Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Dial 'M' for Milkshake

Having a prolonged spell of writer's bloc at the moment - so thought I'd update you with a case that has held Hong Kong's expat community spellbound for the past few months.

On the night of November 2nd 2003, "wealthy" Merrill Lynch banker Robert Kissel was clubbed to death by his wife Nancy in their exclusive Hong Kong home...she was subsequently charged with murder.

Playing to a packed courthouse in Central, prosecutors argued that Nancy Kissel had planned to kill her husband in advance, had searched the internet extensively to research potential poisons (hey, isn't Google fabulous) and had placed a sedative in his milkshake (which was also drunk by a neighbour who has testified to being left with a feeling akin to amnesia)...then, while he was lying unconscious, she mercilessly beat him to death in cold blood. Her credibility is not, it has to be said, helped by internet records allegedly demonstrating the incriminating searches and by the fact that she was having an affair with a TV repairman in the States.

Her defence counsel, however, countered with a very different version of events, painting Nancy as the victim of a long campaign of physical and sexual abuse by an obsessive banker who - above all - was paranoid about the effect a divorce would have on his career (interesting, given how female employees seem to be viewed in the City - coming from LSE I know a fair few investment bankers !). On the night in question - Nancy alleges - her husband Robert threatened her with a baseball bad and tried to force anal sex on her. Not to be outdone by the government's own evidence of incriminating internet searches, her defence team submitted evidence that Robert Kissel had been heavily into bisexual (and at times homosexual) porn.

So all the classic elements of a classy whodunnit - intrigue, money, sex and of course a murderous milkshake.

The judge in the case - Michael Lunn (a 'gwaillo' - or expat - its surprising the number of expats still occupy high-up places in HK's government) is expected to finish his summing up tomorrow, thus leaving the jury to decide between two seemingly deeply unloveable characters. Her apparent inability to provide any explanation for the effects of the milkshake on their neighbour or the fact that the deceased's stomach contained an extensive cocktail of sedatives would seem to seal her fate.

Thankfully Hong Kong does not have the death penalty (unlike across the border where justice consists of a one way ticket to a sports stadium and an invoice for the ammunition)...so the maximum the fragrant Nancy faces is a life sentence - ample time to instruct a bevy of lawyers in an endless number of appeals. If she's acquitted, she will be in heavy demand for daytime TV and the print media.

Either way, I doubt we've heard the last of this saga...

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

The Joys of Work

Was very warm in the office the other day; so I enquired of my boss why the airconditioning wasn't switched on.

'Oh we never use it', she replied...

Why ?

'Because it causes a draft'...

Gotta love it - just a shame I'm only there for another week...

Incidentally today took a call from a representative of the devoted followers of Krishna (or something simillar - feel free to correct me) who wanted to book accomodation for 900 and a conference hall for 500...when I politely explained that we only have a hundred rooms at most he then asked how many people we could fit in a single room (er, 1) and whether - as we had no sutiably large conference room - I would let them pitch a tent in the grounds.

Needless to say, booking was declined...although if anyone reading this has a big house and garden, I'll be happy to pass on their details...

Scotland

National Express Tickets, £42.

Tent set from Argos, £35

Finding a Pub in the middle of nowhere...





Priceless. (about ten minutes before the above pic was taken, the girl in the photo had asked me 'what do you think the chances are of there being a pub along this road)...

The pub (you probably can't read the sign) is called the Clachaig Inn - you get there by walking about an hour from Glencoe village (site of the infamous Glencoe massacre of 1691, in which over a hundred people were killed after the clan chief was six days late in pledging allegiance to William of Orange - kindof puts timely compliance with UN Security Council resolutions into perspective, huh !)...when you arrive, the beer is on tap, the fire is roaring and the people friendly (unlike a pub I once went to in Shrewsbury where the local entertainment seemed to consist of strategically placing hibernating rodents in the bags of unsuspecting city-goers and watching the ensuing fingerpointing and panic with unadulterated glee).

Rather than waste acres of fuckwittage trying to describe how incredible the Highlands are, I'll instead post a few photos...




