Law Actually

I’m not a runner. I can’t think of anything worse than deliberately choosing to go out to pound down a pavement in my running gear, crippled with a stitch, sweaty of groin, moist of brow, with that hot coppery sensation of burning lungs struggling against cold air. (Ah – the memories of P.E. at school. What a joy it is to have escaped that misery.) However, I don’t live a million miles away from where this Parkrun malarkey has been taking place. I’m astounded at the extent to which the public seem to have got their knickers (or should that be leotard?) in a twist over this. What I’ve really struggled with is why the public has reacted in the way they have. The parish council never said to Parkrun, or its members, that they couldn’t run in the park. They simply said, you can either pay a nominal fee for running together as a group – to cover hogging the changing facilities, showers etc. – or you’ll have to run in the park as individuals. Personally, as a pedestrian who chooses to us…

In the background at work today – one of the perks of having duel screens and nobody sitting behind me - I’ve been following the Guardian’s live commentary on the unfolding BHS administration crisis. Following and grimacing, that is. Here are some excerpts. [The Guardian’s] financial editor Nils Pratley has some stern words of advice for Dominic Chappell, boss of BHS owner Retail Acquisitions […] Nils notes how Chappell is “crassly missing the required tone” when he writes in an email to staff: “I would like to say it has been a real pleasure working with all of you on the BHS project, one I will never forget.” “No, Mr Chappell, BHS was never a “project” for the staff. It is how they earned their living and made plans to fund their retirement,” writes Nils.Exactly. This isn’t just an academic talking point for 11,000 people – it’s their livelihoods. Which reminds me.  As a student nearly ten years ago, my partner had a troubling (yet fortunately brief) experience working for BHS in th…

Or at least spoke in an anachronistic manner. Personally, I think the police are worse, what with their painfully guarded style of thinking and speaking and sometimes bizarrely formal vocab and phrases. I’m sure we’ve all seen news interviews with investigating officers which border on farcical for the terminology they insist on using. No doubt that ‘police speak’ is a required element of the curriculum at Hendon for all would-be police officers. From the Law Society Gazette 11/04/16: [In 1932] the Solicitors’ Journal, complaining about ‘police speak’, noted that: a scratch was ‘an abrasion’; a bruise, ‘a contusion’; ‘assistance was procured’; and a policeman never missed an opportunity of ‘using a word with a Latin root’.[A ] Justice of the Peace complained that a policeman never found people quarrelling, there was always an ‘altercation’. He never ‘asked’ but ‘requested’.A parson, even wearing his dog collar, was only ‘a gentleman of clerical appearance’.A young constable reporte…