Guzzle the World

My girlfriend and I have started up a food-review blog: G & T Guzzle the World.

It'll cover the variety of food and drink we come across in and around London.

Check it out! Tweet

Blog Post of the Day/Month/Year

You're probably aware of the current fuck-up surrounding the Greek economy.

I know very little about economics - not that's necessarily a bad thing - and I also don't know what can ad should be done to sort it out.

Which is why I'm glad I found a post on Crooked Timber to help me.

It's a Choose Your Own Adventure game over the various options there are for Greece and everyone else, and it takes into account the economic impacts and limits and also the political ones.

It's a great post which explains the situation in a simple-to-understand manner.

When I did it I got the "Argentina 2001" option. That's not good.

Hopefully, other people can do better. Tweet

Technical Legal Argument of the Day

On Thursday the Court of Appeal released its judgment in the case of Simcoe v Jacuzzi UK Group Plc.

For work reasons* I had been keeping an eye out for this.

What I didn't expect - and I doubt anyone else did - was for the Claimant to also win on a very obscure technical argument (para. 20-34).

The best was to describe it is**:

Lawyer: The law doesn't apply because the government fucked up when they drafted it 

Court: [looks at the background to the law] You're right

I have to applaud whoever considered such a strategy - normally you would assume that any amendment is valid - mainly due to the amount to work involved in researching the issue itself and the background of how the law was amended and it actually should have been changed.

However, I'm expecting the Defendant to appeal to the Supreme Court, either on the technical argument or generally. I'm also expecting the Supreme Court to give permission due to the wide-ranging impact a decision would have.

* It was a technical argument over from when interest on costs can be claimed in cases funded by CFAs/"No win, no fee" agreements. The Court says that it can be claimed from when the main case settles, not just from when the legal costs are agreed which will be some time later on, possibly years.

** Legally, the argument was that CPR 40.8 doesn't apply in the County Court because the law amending it didn't comply with the Act of Parliament which it was enforced under: it says that the Treasury should also have been consulted in preparing it, but there is no suggestion that it ever did.  The Court also said that even if it was wrong, the amendment simply led to a general rule that interest would still apply, but could be ignored if it was justified. Tweet

attends #feb11global

Yesterday I popped along to Amnesty International's "Middle East and North Africa Global Day of Action" which was held at Trafalgar Square.

It was a protest against the current slaughter of Syrian public by their own government over the past year/in favour of the West's attempts to "control" Syrian oil*, as well as protests against the actions of the Egyptian military ovet the past year since Mubarahk was forced to resign as Egypt's president.

From what I saw there were a few speeches by Egyptian exiles, but unfortunately, other than noisy protests by what appeared to be Syrian exiles, I didn't see much about Syria.  That may be because I had to leave because my toes went numb, in spite of wearing two pairs of socks...

However, I did manage to take a few photos.

Syrian exiles selling stuff with the proceeds going to people who have been made refugees:

... and that's were I bought my new scarf (the design is the pre-Ba'ath regime Syrian flag):

As far as I could tell, these were Syrian exiles chanting anti-Assad slogans.  The ones I managed to speak to were condemning the outside world for effectively washing their hands of the situation, and they particularly loath the Russian and Chinese governments:

Amnesty have their own coverage.

I'm not sure if it did much - hopefully given that there seemed to be a few in different place around the world, it may have some impact upon the Syrian government. However, if you're going to slaughter your own people for speaking out against you, I doubt that the views of people in other countries are of little concern...

* Your view may be dependant upon whether you have been watching with horror at the events - which have escalated since Russia and China vetoed outside action to resolve the situation given the apparent failure of peaceful attempts and sanctions - or assume that there must be an ulterior motive for other countries' condemnation. Tweet

... becomes a food and drinks critic...

I currently live in a north London suburb which is basically houses and little else.  The main benefit of where I currently live is that the shops sell a variety of interesting food and drink from various eastern European countries.

A few weeks ago I bought some Bulgarian cheese French-bread-style crisps, which amongst other languages, had their ingredients in Georgian and Armenian.

I've also noticed that they have booze which you would struggle to find anywhere else, if at all: I've found wine from Cyprus; and lager from the Baltics (Latvia and Lithuania - all hail EU laws on free movement of goods!) and from Ukraine*.