All in all, a great place to spend a weekend...I'll be back

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Interviews

Well have my first training contract interview tomorrow...

Touch wood, fingers crossed etc.

Interviews

Well have my first training contract interview tomorrow...

Touch wood, fingers crossed etc.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Well Done Mandy

China seems to be scaring the shit of just about everyone at the moment; a few weeks ago rabid US congressman were to be seen scrambling around Washington lobbying against a threatened Chinese takeover of Unocal on the ground that it would threaten "national security".

Meanwhile over here in "Yurp", the EU has hastily imposed an import quota on the import of Chinese textiles; helpfully, retaillers in the UK and Europe weren't (apparently) properly informed. Thus huge stockpiles of trousers, bed linen and the like are already piling up in warehouses unable to reach consumers.

The only up-side to this is that the buck must inevitably rest with Tony's man-who-can (or indeed can't) in Brussels, the legendarily smug Peter "Hinduja" Mandelson, the EU Commissioner for Trade.

One of the main problems with the EU is that - without anything resembling effective democratic accountability, it tends to be exceptionally prone to well-heeled lobby groups (known in English criminal law as 'corruption'). Step forward large textile firms based in France and Spain, who insist they need to be 'protected' from the surging Chinese hoards. But with British consumers facing a potentially catastrophic shortage of cheap Tesco jeans and M&S sweaters, will the retaillers opt for higher cost factories in Western Europe ?

Of course not. As one newspaper reported today :

"Tesco, the UK’s largest grocer, which sold around £700 million worth of clothes in Britain last year, said it was able to source goods from other areas such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Turkey and that it did not expect its shoppers to be affected."

So the closest the quota would seem to get to protecting the rag trade within the EU is Turkey (enough, you would think, to put at least the French off). No no no, said an EU spokesman :

"This is not just another standard pork-barrel protectionist measure. The EU also considered the effect the Chinese market share was having on other developing countries who have historically been dependent on our market. Who will protect jobs in Tunisia and Morocco ?".

Thank heavens the developing world (barring China) has the EU to look after its interests.

One wonders whether this quite extraordinary announcement will herald a new era of concern for the third world, especially reforming farm subsidies (expicitly designed to keep small farmers in the EU richer than their third world counterparts - no-one in Africa benefits from the "French social model"). I'm not holding my breath.

Of course the UK government and the EU might use this opportunity to apply some leaverage over Beijing to improve its abysmal human rights record; but what with our pragmatic support for 'Idi Amin lite' in Uzbekistan and the fact that several of our soldiers are currently on trial for war-crimes, you have to wonder whether we have the authority...moral or political.

As a final thought - I wonder if the Peter's friends the Hinduja brothers have any interest in Indian textile firms - now that really would be too good to be true.

Monday, August 22, 2005

Don't Shoot I'm Brazilian (Part 4)

Just when you thought it couldn't get any better...

The very day the Brazilian diplomatic delegation arrives in London seeking (in what you might expect to be pretty 'frank' terms) answers from Inspector Knacker it emerges that the CCTV footage from the platform has mysteriously disappeared...this after the police claimed it wasn't working (disputed by TfL who actually run the CCTV cameras at tube stations) . If ever a Fawlty Towers-esque farce were to be written about the police...

Oh and the family of the victim has been offered £15,000 to shut up and piss off, er sorry as an "ex-gratia payment" (an ancient English legal term derived from the Latin 'ex' - getting ourselves out of , 'gratia' - great shit).

When Sir Ian Blair became Commissioner a few months ago he promised to crack down hard on cocaine use at middle-class dinner parties. If things get much worse, you'd forgive him for asking round for invitations...while he may now have the backing of Downing Street, Rev Blair will soon change his tune if he feels the mood of his congregation turning.

Atomic Fish

A quick update from this week's guest publication : the indispensible fishupdate.com (seriously this website exists - try it if you don't believe me).

Apparently the mainland Chinese authorities have banned the export of fish to Hong Kong after some were found to contain malachite green (a suspected carceogenic chemical)...

