Christmas Crackers

This was sent to me by a troubled Christian who routinely checks his crackers for profanation:
First Man : What do you think Christ would say if he saw the commercial exploitation of the religion that bears his name?
Second Man: Where are my bloody royalties?

Is this what Christmas has come to? Even the crackers play Judas?

Mens Rea

Hi, my name is Jonah and I just got out of jail. The reason I wanted to have my say today was because of something I read in an English paper recently. It was about a man who killed his wife and it’s a bit – just a little bit - like what happened to me.

Here goes: Husband and wife are sleeping in their motor home. They are tormented by a bunch of bad-ass teenagers making a racket outside. Police are nowhere to be seen, surprise surprise. Then the man dreams that the teenagers have broken in to the motor home and he is laying into one of them. But what he’s actually doing is he’s attacking his Missus. He wakes up and finds her dead.

So far, so good. He is arrested, charged and tried. But they let him go because he had a sleep disorder. It means that he kind of loses it, and loses himself in his dreams – not all the time, but some of the time. You see he didn’t mean to kill the Missus, and he couldn’t know that he was killing her either. As far as he was concerned, he was actually killing one of these teenagers. Fortunately he couldn’t be guilty of killing any of the teenagers, because there were no dead teenagers. Got that?

Anyway, I might sound like I’m not taking this totally seriously. But believe you me, I really am. And this is because I too had a little dream a few years ago. This one involved an antelope. Yep, an African antelope. I was roaming this game reserve one moment, and the next moment I was hacking at the thing with a very large machete. And I was slicing and slicing and slicing him until he was just like so many pieces of salami.

So far, so good. But this time, the cop guy turns up and when I told him that I was having a dream about being attacked by an antelope and I was only defending myself, you know what he said? Yes, sir, but how does that explain the fact that last night you slaughtered your neighbour and his entire family and you sliced up their dogs into lots of tiny little pieces? And, you know what? I couldn’t answer that and I had a really bad lawyer and so went to jail.

So my point is this: the law is a bit of a tart really. Doesn’t always do what you expect it to do. And it’s not what you know but who you know that counts. It’s not what happens, but the lawyer you happen to get that’s important - like so much in life. Mind you, life, like the law is full of all sorts of great surprises. My friend Jonno dreamt that he was murdering his wife and when he woke up, he discovered an intruder lying dead in the hall way! And he went to jail.

So I’m not sure which it is better to be nowadays: Good in your head and bad in what you do or bad in your head and good in what you do. I suppose, if I knew that I’d be running the darned country.
Posted by Jonah Wicki, of no fixed employment nor abode

More leaked emails emerge – this time it’s Swine Flu!

It still has not been established whether these emails were leaked by an insider or a computer hacker. Whilst authentication of the items is pending, we clearly have had to change or truncate individual names and cut some references. These and departmental titles will be revealed in subsequent releases when the email source is corroborated.

From: Siegfried P Date: November 5 2009 15.36:12
To: Hamish R Subject: Flu Pandemic
Forecasts were wide of the mark, I’m afraid. Came in significantly lower than expected. And those who did catch it, far less severely than originally thought.

From: Hamish R Date: November 5 2009 16.34:22
To: Siegfried P Subject: Flu Pandemic
The projections were as useful as the ones they knocked out for AIDS, CJD, SARS, Bird Flu etc etc. Ditto credit derivatives, climate change, same old story. Hope this isn’t going be another case of throwing good money after bad. How far did they actually get with the stockpiling malarkey? Picture can’t be that bad, can it?

From: Siegfried P Date: November 5 2009 17.45:23
To: Hamish R Subject: Flu Pandemic
Hard to say. Apparently there's enough for a fair proportion of the population.

From: Hamish R Date: November 6 2009 10.34:23
To: Siegfried P Subject: Flu Pandemic
Siegfried, what proportion exactly? As in the proportion we’re committed to, not what proportion that's arrived?

From: Siegfried P Date: November 6 2009 11.12:34
To: Hamish R Subject: Flu Pandemic
You’ve read the papers? Perhaps 80% of the population. Roughly. Probably.

From: Hamish R Date: November 6 2009 14.45:12
To: Siegfried P Subject: Flu Pandemic
80%? And that is what we actually have now? So, how much will that cost?

From: Siegfried P Date: November 6 2009 15.02:54
To: Hamish R Subject: Flu Pandemic
If only I knew!