I've also stumbled across some Moldovan red wine, which was very nice - quite sweet, but not so sweet that it was off-putting. I'd recommend it, if you manage to get hold of it.

As a result, I'm on the look-out for other interesting/obscure brands of drinks, mainly so that I get get into it before they get popular... If anyone can recommend any I'd be very grateful.  If not, I'll simply spend time looking through eastern European food and drink shops, picking up stuff at random.

* Well, I think it was from Ukraine; the label was in Cyrillic, but it contained the word "Україна" which is Ukraine as spelt in that alphabet... Tweet

#Syria: a simple question

If you've been following my Twitter feed over the past few days you might have seen that there's a bit of a heated discussion between Justin McKeating, Flying Rodent, Daniel HG, Branes and I over the current situation in Syria.

Since last March thousands of Syrians have been killed by their own government simply for saying "We want you out".

Daniel & I take the view that "enough is enough" - sanctions have clearly failed, as have attempts to resolve the situation  peacefully - and in any event there are certain acts which no government should be allowed to do, i.e. kill vast numbers of its own population.

The others don't.  As far as I can tell - and I'm happy for be corrected - the opposition seems to boil down to "It'll be another Iraq" and/or "It's about control of oil" or we (by which I'm assuming means western countries) lack the "moral authority" due to historical reasons.*

I take the view that something along the lines of Libya, Bosnia, or Kosovo should be done - outside action to stop the slaughter. I accept that there would be causalities, both civilian and military, but consider that is the least worst option in the circumstances.

I'll assume that even the most vehemently opposed to the use of force would accept that there is a limit on the number of deaths after which other countries should get involved in the situation.

So the question is, what is that limit? Is it a certain number or percentage of the population? Is it over a certain time-frame.

UPDATE: On a related note, I find this piece about the reaction of Chinese bloggers interesting, and the cartoon very appropriate.

UPDATE: This piece from Raincoat Optimism from January goes into more detail about the positives and negatives.

* Frankly, I consider Iraq to be a false comparison due to their being significant differences - e.g. it's clearly not an attempt to settle old scores (we have none!)/find any excuse to invade (the situation has been going on for almost a year, without any suggestion that the Syrian government would stop killing people) and it's clear that the people want to get rid of their government - while claims about it simply being about oil are complete load of bollocks - Syria's main export is oil, of which Europe is its biggest consumer.  We had (prior to the sanctions) very easy access to it - in fact they were completely dependant upon our business! If you have easy access to anything - especially when you're the only customer - you don't take out your suppliers. In fact - and unfortunately when it comes to oil - you support them no matter what, like we do with Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.  As for moral authority, while I accept that western government have fucked about in the past, that's not an argument against resolving the situation. Tweet

...helps out the government

You may be aware that the government has a public consultation on reducing "red tape". It seems that anyone can make a suggestion.

Assuming that this is not simply a way to excuse rolling-back employment rights, I've decided to help them out.

In an earlier post, I referred to the World Bank's "Ease of Doing Business Index", which - as the name suggests - lists how easy it is to do business in every country in the world.

Earlier today I saw that they've published their 2012 Index, in which the UK ranks #7 overall.

Therefore, I sent the following submission:

Dear Cabinet Office,

I saw that the World Bank have published their 2012 "Doing Business" rankings.

The UK comes in at #7 overall. In 3 categories we are in the top 25; in 2 more we are in the top 20; while in 3 other areas we score in the top 10.

Frankly, I do not think that it can be seriously argued in any way whatsoever that the country is hampered by regulations.

However, it is noticeable that we seem to be dragged down by the apparent difficulties in "Getting Electricity" for which we rank at #60, and "Registering Property" for which we come in at #68.

If any charges are to be made, I suggest that these should be the first areas to be targeted.

Yours sincerely,

They have an auto-response on their email, so they have definitely received it.

I'll let you know if I hear any more. Tweet

Legal Aid changes are delayed

I've previously mentioned that the government plans to make big changes to legal costs, including how legal aid is dealt with.

While the reforms are still planned to go ahead, they have been put back until 2013 at the earliest. Tweet