A worthy gesture to be sure. However, let's not forget that Hong Kong is just upriver from Guangdong province, China - home of the Daya Bay nuclear power plant (remember the perennial Irish bitching about pollution from Windscale, er sorry I mean Sellafield) and God knows what in terms of heavy industry...visitors to Lau Fau Shan, a village in HK's New Territories (so called becuase they were acquired after the rest of Hong Kong - in 1898 on a 99 year lease - a deal that was ultimately to spell the end of Hong Kong as a British colony) can look up and see the appetising smog of Guangdong and Shenzen before tucking into their shellfish.

You have to wonder whether the ban doesn't slightly miss the point.

Incidentally if you want to see the Chinese approach to pollution regulation firsthand, catch a boat trip from Shanghai up to the mouth of the Yangtze - and pack a gas-mask....

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

The Curse of Gnome Revisited

Since it was started as a rag tag publication by Messrs Rushton and Ingrams, Private Eye has had a major problem : how to print libellous bollocks without getting sued.

One of the most ingenous devices it adopted was termed the 'curse of gnome'. This worked thus :

In a fit of temper, a newspaper proprietor, "businessman", politician whatever sues Private Eye.

The 'curse' is activated such that the magazine will report, in scrupulous detail, any subsequent misadventure, tragedy, scandal that befalls the hapless litigant.

Having now received four rejections from job applications to law firms, I'm thinking of applying a simillar principle to this blog.

Shame to see Herbert (Not So) Smugs getting fined £30k the other week at the employment tribunal wasn't it ?

Monkey Speak

Two particvularly appalling examples I've seen recently :

Failure = "Deferred Success" .

Getting Sacked : "Being empowered to take control of one's career path."

Will try and use soon; also trying to get my job title at work (which goes out on letters to clients etc) from Administrative Assistant to Chief-Assisstant to the Assistant Chief...

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Don't Shoot I'm Brazilian (Part 3)

Lo and behold, now documents come into the possession of ITN casting grave doubts about the Met's version of the shooting of innocent Brazilian Jean Claude de Menzes...who is apparently now casually reading The Metro (to be fair a paper so bad as to drive any reader to suicide) instead of vaulting them in a suspicious manner.

I say again, I do not have a problem with the shooting of suspected suicide bomber PROVIDED THE INTELLIGENCE IS RELIABLE...

How do we beat suicide bombers ? By high level human intelligence, ie. infiltrating suspect groups. I have yet to see this take precedence over clamouring for an ever tougher clampdown on fundamental freedoms...this may play well with The Sun but will not (I promise you) thwart the next attack (which will doubtless increase Rebekah Wade's circulation).

I hate to say I told you so, BUT...
Kindergarten cops ?

Viva la revolution man !


Thanks to Jon for this...keep working hard

Monday, August 15, 2005

Cricket

G'Day...

and goodbye.

One wicket down already...

At work...

Someone please send me some amusing forwards to break up the tedium.

tomjenkins0@gmail.com

Thanks...

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Also having a bad day...

Alexander Yakovlev, a former UN procurement officer accused of taking kickbacks in the oil-for-food scandal, after Kofi Annan waived his diplomatic immunity.

One suspects the US Justice Department will have no diffiulty asking the White House for funds for the investigation; if only to deflect attention from the hideous corruption endemic in post-war Iraq (run, er, by the US).

Shhhh ! Don't mention the 'H' word...

Bears Eating Yaks in the Woods

If you've had a bad day, spare a thought for Reinhold Messner, who spent (presumably) much time and money importing what The Guardian described as a "prize yak" from the Himalayas to his Alpine home.

Unfortunately the poor beast did not have long to adjust to its new home before it was, er, mauled to death by a bear.

Brown bears were on the verge of exitinction in the region until a £1m re-introduction programme funded partly by the EU. Ten bears were captured in Slovenia and fitted with tracking devices (which apparently no longer work) and transferred to the Swiss/Italian Alps.

Given that the bears are from Slovenia (Eastern European economic migrants and their presence in Italy was a result of the actions of the EU, its perhaps hardly surprising that the local media was quick to point the finger of blame over the yak incident.

