The Ministry Of Truth

I’ve never previously had a Christmas dinner where the sprouts were bigger than the turkey, but office Christmas parties never lose their capacity to surprise, do they?

Two things.

First, I’m getting an iPhone 3G.  And I’m not even paying for it!  Said thing of beauty is to be provided by my employers.  (Of course I’ll probably have to forfeit this year’s remaining annual leave entitlement, but…)

Second, The Moral Bankruptcy Of 21st Century English Football (Part Infinity + 1) and There Are Times It’s Embarrassing To Be A Lawyer (Part Infinity + 2), courtesy of The Guardian’s George Monbiot.

In the past few days, Sheffield Wednesday Football Club has dropped its [libel] cases against some of its fans. I am now allowed to write about the worst example of legal bullying I have ever seen.

The club has had serious problems, on and off the pitch, and many of its fans use an internet forum - owlstalk.co.uk - to discuss them. They make the kind of comments you would expect to find on any talk board, and which would normally be forgotten within 15 minutes. Two and half years ago the club launched its first suit. Only now have the people who posted these comments emerged blinking from the labyrinthine nightmare of English law…

Sheffield Wednesday went to court to demand the names and email addresses of 14 people who had posted comments on owlstalk. Here are some of the comments over which the club complained. “What an embarrassing, pathetic, laughing stock of a football club we’ve become.” “Another day, another blunder. I doubt even Leeds were in such a mess this time last summer, and look what happened to them.” “I am waiting with bated breath to hear who the Chuckle Brothers have signed after their trip to watch players abroad. With the amount of money they have to spend and the wages they can offer the best we can hope for is that little known Transvestitavian International I Sukblodov, who last scored in a brothel.”

Such comments were deemed by Sheffield Wednesday’s lawyers to be “false and seriously defamatory messages” which had caused grievous injury to the delicate flowers who ran the club. (They should try posting an article on the Guardian’s Comment is Free site.) The lawyers threatened “proceedings to include claims for injunctions, damages, interest and legal costs (which could be substantial)”. The judge threw most of the application out, but instructed the forum’s host to reveal the email addresses of four of the posters, whose remarks seem to me to be almost as trivial as those he dismissed. This took place a year ago, and the long shadow of the law hung over the posters until the club’s lawyers dropped the case last week.

Another case dates back to February 2006, when the club sent a warning letter to a fan called Nigel Short. When he received the letter he offered to apologise and to change his comments, but the club rejected this. He was able to fight it only because he found a lawyer - Mark Lewis of George Davies Solicitors in Manchester - who was incensed by this case and was prepared to represent him. “I’ve had two and a half years of worrying I was going to lose my house,” Short tells me. “It’s been hell. If Mark hadn’t done this no win, no fee, I would have been bankrupt by now.”

In November 2007, Short was diagnosed with throat cancer. The case continued. But on Wednesday September 3 he announced that his treatment had been successful. On Friday September 5, the club dropped the case and agreed to pay his costs. It issued a press release which suggested it had done so because of “Mr Short’s medical condition”. I asked the club whether it had abandoned the case because it knew that Short would now live to fight the action. It has refused to answer my questions.

Full case report of the fiasco here.

I dare say if I thought about it long and hard enough I could come up with some pithy pun or other on which to end this post - given my origins it would probably centre around an (entirely justifiable) insult towards natives of South Yorkshire.

As it is, I’ll suffice myself to say that the firm of solicitors instructed by Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, its directors and shareholders in the above matter was Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis, known colloquially as K&L Gates.

Decide for yourself whether you would ever entertain the notion of instructing such a firm.  The Minister will be taking his (admittedly limited) purchasing power elsewhere.

Not for the first - or, I suspect, the last - time I am ashamed of my profession.

I have received ten cvs in the past three days for the advertised role as the Minister’s factotum.  Only one of those cvs has been from someone carrying a dyed-in-the-wool Anglo-Saxon name.

The other eight came from candidates with names that suggest they don’t form part of the British National Party’s plans for world domination.

The quality of two of those candidates certainly leaves something to be desired and, like the Anglo-Saxon-monikered Boris Johnson acolyte, they have received “close but no cigar” responses.

Of the remaining seven, every one has relevant experience and good academic qualifications.  On paper, at least, three of them have a rather better academic pedigree than me to the point that they have been awarded academic scholarships from “traditional” (ie pre-1992) universities.

Most have already funded themselves through either the Legal Practice Course (not that that’s worth a bucket of warm spit) or the Bar Vocational Course.

While some people obviously do not interview well there is, on paper, no obvious reason why any of these people should not already be pursuing careers as Trainee Solicitors or Bar pupils in London (assuming that’s what they want to do) instead of casting around for paralegal/legal executive scraps in the Northern Home Counties.

I wonder why they haven’t already been snapped up already…?

There’s always a chance one of them might turn up at interview next week with ‘CLASS WAR’ tattooed on his or her forehead but, having spoken with most of them by phone in the past 48 hours, I suspect not.

Three have been asked to form an orderly holding pattern and four will be interviewed next Monday and Tuesday.

Is it good form to ask candidates to brew up at the start of the interview?

The Minister is recruiting.

All legal executives and paralegals may apply: the Minister is an equal opportunities employer.

Indeed, to be honest, the Minister will employ as his Private Parliamentary Secretary almost anybody who can make a decent cup of tea.

However, the Minister has just received a cv from someone listing their interests as including:

attending local political meetings and campaigns (including recently assisting with the Boris Johnson campaign for London Mayor).

