It was my dad's old driving gloves that brought me face to face with the fact that my mum was going to die. We’d lost my dad in late 2014, in the fourth year after his retirement. The first year had ended with his stroke. The second
There's a rule of thumb in compliance work. I can't remember where I picked it up: it might have been from Jim Nelson, my first financial crime boss in banking, to whom I owe a huge amount. Or it might have been from Hui Chen, an
One could argue that this post is a wee bit previous. But yesterday was a huge, huge moment - for the crypto industry, certainly, but also for a whole raft of lawyers who've been following this case with bated breath for years. Which case? The one where an
For years, I've looked without success for a downloadable or streamable copy of a BBC Radio 4 show called The Tingle Factor. Not the whole thing; just one episode, which I must have caught on the radio entirely by accident while driving years, and years, and years ago.
Work is piling up. And so are the quarter-written posts. So pending a moment when I have the brainspace to finish a couple of them, it's time to drop some hopefully interesting stuff into the pot. The Science Fiction of the 1900s: by Karl Schroeder. Karl is a
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There’s a fundamental philosophical difference between official attitudes to whistleblowers here and in the US. (Or at least it’s sometimes intimated that it’s “philosophical”. I’m far from convinced.) In the US, various statutes enable the compensation of whistleblowers. At federal level, the main one is the
We're tool users, us humans. Often we don't think about the tools we use. They're just there. Extending our limbs, our brains, our capabilities. Our ability to do this is pretty much a definition of who and what we are. But anyone who does
Because I'm a barrister, I'm regulated by the Bar Standards Board.
I have nothing terribly useful to add to the tale of Alexei Navalny. All I can do is bow my head to someone who's (a) been murdered - yes, I know this isn't technically proven, but please; (b) by someone who's self-evidently a dictator
Dan Hon is a smart person. I've mentioned his "Things that caught my attention" newsletter once or twice. It rarely disappoints. He often manages to look at things from a different angle, shining light on facets I hadn't considered before. (I prize this trait
A short one this time. Just three pieces, and put out quick because one of them is just... well, read it yourself. ‘I’m sorry to have to announce that my cancer situation has developed not necessarily to my advantage’: by Simon Boas. (Brought to my attention by my colleague
This is by way of a linkblog today. Not my usual Commonplace, although it shares some characteristics with it. One of my long-held beliefs, one of the things that has had me fuming for ages, is the UK’s complacency about corruption. I can date the beginning of my engagement
A short hit here. And again - this one is sounding the politics klaxon. So as always with political stuff, this is going on the site but not out on email. Any successful fraudster or con artist knows how to exploit blind spots. Sometimes they're off the peg:
The Bar still has an access problem. Lots of barristers, and the Inns of Court, are collectively and (hey, this is the Bar after all) individually trying to do various things about it. But the fact remains. This is a weird job, which costs a lot to get into and
A couple of hangers-on from Monday, now: Walkers Snack Foods Ltd v Commissioners for His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (VAT - snack foods - whether standard rated by Note 5, Group 1, Part II Schedule 8 VATA 1994 - whether products made from the potato or potato starch)
I couldn't let this day go by. I have to admit it, though: I hadn't spotted the date till Dave Winer wrote about it last night. It's 40 years today since Steve Jobs unveiled the Macintosh to the world. The Macintosh, for more than
I haven’t done a huge amount of managing people in my life. But I’ve been managed by a few stars, and a few more stinkers. And as a barrister I’m often working with, and expected to act as de facto leader of, a legal team. So the
It's been years since I did any broadcasting. After a first slot on BBC Three Counties Radio in my 20s on the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing (I've got a tape of it somewhere; it probably belongs with some of my jazz and soul reviews
There's a bunch of LLM/AI stuff this time. It just happens that this is what was crossing my desk and caught my eye. I made this: by John Siracusa. John used to write insanely long reviews of new Mac OS releases. They were essential reading for Mac
I've said before that there's nothing wrong with a re-read. Good books, particularly good fiction books, deserve to be read more than once. This applies with force to good series: sometimes (and Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London is a prime example) threads of plot