From: Hamish R Date: November 6 2009 15.21:45
To: Siegfried P Subject: Flu Pandemic
Dear Siegfried, isn't it your job to know? Anyway, whatever it is, it’s going to be a pretty penny, isn't it? The Minister knows all about this, I assume - the new figures, I mean?

From: Siegfried P Date: November 6 2009 15.28:32
To: Hamish R Subject: Flu Pandemic
Oh, yes. He is definitely in the loop. No hiding it from him. He misses nothing

From: Hamish R Date: November 6 2009 16.21:02
To: Siegfried P Subject: Flu Pandemic
Quite. For the time being, we’ll sit on this. It isn’t going to help anyone that the outbreak is milder than feared. Our role is to make people fear, eh Perkins?
Better delete this entire email thread as well. Don’t want our advance knowledge of the whole screw up to be misinterpreted at some point in the future, do we?

From: Siegfried P Date: November 6 2009 17.12:32
To: Hamish R Subject: Flu Pandemic
No. There will be no smoking guns in this department. And shall I even delete the email that says delete the emails?

From: Hamish R Date: November 6 2009 17.32:41
To: Siegfried P Subject: Flu Pandemic
That’s a daft question Perkins. It’s like a lawyer asking, “Do I go for the injunction or the super injunction? Smarten up!

From: Siegfried P Date: November 6 2009 17.45:11
To: Hamish R Subject: Flu Pandemic
Yes, sir. Of course. Consider it done.

From: Hamish R Date: November 7 2009 17.51:34
To: Siegfried P Subject: Flu Pandemic
One last question: Don’t suppose this flu drug we’ve stockpiled can be used for anything else? You know, as was the case with Viagra? Just so that this whole fiasco won’t have proven a total waste?

From: Siegfried P Date: November 7 2009 17.57:03
To: Hamish R Subject: Flu Pandemic
Don’t quite know sir. Quite possibly. Not sure whether it would be exactly like it was with Viagra. But, will look into it.

Super ego, super ID, super injunction.

The internet is fast becoming a world of avatars, 'sock-puppets' and fakes. The material world has mutated into an electronic one over recent decades. And as a result, our day to day grasp of reality is now predicated upon our faith in the intangible electron. How can we really know that anyone is who they say they are nowadays?

Hi, I began on that rather dour note with my tongue placed firmly in my cheek! As you might know, the 'glamour model' who did yesterday's piece poked fun at boring old lawyers. And here I am, a boring old lawyer, offering you my take on the internet. (And I don't mean take in a pecuniary sense!) But the point is, I'm not actually so boring when you think about what I have to say.

And what I have to say is this: internet identity fraud is becoming a big, big issue. It has quite literally become an issue for this website, although because of a super-injunction issued last night, I cannot refer specifically to why that is. But believe me, it is.

Now, whilst I must remain silent in that respect, I can however consider a contingent issue that is not - to the best of my knowledge - the subject of any injunctions. This is the use of fake IDs and web names in the ‘comments’ sections of this and other blog sites.

It all seems like a lot of fun at the time, doesn't it readers? Popping up on different websites, posting comments under pseudonyms? You know the sort of thing: "Comment by David Cam-moron... Climate change deniers are no better than the Catholic church that crucified Galileo..." or "Comment by Maggot Thatcher... NuLiebour will never ever be trusted again and will be booted into the gutter in 2010..." We don't even need to give silly fake names, if we don't want to. I, for example, could pretend to be plain 'Gordon Brown' as I log on to Tractor Drivers Monthly, and make comments like, "Nothing gives me more pleasure than driving my tractor stark bollock naked over the hills and valleys of Buckinghamshire."

You see, the internet is fast turning into a new Wild West where anything goes. I, you or anyone else can go onto the BBC, Sky or Guardian websites and sign in as whoever we want to be (assuming someone has not taken the names we wish to assign ourselves). And it might seem very amusing at the outset, but it can cause a lot of upset, a lot of anguish and pain to the parties involved. In fact only yesterday there was a case where a number of prominent 'Daily Mail' journalists were supposedly posting foul mouthed claptrap under their 'real names' on numerous blogsites. One of them admitted getting turned on by stained underwear and another claimed regularly to enjoy shoving small, furry rodents into a place where the sun don't shine! Now that can't be right, can it readers?

