Josephine spotted with amusement (June edition of Counsel, page 6) a possible essay title for the August resit examination in Constitutional and Administrative Law:
The Society of Labour Lawyers is holding a discussion on a written constitution - "Technicolour dream coat or strait-jacket?"...
And now.
Josephine is going to spend the rest of the afternoon doing Something Useful.
Monday, 25 June 2007
God's Covenant With Noah (Genesis 9)
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth."
12 And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."
17 So God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth."
18 It has been raining non-stop since exams finished. Josephine is absolutely sick to death of the pouring rain.
Advise the parties.
Sara
It's ten to three and Josephine can't sleep. So she's listening to one of her all time favourite songs on loop. Josephine has a slightly addictive relationship with music: she can listen to one song or a very short playlist of songs over and over for days at a time until she is sick of it and can't listen to it again for months. Last week it was Portishead and The Police. During exams it was The Lark Ascending, Buffalo Springfield's For What It's Worth and Edwyn Collins' A Girl Like You. Before that was a protracted period of Joni Mitchell, Ravel, Neil Young and Crosby, Stills and Nash.
This week it is Fleetwood Mac's Sara.
It's definitely a Desert Island Disc. It's possibly even a one-last-song-before-I-die.
An "Oh-go-on-then, just-another-six-and-a-half-minutes...", mourners-grooving-in-the-aisles-at-my-funeral sort of song.
Probably won't be mentioning that in my applications for pupillage, but just thought I'd share. Music sounds so much better through headphones.
In the dark.
This week it is Fleetwood Mac's Sara.
It's definitely a Desert Island Disc. It's possibly even a one-last-song-before-I-die.
An "Oh-go-on-then, just-another-six-and-a-half-minutes...", mourners-grooving-in-the-aisles-at-my-funeral sort of song.
Probably won't be mentioning that in my applications for pupillage, but just thought I'd share. Music sounds so much better through headphones.
In the dark.
Friday, 22 June 2007
A Lady of Letters
Josephine is seething. So much so that she feels moved to Write A Letter. Yes, tomorrow morning bright and early she is going to sit raging in her overcoat and pearls and give thetrainline.com what-for! Josephine objects to being dealt with by a trained monkey or a machine when she calls a Customer Service Helpline to speak to a real, live, reasoning person. One wonders if the introduction of Prison Video Links will one day be augmented by Interactive Voice Response Systems.
"You are charged with an offence under s.66 of The Sexual Offences Act 2003. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?"
"Not guilty."
"Thank you. I'm showing you pleaded guilty to a charge of aggravated criminal damage under s.1(2) of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 is that correct...?"
"You are charged with an offence under s.66 of The Sexual Offences Act 2003. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?"
"Not guilty."
"Thank you. I'm showing you pleaded guilty to a charge of aggravated criminal damage under s.1(2) of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 is that correct...?"
Friday, 15 June 2007
More Law in a Box
And just when Josephine was wondering what to do with herself next, twenty-one back copies and the current edition of the Weekly Law Reports arrived. It was like all her Christmases come at once: no moment in her life could ever be as exciting ever again.
Wednesday, 13 June 2007
Josephine's Jolly Day of Adventure
Like the last of a bottle of wine left over after a tremendous party, Josephine is feeling rather flat.
Exams are over, and all of those things that seemed Terribly Important and Distracting during the revision period have actually now revealed themselves to be rather dull. Weeks of self-imposed social exile and revision confinement having come to an unremarkable conclusion (where were the ballet dancers, the fireworks, the flamingos?), Josephine is at a loose end, and where less than a week ago there weren't enough hours in the day, suddenly some two thousand of them stretch out empty and unstructured before her. What to do?
Yes, as might anyone feeling the sorry absence of revision schedules, exam countdowns and timetables, Josephine decided to Make A List. Determined not to be consumed by the anti-climactic gloom of the post-exam wasteland, she resolved to dust off her wings, straighten her stripes and become a busy little bee. And so, thinking it would be a great shame to miss the possible Ruin of a Lord Justice of Appeal, Josephine decided to spend a jolly day of adventure over in the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court. And what an adventure it was.
