks off a train on to a ramp, with only 2 minutes to do it before the train had to give way for the next one.
It made me think of a recent article bemoaning how those in the unskilled/semi-skilled world have been left with few chances in the jobs market. The luddite response (aka the RMT clinging on to outmoded terms and conditions) will not do, but my beef is on how successive governments have been strong on words for retraining and general future proofing, but poor on delivery.
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I have been told of a conversation in a well-known shop that, amongst other things, does passport photos. A customer was advised that whilst photos for a UK passport must follow strict guidelines, for an Irish Passport you can have anything you want (including I presume a wrecked expression after eight pints of Guinness). Now of course I could consider this a racial slur upon the country of my mother's birth, could I not....?
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With the above in mind, I did not dismiss out of hand a suggestion that I could apply to be a 'sensitivity reader'. Apparently, the agency to go for is Writing Diversity, where CVs include "...disabled nonbinary Jewish queer person with ADHD'. I thought I could offer:
'Visually impaired [short sight], half-deaf, Irish heritage forgetful senior from working-class background, suffering from vertigo and manual dexterity deficiency [clumsiness].
Surely a shoo-in?
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And what about the bar on describing a person as fat. Would 'obese' be any better? Probably not. In which case someone with a BMI of 30 or above can now legitimately be described as 'enormous'. Be careful what you wish for?
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The serious point is over extremist social positions. I subscribe to the pendulum theory: if attitudes move too far and too fast from the centre, then they will come back, as has happened in the trans debate. The pendulum will then reposition itself, but not as far from where it was hanging originally than as wanted by the activists.
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I am not averse to diversified vocabulary, but the writer Will Self seems to suffer from a superfluity of show-off diversification. In a piece I have just read he employed 'rodomontade' (boastful or inflated talk or behaviour) and eidolon (an idealised person or thing). I fear that this rodomontade will not augment any perception by him of his being an eidolon; more likely it suggests that he eats a bowl of synonyms for breakfast each morning.
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Matt Hancock would have preferred all the detail of Government management of the pandemic to come out in the Inquiry. Shame then that the need for early rehabilitation of image through his Covid account took priority, with uncomfortable consequences. 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here'.
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A N Wilson writes with trenchant arguments in favour of religious belief. He cites leading intellectuals of the past who were strong believers, such as C S Lewis. His thesis seems to be that if Lewis and others believed in God, then as they are intellectuals we should all believe in God. I have no problem with those who have religious belief; my problem is with evangelism. It is a redeeming quality of Judaism that evangelism is not involved. As a Jewish adherent once told me, if anyone knew what was required in orthodox practice as a Jew, no one would ever be interested in converting. PS That is a sort of Jewish joke, if you get it.
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The big event in the Davey family for February was daughter no. 2. getting married. It was a wonderful occasion. My prize for quirky moment of the day goes to the groomsmen. In the middle of the ceremony an industrial vehicle reversed nearby, with a beep beep beep loud enough to be mildly intrusive. At the Reception the groomsmen assembled in line and shuffled backwards, beep beeping along. The guests loved it, Class.
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The author is a writer, speaker, historian, occasional tour guide, and former Managing Partner of a City law firm.