Do we want a world where we no longer trust anything anyone writes? Where people, pretending to be someone or something that they're not, make allegations that they know won't generally be traced back to them? It might seem funny now readers. But one day when someone is attacking you or something that you believe in, and when your name, or that of someone you admire, is taken in vain, then you might not be laughing anymore. Oh no! You won't find it funny when someone pretending to be you says they enjoy the aroma of their partner's poo, or that they like to masterbate whilst watching old repeats of Frasier or The Vicar of Dibley!

So here is what I think people like me will be able to bring to the table in the future. We all know what copyright law and patent law are. Why not work at developing identity law that can grapple with the integrity of internet IDs? No more silly names, no more silly allegations. Because even you, you sock puppet, even you, you fake George Osborne, you fake Polly Toynbee, you fake Andrew Neil with all your 'weird little hobbies', if you carry on using those names and you are not those people that you say you are, then you will find that the only thing stuffed where the sun don't shine is the legal documentation that I serve on you, matey boy!

Anyway, these are my ruminations on where I think the internet and internet law might be heading. I really think that these changes are going to be needed. All that we lawyers now need to do is consolidate the technical expertise. And finally, I hope that this wasn't as boring as our 'glamour model' Kayla suggested it would be. Who knows, even she might find something of interest in my brief, painless, and, simply written, discourse on internet fakery!
This post was brought to you by Ferdie Doberman, Litigation Partner.

Glamour model Kayla's 'secret operation'

That Mister Ludd is not a terribly gracious man. He told me that I cannot do another post after this one because everyone has to take it in turns. This means that tomorrow it will probably be some government official or lawyer boring us all to death with his latest assessment of the MPs expenses row. That is hardly going to ‘pull in the punters’, is it?

I hope that there is no ulterior motive, however, such as Mister Ludd getting jumpy about the things I covered (or uncovered) yesterday. Maybe Mister Ludd feels threatened by the very lawyers that he is happy to feature on this website from time to time. But who knows? Maybe when he reads my post today, he will relent, however and realize that, irregardless of lawyers, I am the kind of personality that he should welcome with open arms.

Anyhow, I did not manage to tell ‘family man’ about ‘the operation’ that I mentioned in yesterday’s post. There were some photographers hanging around the Ivy last night as we approached. I can’t really believe that they were waiting for us; my vague references yesterday can’t have filtered out that quickly.

But ‘family man’ wasn’t taking any chances. He decided its better that he’s not seen with me in public. Oh, I know that his company might be purchasing the rights to my memoirs, but how often can he get away with that as an excuse? We ended up going for a discrete and relaxed Chinese. He delighted the waiter by buying the most expensive champagne on the menu. And after a few glasses of bubbly, I’d forgotten what I was going to say. Whoops!

It sometimes makes me laugh that he hasn’t found out for himself after the number of times we’ve slept together. Because, you know what he says to me? He says, “I can spot a fake from a mile off!” Of course, he says this usually when we are having intricate and meaningful conversations about celebrities. He tells me that, contrary to what some say, not all celebrities are shallow fakes. There are the fakes and the non fakes. He says that his skill in life is being able to tell the difference.

I have not yet dared to ask him how silicon should be viewed in this great celebrity charade. Does silicon make you fake? Or do people nowadays just see it as an accessory – you know, like a beautiful Fendi bag, or a pair of Jimmy Choos? Let’s hope the latter, as I have a lot of those kinds of accessories!

Hey, just a thought, darlings: If it’s possible for celebrities to reclassify the extensive repair work they've had as 'accessories', then maybe I could simply reclassify my ‘operation’ as an accessory - a bit of nip and tuck! I am sure that ‘family man’ would almost certainly expect a sixties starlet like Kayla to have had a bit of work done from time to time!

Anyway, just to let you know, a friend is coming round this afternoon to help me write my memoirs. Apparently, people call her a ‘ghost writer’, on account of the fact that she remains anonymous. When I told my theatre friend David, he roared evocatively, “Enter Ghost!” Although I do hope that my 'ghost writer' friend won’t have the kind of influence on my memoirs that the ghost did on Hamlet!

Anyway, I’ll let you know how I get on (if boring old Mister Ludd ever lets me.) Let’s hope that next time you hear from me – whenever that is – I will have some more news on the ‘family man’ as well.