It is surely only a matter of time before the area is "swamped" and local predators will be forced out of their jobs.

Monster Mums & Sleazy Waiters

I don't normally approve of Sun editorials let alone quote them on this blog : but this one piece amused me; its not often the lovely Rebekah gets something right so credit where its due :


MONSTER mum Elaine Walker is callous beyond belief.

First she abandons her 15-year-old daughter with £25 (Elaine claims it
was a whopping £35) so she can shack up with a Turkish waiter. Now, as if the poor girl wasn’t hurting enough, Walker claims it was “a price worth paying” because her and Turkish Ali’s love will be “everlasting”.

Who is she kidding?

This isn’t love’s young dream. There is no long, romantic tradition of British women living happily ever after with their holiday waiters. Meanwhile, without a trace of irony, Walker says she’d love a child with Ali. Unfortunately, she says, she has been sterilised.

That’s a stroke of luck for any future kids she might abandon on a whim.


Monday, August 08, 2005

Football Chants

Apparently police are investigating after a small section of Hull City supporters were chanting "you're just a town full of bombers" at a QPR game - implying that London is a town full of bombers.

The obvious wittiness of this harmless banter aside, they seem to have failed to grasp a crucial point about the 7th July attacks....

The bombers all came from Leeds.

Maybe they should try the same chant at Ellen Road - or do they perhaps feel that, were they to do so, they would get the shit kicked out of them...or are they just too fu***** stupid to watch the news !

Incidentally did go to Hull a few years ago - it is, needless to say, a shithole.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Top Swiss Blogs

Just seen this post over at JudgeJonathan...apparently now #98 in the official "Top Swiss Blogs" list.

Many congratulations.

Reminds me of a scene from the great film Airplane !

Elaine "Would you like something to read?
Old Lady "Do you have anything light?"
Elaine "Uhh... how about this leaflet, Famous Jewish Sports Legends?"

Official : Lawyers Can Kill

The effect that a half hour talking to a lawyer can have on the contents of your wallet has long been recognised...but now it appears that it can have a detrimental effect on your health too.

In 2002 the US Supreme Court - in a move that George W would probably call "legislating from the bench" - ruled that the execution of the mentally retarded was unconstitutional. Crucially, however, their honours left the detailed minutiae of applying this ruling to the individual states(for example someone considered mentally retarded in New York or California might well be considered normal in, say Alabama or even a genius in Utah).

The petitioner who successfully argued the unconstitutionality of this quaint practice of executing the retarded was a guy called Daryl Atkins, convicted of capital murder in Virginia.

The state of Virginia decided upon a cut-off IQ (no pun intended) of 70.

This week Atkins was back in court where the prosecution successfully argued that the frequent contact Atkins had with his lawyers had raised his IQ up to 76.

He is now scheduled to be executed in December.

Logically his IQ cannot be that high if he was stupid enough not to flunk the IQ test (knowing, naturally that if he showed himself to be even vaguely intelligent the state was going to kill him). It remains to be seen whether the appellate courts will accept this argument.

The moral of the story would seem to be - if convicted of murder - play dumb and don't whatever you do communicate with your lawyers.

It should, of course be remembered that the 2002 ruling did not alter the other criteria necessary for the application of capital punishment : namely black skin and no money.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

The Foreign Office

One final post for the day.
Apparently a bunch of management consultants has produced a report claiming the following things about our beloved Foreign Office :

  1. The Foreign Office is "slow to act"

  2. There is a lack of delegation

  3. There is not enough accountability for completing tasks and meeting deadlines, with junior staff avoiding blame for poor work by relying on their bosses to check documents

  4. Middle managers feel obliged to "monitor, review and repeat work in order to 'justify their existence'

All well and good : but such incompetence pales in comparison to the level of ineptitude needed to spend months on a report confirming the bleeding obvious.

So the civil service is cumbersome, unaccountable, inefficient and bureaucratic. Bears have been known on occasion to shit in the woods.

Typos

Some of you may have noticed that my blog is quite often riddled with typos.

This is not because I am dyslexic (either the genuine or the 'born again' variety - you know, the people who find spelling difficult after reading about how nice a laptop their LEA will buy them).