Do you think that candidate’s going to get an interview?

I’m about half an inch away from removing The Guardian website from my bookmarks.

Its Comment Is Free section is becoming a sandpit for chimps who’ve been given a box of Crayolas to play with by Alan Rusbridger. The pisspoor Martin Jacques column of last week was today almost surpassed by a pisspoor Zoe Williams column that, unlike Jacques’ effort, is so pisspoor it can’t even be considered funny and to which I refuse to link.

Meanwhile, its Breaking News section currently has one “headline”:

COMING UP TONIGHT: Follow The Apprentice with Heidi Stephens’s live blog from 9pm

To paraphrase Keith Burkinshaw, there used to be a newspaper in there.

I’ve just updated WordPress.  It transpires that we’re only up to 392 posts (including this one), so we’ll get to celebrate the 400th anniversary again soon-ish.

I won the court case yesterday. This may have had less to do with the brilliance of my oratorical skills than with the fact that the claimant didn’t turn up.

The District Judge and I sat and looked at each other for 20 minutes; she then asked me a few cursory questions about what my case was; she then looked at her watch, sighed and said, “It’s his case and he can’t expect it to get very far if he doesn’t turn up. The claim is dismissed. I suggest you leave as quickly as possible in case he arrives any second.”

“Thank you, Madam.”

This full version of events may not have been disclosed to my colleagues, though I have made them aware that the outcome was favourable…

The court usher had more facial piercings than I’ve ever seen on one individual.  I’d love to see him try to eat soup.

Over the course of eleven years my advocacy record is played four, won four.

Undefeated.  Me and Joe Calzaghe.

On two occasions the other side didn’t turn up and on another the chairman of the tribunal opened with the words, “Sorry to keep you waiting but we’ve just read your submission and your appeal is successful.  Do you wish to add anything?”

At some point some fucker’s going to make me open my mouth and then my client is really going to be shafted…

Nobody likes a smart arse show-off…

…except the Minister.

One take, one camera, one sickeningly talented musician.

At 2pm tomorrow in Lambeth County Court, the Minister steps up to the advocacy oche for the first time in a decade.  How pisspoor is that defence going to be..?

If I escape without being found in contempt of court it’ll count as A Result.

I had another of my surreal days yesterday. The hour between 2pm and 3pm was particularly strange.

While trying unsuccessfully to hook up his computer to a malfunctioning T-Mobile hotspot I found myself discussing American politics with a 52-year-old Californian corporate attorney who looks like Dubya and rides on private jets but is, mercifully, a registered Democrat who invests in eco-friendly businesses.

In Starbucks.

In the City.

Next to her…

…as he walked by…

“Nikki from Big Brother 7” - as I believe she used to be known - is a testament to the abilities of Photoshop (she has appalling skin), reads Jodi Picoult novels and has a picture of a nice black and white collie as the wallpaper on her Nokia N95.

Yes, it seems she really can read.

After she left, I informed my caffeine-imbibing companion that we had been graced by the presence of Celebrity.

“Who was she?”

“She was a Big Brother contestant a couple of years ago.”

“Ha! I take it she didn’t win, then?”

Touche.

Dexter Fletcher, meanwhile, was wearing a very sharp whistle. He looks old, but then he’s always had a face like one of those dogs with all the creases that look like Steven Gerrard.

All this comes four days after almost knocking over Ronald Pickup at a train station. He’s nearly 80: even I would have felt bad about that.

And so to 48 hours of completion. I suspect I’m going to miss out Thursday and Friday and come up grimacing on Saturday.

I received my contract of employment for my new job today.

The HR professionals (sic) spelt my name incorrectly on it.

So there’s good news and bad news.

The good news is that I’ve got a new job. Well, more accurately I’ve got a verbal offer of a new job. And while I’m going to sleep on the decision, it seems very likely that I’ll accept: 26% pay rise, promotion back to head of department and the daily return drive down from 75 to 12 miles. So the Minister’s Wife may not have to put out the red light for a little while yet.

The bad news is that the blog-related implications of the Hard Drive Meltdown have now properly sunk in. I have lost, I believe, seven draft SMIPs.

These SMIPs were designed to keep SMIP-related activity ticking over while I set up SublimeMomentsInPop.co.uk, a new, music-content-only site to run alongside the Ministry.

Unfortunately, the design of smip.co.uk needed quite a few SMIPs and some other content for launch and - you’ve guessed it - all the draft launch content has also gone digitally tits up.

I guess the new job means that I may be able to convince the Minister’s Wife to permit me to parcel up the main backup drive and send it to a data recovery extortionist. However, opting for the cheapest available option (£300+VAT) will take six weeks and there are no guarantees of any success. I’ve not currently got the heart to try to start recreating what’s been lost.

And I’m still very dissatisfied with the way the Ministry looks.

So I’ve got the blogging hump at the moment…

Meanwhile, the local news continues to feast on the corpses of the “five prostitutes” murdered by Steve Wright.

In fairness, Look East has almost always referred to the victims as “women”; it’s just the national BBC newsroom that seems to consider prostitutes as inhuman.

In an extended edition of Look East, it was left to one of the victims’ brothers to make the most pertinent comment on that point:

Miss Alderton’s brother, Tom, said: “They were all little girls and in desperate circumstances. It helps everyone to come to terms with it if they think ’sex worker, drug addict’ but nobody’s anything 24 hours a day and most of the time, in these girls’ lives, they were neither of these things.”

I’ve just had a telephone consultation with my GP.

He thinks I may be suffering from stress.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!