Love to you all, darlings X

Exclusive: Sixties glamour model Kayla Cayne - Sex, drugs, and R&R in UK 2009

I am currently sleeping with someone who is very, very well known. The tabloid press does not have a whiff of this. His wife, his family know absolutely nothing. No one in the media empire that my ‘family man’ owns and operates - people who would truly sell their own grandmothers to get hold of a story like this - has even the faintest idea.

It is delicious for someone like me, who has had many run-ins with journalists and paparazzi over the years, to keep a lid on a secret like this. Of course, some people would think it more delicious, and more profitable, if I did a ‘kiss and tell’. Another expose, another fortune perhaps? Well, as far as I am concerned, at this very moment in time I need neither the money nor the tabloid grief. So secret is how my affair is going to remain, darlings.

Furthermore, I think that secrets should only ever be revealed in a discrete fashion. I think secrets should be a game played by ‘consenting adults’ No, I am not trying to sound clever by writing that. What I mean is that you should never reveal secrets – not to the press, not to the world - unless all parties affected by those secrets have given their consent. Surely it is only fair?

And whilst we are on the subject of secrets, there is another one that I have to own up to. I have to tell my very, very important lover (V.V.I.L.) something about myself. My lovely ‘family man’ is totally in the dark about the ‘other me’. He is clueless. I’ve been meaning to tell him right from the first time we met (at Ascot, no less). But every time I thought about it, we were getting on so well and I was worried about ruining things.

But the prospect of writing this column made me think: now is the time to make a clean breast of things. Clean breast? That is almost funny. There is so much silicone inside me that I wouldn’t know how to make a ‘clean breast’. But yes, now is the time to tell him that back in the sixties, in the heady days before I became famous, I had a little operation. Well it was really quite a big operation - at the time. But right now it seems like nothing. I’ve been every bit ‘the woman’ for the past forty years!

So I am telling him this secret today. He will know as soon as you do, dear readers – but only if he cares about me enough to read my new scandal column! Otherwise, I will tell him this evening when we dine at the Ivy – if by then it hasn’t ultimately filtered out by some other route.

Now, going forward… In my future columns, I will be telling you a bit about what a glamour model like Kayla does after the wrinkles start to show. You know, after we retiring models have wrapped our weary bodies back up again, there is still quite a life ahead, I can tell you. Look at the enormously talented Abi Titmuss – who I understand is to play Lady Mac at Lowestoft's world famous Seagull Theatre. Poor dear Abi, she hasn’t yet worked out that real actors always call it ‘The Scottish Play’. And what about that intellectual giant, Jordan, with her valiant attempts to be a woman of (big) letters? I suppose that there’s a bit of George Eliot in all of us, eh, girls?

Anyway that is what the future holds after the photographers have switched off their flash guns and gone to find the next hottest thing on two legs. Oh yes, Kayla has been doing a lot more than simply dabbling with Very Important Persons (VIPs) – or should I say Very Important Media Persons (VIMPs). She has been quite a media mover and shaker herself. Kayla is no slouch. I will reveal all - I hope starting tomorrow. And this time I will not spare anyone’s blushes, I promise!

It never rains but it warms

This week there was another serious outbreak of global warming. We know that it has happened many, many times this year; it has happened in the past; and it will sadly happen again next year and the year after. Ah! I hear you ask. How do we know that what occurred over the past few days (the storms, I mean) was really an outbreak of global warming and not just a case of torrential rain? Good question! Well, you only had to turn on your television last night to see the reports on the news channels that heavy flooding was connected to global warming. This was unequivocally supported by a massive array of graphs, charts and widespread numbers to prove it. Even the BBC’s flagship news programme, Newsnight, took this line. So it is definitely true.

Hi there, my name is Sven Johnnson. My good friend Didier de Clerck put me in touch with the very decent owner of this website, a Mr. Ned Ludd and suggested that Mr Ludd might be open to a contribution from one of Europe’s leading climate change specialists – that’s me, folks. I rang Mr Ludd and he generously responded with the words, “Not another one.” And after a deep breath, he continued, “Fuckit” – which I gather is British for the affirmative! So here we are. I am today’s guest blogger!

Now, I, Sven Johnnson, am the man who lives for numbers. I live, breath, eat, sleep and most important of all, dream numbers. When I was younger my fellow students used to think that I was really mental about numbers. They’d say, “Sven – he’s the guy who goes around thinking that he hears strange numbers in his head.” And how strange is that, folks? But you know what? They were right.