Armed with a much-improved playlist not featuring a single .mp3 law lecture and a book to read over lunch, Josephine set off. [Amongst others set aside during the revision period to be read at a more leisurely pace after exams was a novel by Hugo Rifkind (the title of which had slipped Josephine's mind) and another by Mark Thomas. Needless to say, on digging the book out of a pile of papers it was decided that brandishing Thomas' As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela in the public gallery might be marginally less imprudent than Rifkind's Overexposure. It seemed, some hours later innocently asking for directions to the Magistrates' Court from an armed policeman outside 10 Downing Street, that The Magic Faraway Tree would, in fact, have been the most sensible choice.]
By the time she arrived on the steps of the court, the show was over, the Naked Judge had been acquitted and the television reporters on the pavement were waving injudiciously phallic microphones in the faces of various Important-Looking People in Suits. Consequently, Josephine spent a stifling afternoon in a wood-and-glass box at the back of one of the courts watching Joe Public getting a bollocking from a magistrate in a lively-coloured shirt, while an American woman in the row behind her gave a muttered running commentary to her male companion peppered with expletives about various players on the judicial stage before us. In a brief interlude between defendants, we were even treated to a rendition of a rudely re-worded cabaret song: so pleased was she with her musical venture that we were treated to several repeat performances, of which one was sung at half-speed in order to make a note of the new lyrics in the large notebook balanced on her knee. The afternoon's proceedings ambled on with all the efficiency and urgency of a building project in a Spanish holiday resort and, several hours later, Josephine made her way home rather more competently than her way there.
As it turned out, the Mark Thomas was an appropriate choice: Josephine encountered no less than six armed policemen in her attempt to locate the court, spotted several protesters waving banners outside the Palace of Westminster, and the first two of the afternoon's cases concerned Parliament Square protesters apparently in breach of the terms of their licenses to use loudspeakers. There's something almost life-affirming about the amusement afforded by naturally occurring coincidence.
Exams are over, and all of those things that seemed Terribly Important and Distracting during the revision period have actually now revealed themselves to be rather dull. Weeks of self-imposed social exile and revision confinement having come to an unremarkable conclusion (where were the ballet dancers, the fireworks, the flamingos?), Josephine is at a loose end, and where less than a week ago there weren't enough hours in the day, suddenly some two thousand of them stretch out empty and unstructured before her. What to do?
Yes, as might anyone feeling the sorry absence of revision schedules, exam countdowns and timetables, Josephine decided to Make A List. Determined not to be consumed by the anti-climactic gloom of the post-exam wasteland, she resolved to dust off her wings, straighten her stripes and become a busy little bee. And so, thinking it would be a great shame to miss the possible Ruin of a Lord Justice of Appeal, Josephine decided to spend a jolly day of adventure over in the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court. And what an adventure it was.
Armed with a much-improved playlist not featuring a single .mp3 law lecture and a book to read over lunch, Josephine set off. [Amongst others set aside during the revision period to be read at a more leisurely pace after exams was a novel by Hugo Rifkind (the title of which had slipped Josephine's mind) and another by Mark Thomas. Needless to say, on digging the book out of a pile of papers it was decided that brandishing Thomas' As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela in the public gallery might be marginally less imprudent than Rifkind's Overexposure. It seemed, some hours later innocently asking for directions to the Magistrates' Court from an armed policeman outside 10 Downing Street, that The Magic Faraway Tree would, in fact, have been the most sensible choice.]
By the time she arrived on the steps of the court, the show was over, the Naked Judge had been acquitted and the television reporters on the pavement were waving injudiciously phallic microphones in the faces of various Important-Looking People in Suits. Consequently, Josephine spent a stifling afternoon in a wood-and-glass box at the back of one of the courts watching Joe Public getting a bollocking from a magistrate in a lively-coloured shirt, while an American woman in the row behind her gave a muttered running commentary to her male companion peppered with expletives about various players on the judicial stage before us. In a brief interlude between defendants, we were even treated to a rendition of a rudely re-worded cabaret song: so pleased was she with her musical venture that we were treated to several repeat performances, of which one was sung at half-speed in order to make a note of the new lyrics in the large notebook balanced on her knee. The afternoon's proceedings ambled on with all the efficiency and urgency of a building project in a Spanish holiday resort and, several hours later, Josephine made her way home rather more competently than her way there.
As it turned out, the Mark Thomas was an appropriate choice: Josephine encountered no less than six armed policemen in her attempt to locate the court, spotted several protesters waving banners outside the Palace of Westminster, and the first two of the afternoon's cases concerned Parliament Square protesters apparently in breach of the terms of their licenses to use loudspeakers. There's something almost life-affirming about the amusement afforded by naturally occurring coincidence.
