The furore over the knighthood awarded to Salman Rushdie has not passed me by, I am just shocked by it all and for once I don't think I can agree with either side.

No really, I am serious, I have no firm opinion on this matter.

As far as I see it Salman Rushdie was given shelter in this country from an essentially oppressive regime which wished/wishes to restrict freedom of speech and thought. It manifested this desire by issuing a fatwa {sometimes spelt fatwah} which called for Rushdie's death and even offered a bounty. This was in response to a novel he wrote in 1988.
Clearly this is an action which is against all natural concepts of civil liberty and the oft-cited human rights.

Of course the problem is that the people who called for his death weren't Nazis or Communists or any of the other groups whom it is acceptable to loathe. No, this particular ridiculous overreaction to a work of fiction eminated from the Islamic leader of Iran, who clearly has nothing to do with a British-Indian novelist. Still, Rushdie had to hide in Britain, at I imagine some cost to the taxpayer, for ten years.

Rushdie's contribution to literature and the issues surrounding free speech are well known and respected, but here's the problem - he's been doing it for years, why choose to knight him now?!

Instincts tell me to support the knighthood and condemn the frankly comic overreaction of the Muslim world. Burning effigies of Rushdie are a gift to people who do not believe the words of the senior clerics of that religion who constantly {but without much success it seems} tell the British media that Islam is a religion of peace. Burning effigies of the Queen are even more hilarious as it shows the total lack of comprehension of how the honours system works in this nation and is just mindlessly offensive in a way that cannot even claim some semblance of art as The Satanic Verses did.

However, here my dilemma begins - Why has Rushdie's name been put forward? Who made the choice and why was it allowed to stand at a time when relations with the Islamic world are so very tense?

Perhaps it was the action of a Civil Service who felt weakened by the Government's lacklustre performance with the kidnapped servicemen and woman in the waters off Iraq. I don't know, all I do know is that it has played straight into the hands of fundamentalists. They now have further material to pump into the heads of the young men they are undoubtedly training somewhere to blow themselves up for the glorification of a religion. A religion with a worldly incarnation which is increasingly regarded as unstable across a wide portion of the globe.

Knowing this, as I'm sure the administration does, if one death occurs as a result of this knighthood I will find it difficult to exculpate our own people. The timing is terrible and something which should have been a positive strike for freedom of expression on all sides looks like becoming an excuse for barbarism and opression.

I am now 50% through my OLPAS ordeal, with only 5 chambers still to decide on me.

Looks like the nature of this blog may well change since I'll be staying in London for the foreseeable future and undoubtedly reporting on all the niggling little irritations which have been the bane of many a Londoner's daily life for years. However, thanks to immense egotism and the solitary online life of a blogger I will be able to post them as if they are some sort of special new revelation - stand by!

Is it just me, or is anyone else who is currently being put through the mill of OLPAS a bit hacked off that there is no duty to give feedback of any kind before a chambers rejects us?

2 Pump Court binned my application yesterday and it would be nice if they could have just posted a one liner saying "Your degree's crap mate" or whatever.

I know that some chambers get millions of applications, but if the same person who has to read them spends another say 20 seconds just typing out a sentence explaining the decision it would be so much better. For starters it would help me understand what chambers are really looking for, which I find is not the same as what we are told they're looking for... secondly it would help me tighten up my application for the next round and thus help other chambers who will start receiving better apps.

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On a totally unrelated point, I want to know who's responsible for the vast numbers of trees around the Gray's Inn Road/Holborn area which drop copious amounts of feathery pollen things which get in my eyes {no joke with contact lenses} and generally make everyone feel like they have hayfever. If they're still alive I hope they're in pain for several months of the year - what a stupid thing to plant in an enclosed street, I mean really!

Oh dear.

I've just spent ten minutes researching a pseudonym for my Employment opinion. That's getting close to a whole number percentage of the research time for the actual law... this is bad - I have never before wanted a piece of work to go away this much!

I'm fully aware that it's been some time since I posted here. This is due primarily to laziness. My bad.

I failed the Legal Research assessment which has irritated me considerably. Especially since the pass I got on the Opinion was due entirely to the research I did - so in essence I'm being punished for not presenting some information in the way ICSL decide they want to see it. The excuse is that the skill of research is geared towards providing impartial information to a pupil master or leading counsel on a case. The way I see it is that by "teaching" two modules in the same period ICSL save having to pay another lecturer and timetable more classes.

Anyway - enough moaning about the shortcomings of the BVC, when ICSL loses its name and becomes the City University Law School {or whatever they call it} the overall quality of teaching will have to improve since they'll no longer be able to trade on the name alone. I just feel sorry for those good tutors who will be tarred with the brush of their less than satisfactory colleagues.

On a happier note Tony Blair is finally buggering off... I don't think I need to say any more except that I won't miss the lies, fake smiles and blood-boiling guile of that odious stain on Britain's history.

I'm only writing this post because it means that I don't have to be thinking about work while I do it. Also, it means that I can use the word nadir in a genuine sense.

One of the motifs of my BVC blog is that I do not care for Legal Resarch and Opinion Writing. I find it unstimulating, frustrating and frankly it is a matter of total indifference to me whether Miss X who was careless in renewing her insurance gets flooded or not.
In addition to this, I'm spectacularly bad at writing Opinions. Those who know me reasonably well may suspect that these two facts are not unconnected... They'd be right.

It is often joked by pupil barristers that they end up practising in the area they most hated whilst training. If this is to be so with me, I shall give up the course now and become a double-glazing salesman in preference to EVER writing another damn Opinion.

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On a totally separate note, there is a job being advertised by Blizzard Europe, the people behind the World of Warcraft online game. It is for an English-speaking GM {Game Master} which would be my ideal job if it didn't mean having to move to live South of Paris... There must be a job somewhere in England where I can sit and drink tea and play games?! I'll even accept Wales and, at a push, Scotland.