Now, this post is just an introduction to Sven Johnnson. But let me tell you what you can expect from my blog in the coming weeks, months and years (let’s hope it will be years, eh, guys?!) I will be showing to all of you how numbers shaped my life. And when I say numbers, it’s not just numbers. It is graphs and charts and computer models. I will also be showing you how those numbers (and graphs, charts and computer models) have shaped your lives and will increasingly shape your lives as we go forward.

This is a great moment in history for you readers to be following my blog. This is because we are starting to see the emergence of people like me getting more and more involved in government studies, news production and major, major research projects. This, I can tell you guys, is going to be the era when numbers not only changed all of our lives, but changed the world we live in, that changed the way we think. Oh, and finally, that changed all our futures, yours and mine!

So, I will tell you this now: You will obey those numbers. That is an order!! (Only joking! It is what we in the European Commission call a Euro-Joke!!)

Posted by EU Climate Change Advisor – Sven Johnnson.

An EU Policy Advisor writes

I have been following this website with its guest bloggers for some time now. Some of the posts can be quite clever. Occasionally they are poignant. From time to time, I even detect a note of humour. What is clear though is a consistent bias in the posts and that bias is anti-establishment in tone. I have sent countless emails to Mr Ludd pointing this out and have asked on many, many occasions if I might offer the opposing view. To date his responses have been really quite unhelpful. In instances they have included the ill-considered use of words that some would deem offensive. However, after the recent arrest of two of his ‘bloggers’, Mr Ludd is in a spot of bother.

I sent him another email yesterday, when I read of that arrest and I asked him what he intended to do. Would it be conceivable, I asked, that I could offer my opinion on current affairs? This time he has responded in the affirmative, and with the following encouraging words, “If it will stop you bugging me, you tit.” And so it is that I will take today’s slot and offer you a few words of wisdom. I am glad that Mr Ludd has at last demonstrated that he is eminently willing to publish the other side of the argument.

Now there are some of you, possibly many, many of you who think that I am British. Very entertaining! But sorry, nothing could be further from the truth. I might have a grasp of English that is as firm as, and in many instances, firmer than that of British people. But it might surprise you to discover that I am in fact Belgian. Like our Prime Minister, and now President of Europe, Mr. Rompuy, I speak all the languages of the EU. And like Mr Rompuy, it is through the use of these languages that I hope to spread harmony, understanding and, most important of all, unity.

Now, you might have enjoyed the anti-establishment posts on this website. You might have felt some sympathy for the Lord and Lady who ‘innocently’ supplied drugs to elderly people. But can I say that you are terribly mistaken if that is indeed your viewpoint? For how indeed do you intend to achieve unity in this little country of yours, if you can criticize the drug taking habits of some in your community whilst ignoring those of others? The law must be rigorously applied across all communities if it is to work and to work efficiently. The law is not something that you can pick up at the time of your choosing and reject like some cheap and dirty wench when you no longer have need of her (which incidentally I have never done, however dirty she was at the time.) Just because Lord and Lady Trencherman are of noble provenance it does not mean that they are above the law.

And in no less a degree is this the truth for the European Union that it is currently my honour to serve. Now that we have our new President, Mr. Van Rompuy we finally have the opportunity to spread unity across the member states and to ensure that this unity is rigorously enforced by the application of the law.

It is truly a great day for democracy. It is truly a great day for all the nations of Europe and for all the people of all of those nations. For whilst Mr Van Rompuy was elected by a few grand men and women, he – and those men and women – will work tirelessly for the many. And I can delight you now with the news that it will be good people like myself who will spread the word – or rather the words - of the EU. It will be people like me with my twenty six languages, who will tirelessly teach the skeptics and the cynics amongst you of the great benefits of this community. It will be people like me who will show you how to reject the eccentric behaviour of your Lords and Ladys who pursue simply their own ends. And finally it will be fellows like me who will teach you how to act within the law and for the good of all people – even those people who are not clever enough to recognize that good!
Thank you.
By guest blogger Didier de Clerck, EU Policy Advisor

BUSTED

I have been asked at short notice to stand in for my brother Reggie. Last night he and dear Ivana received a visit from the local constabulary. A number of men, some in uniform, some in jeans or tracksuits, turned up on their doorstep and questioned them about certain crops that they believed were being grown on their land. Lady Ivana, I am told, was willing to divulge the whereabouts of these crops and led the men to a greenhouse full of healthy, flourishing bushes. She and Reggie were duly arrested and are right now being questioned about their involvement in a major drugs growing operation.