Tuesday, 5 June 2007
And you know it's bad...
...when you start spotting your fellow students in the doctor's waiting room. Particularly when you had no idea previously that either of you lived in the same location. And that you're both carrying statute books.
There are snakes, ants that sting and other creepy things...
in an Eng-lish coun-try gaaaaaa-ar-den!
Yesterday afternoon's exam venue should have been really quite charming and characterful by comparison to the battery farm over in Docklands. But Josephine awoke yesterday morning completely out of sorts with a thundering migraine and an upset tummy, such that the whole ordeal was really rather traumatic. Not only was it hotter than Daddy Bear's Porridge, but the loud and intrusive intermittent bleeping of a lorry reversing at intervals up and down the road outside for at least an hour was more than a little irritating. The provision of bright glaring-red scrap A4 paper on which to make notes (who on earth chose that one out of all the possible colours in the stationery cupboard?) only seemed to exacerbate the pounding headache such that the overall strain of the experience seemed monstrously overwhelming.
Suffice to say, the acrobats were really only a minor distraction while Josephine hacked her way through absolutely appallingly muddled and not-in-the-least-bit-coherent answers concerning the matters of easements and freehold covenants: so entangled in dominant and servient tenements was she, she would not even have noticed had they been more gainfully employed in a re-enactment of Whittaker v Minister of Pensions.
No, I never thought I'd find myself saying it, but I shall be glad to sit in the cool expansive gloom of the ExCel Centre in Docklands tomorrow, aspirined up to the eyeballs and furiously scribbling about Equity and Trusts.
Disappointment and despondency aside, Josephine is looking forward to the resumption of relative normality in all but a few days' time, followed by a night of carefree post-exam celebration with fellow students, all of whom will be quite literally proclaiming their renewed freedom from the rooftops. Josephine has assembled her flamingo liberation-apparatus in eager anticipation of the event, and will be preparing her defence to a charge under s.25 of the Theft Act 1968 over the weekend.
Officially past the half-way mark, and now scrambling toward the finishing line...
Yesterday afternoon's exam venue should have been really quite charming and characterful by comparison to the battery farm over in Docklands. But Josephine awoke yesterday morning completely out of sorts with a thundering migraine and an upset tummy, such that the whole ordeal was really rather traumatic. Not only was it hotter than Daddy Bear's Porridge, but the loud and intrusive intermittent bleeping of a lorry reversing at intervals up and down the road outside for at least an hour was more than a little irritating. The provision of bright glaring-red scrap A4 paper on which to make notes (who on earth chose that one out of all the possible colours in the stationery cupboard?) only seemed to exacerbate the pounding headache such that the overall strain of the experience seemed monstrously overwhelming.
Suffice to say, the acrobats were really only a minor distraction while Josephine hacked her way through absolutely appallingly muddled and not-in-the-least-bit-coherent answers concerning the matters of easements and freehold covenants: so entangled in dominant and servient tenements was she, she would not even have noticed had they been more gainfully employed in a re-enactment of Whittaker v Minister of Pensions.
No, I never thought I'd find myself saying it, but I shall be glad to sit in the cool expansive gloom of the ExCel Centre in Docklands tomorrow, aspirined up to the eyeballs and furiously scribbling about Equity and Trusts.
Disappointment and despondency aside, Josephine is looking forward to the resumption of relative normality in all but a few days' time, followed by a night of carefree post-exam celebration with fellow students, all of whom will be quite literally proclaiming their renewed freedom from the rooftops. Josephine has assembled her flamingo liberation-apparatus in eager anticipation of the event, and will be preparing her defence to a charge under s.25 of the Theft Act 1968 over the weekend.
Officially past the half-way mark, and now scrambling toward the finishing line...
Sunday, 3 June 2007
8.3.3.3 Common Law Prescription
The law will presume the grant of an easement if it has been enjoyed since time immemorial ie the commencement of legal memory in 1189. If, however, it can be shown that the use has lasted for at least twenty years it will be presumed that it commenced in 1189...
So... in the Eyes Of The Law, Josephine was born in 1186?
I take it all back. Never mind a common law prescription, Josephine is fast needing an NHS one. And as for the Law... maybe an eye-test?
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