Any mistakes are - naturally - a tribute to the legendary reputation of The Guardian in this area (hence the epithet Grauniad).

So now you know...

Law Applications

Just read my mission statement opposite which apparently included bitching - haven't done much of that recently so here goes...

Law applications.

Let's face it, money is useful. It enables you to do things like eat, drink and go to India. That's fact one.

Fact two - studying costs money; when I got the bill for my law masters from Oxford it was nearly £1k more than I had been expecting.

Putting these facts together, a job paying money after University is a good thing to have; a job that gives you a grant to be a student for a year, then pays you a starting salary of around £28k is a very good thing to have. Welcome to the world of training contracts - a world to me at least shrouded in mystery.

So off I trot to these law firms with my LSE degree; and the first thing they do is hit me with a lot of bullshitty questions. "Describe when you saved the world from nuclear destruction as a member of a team (always remember the 'T' word) - this is obviously a trick question - who's ever seen a disaster movie without a single hero acting alone ?

But you get the idea; assuming you write crap they like, off you skip to the interview; this may be a relatively civilised thing (two partners for half an hour @ £500 an hour a partner). Alternatively, if the firm has been stupid enough to let HR (human remains) get its claws in too deep you're met with various group and individual assessments designed to test whether, in the words of R.E.M. you're a 'shiny happy person'; the key is to be shiny and confident on the outside - its not whether what you say is right but its whether how you say what you say is right.

Some of my more astute readers may sense a certain bitter and twisted vibe here - the fact that I got rejected for every training contract I applied for last year has, obviously, nothing to do with the tenor of this post. Nor does the fact that I'm going through the whole bullshit forest again, with only a day's interview skills training between me and future unemployment, before you add on the predictable parental paranoia about unemployed graduate offspring.

The things we do for money...

Piccadilly Line Re-Opens

Welcome back.
We've missed you...

Also Circle Line - don't really give a shit.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Official : Koreans Clone Dog

This is entirely serious : BBC News is reporting that Korean scientists have successfully cloned a dog (read it here).

How long before Seoul's more fashionable restaurants are offering "Cloned Dog" as a speciality ?

Multiparty Politics : Russian Style

Much is made in the UK of the general uselessness of our so-called opposition; true Michael Howard's decision to fall on his sword on the morning after the election indeed led to the predictable, and highly entertaining farce that is a Tory leadership race - and if the crew of a boat are at each other's throats the chances of the boat moving in a consistent and desirable direction are somewhat limited.

However, Tory fortunes fade into insignificance when compared with the travails of Gary Kasparov, the erstwhile chess genius who could be the only thing between Russia and Putin-ocracy. On a recent campaign tour, Kasparov found himself turned away from more places than a poultry farmer in South-East Asia; excuses included "the inability to garuntee his security" (presumably security from the KGB, er sorry I mean FSB), a fallen curtain on the stage (presumably of the material not the iron variety) and - saving the best till last - "rocks on the runway (actually having spent some time in the terminal of Sheremetyevo Aiport I find this one believable). Other features included the "spontaneous" gathering of Putin supporters to throw ketchup, eggs etc. at the hapless chess maestro (one hopes they weren't too expensive - the people, not the eggs) and the predictable 3 car FSB chaperone following on behind.

If this is the situation now, I can't wait for the "election"; anyone taking bets ?

Monday, August 01, 2005

All Friends Now ?

A great day for restorative justice; presumably modelled along the lines of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Indonesian Commission has established the "Truth and Friendship Commission" to look into human rights abuses in East Timor during it struggle for independence from Jakarta.

Or to give the panel its full name, the "Oh shit we'd better look like we're doing something or the UN will shaft us with an independent criminal tribunal Commission".

Best of all alongside the usual motley crew of lawyers and human rights experts, BBC News reports that the panels will also consist of "retired army officers".

You couldn't make it up could you ?

We're Not Afraid



Thx to Amy for this one.

Outer Bumblefuck

Well back here for good now (well until Oxford).

Probably better than joining the citizens of cardboard city under Waterloo Bridge