I feel that their treatment has been unfair, unwarranted. Somebody availed themselves of information posted by Ivana on this very website and decided to 'look into it'. A contemptible little 'investigator' broke into their greenhouse under the cover of darkness and subsequently confirmed to his superiors that this was a major cannabis operation. Because of the quantity of the drugs involved, Reggie and Ivana are now viewed as the Mr. and Mrs. Big of a major narcotics empire.

The truth is that my brother and sister-in-law have been supplying a growing number of old people with treatments for conditions that haven't responded to prescription drugs - MS, Sciatica, Migraine, chronic back pain to name but a few. The ‘supply chain’ has been manned by men and women of perfectly decent standing whose purpose has not been to exacerbate broken Britain but rather to assist people who find genuine relief through using these drugs.

It is characteristic of this country’s current administration that having done so much through its own socio-economic policies to foster broken Britain, it still feels that it has to penalize those who only wish to make the lives of others more bearable. Publicity conscious politicians, preferring to pander to the ill-informed views of middle England, are concerned not that justice is actually done, but rather that it is seen to be done.

These are the folk currently running this country of ours and writing its laws. They are sacking their own experts and making up policy on the hoof. If harmless eccentrics like Reggie and Ivana continue to get banged up whilst politicians mercilessly champion the ‘court of public opinion’ but subsequently take up well paid jobs with major pharmaceutical companies, then we might as well give up right now and spend our lives smoking crack and shooting up heroin and burning effigies - whenever it so pleases us - of the very politicians that we are meant to respect but never will.
(Hope this was not too much of a rant Ned, regards Algie.)
By guest blogger Algernon Trencherman

An apology

I see that my lawyer Mr. Doberman used yesterday’s post primarily to blow his own trumpet and showcase some of the cunning new legal tools that he is developing at Scheister’s. I had thought that he was supposed to be discussing Lady Ivana’s new blog and the legal ramifications of talking openly about ‘film people’. In fact I was rather perplexed that his only real point on the subject was that I appeared to be ‘in the dark’. Well, I will readily admit that the kind of fellows that populate Burbank and Beverly Hills are indeed a mystery to me as indeed are Lady Ivana’s past relations with them. So quite why he mentioned this, I am not sure.

I suppose that I really should not complain about Ferdinand’s contribution, though. As long as her Ladyship doesn’t come out with any howlers in her forthcoming literary undertakings, then he will indeed have helped me out and quite possibly earned his case of Mouton. Not sure whether it will be the 1989 though.

On another matter altogether, I feel that it is incumbent upon me to make an apology. There has been a lot in the news lately about the investment bank on whose board I sat for twenty years. It transpires that the founders of the bank ran a lucrative business funding eighteenth century slave traders. It therefore appears that the noble institution was founded upon the suffering of others.

Now whilst I have never engaged in the slave trade personally, it appears to be all the rage nowadays to apologise for acts in which one has played absolutely no part. Yes, I did indeed earn a living from the descendents of slave traders, but I never actually perpetuated the ghastly trade myself – unless one considers the long hours some of our dealing room staff have worked over the years.

But I rather like this idea of making an apology that is in no way heartfelt, meaningful or genuine. It is very fitting for a senior investment banker. And it allows me to overlook some of the hideous things that the bank really has done, such as, heavy speculation in food commodities markets that brought higher prices and greater hardship to the developing world… In addition, the massive bailouts that the taxpayer had to fund when the bank’s ventures into the mortgage backed securities market went spectacularly wrong. Much easier to apologise about something that doesn’t eat you all up inside, eh?

Good, well now that I have got that off my chest, I can inform you that her Ladyship’s ‘Burbank’ blog will still be only one of many appearing on this site in the future. The owners of this site would like it to maintain its ‘bio-diversity’ and continue the guest blogging concept. There will be regular contributions from politicians, bankers, lawyers, and presumably even strumpets.

I cannot yet tell you who will be guesting tomorrow. But I am sure that whoever it is, it will be informative and quite possibly contain an element of shock. If not, it’ll probably just be the usual rant that one is used to seeing elsewhere in the blogosphere. Good luck. Or maybe hard luck.
Toodle pip, as Ferdie says.
By guest blogger Lord Trencherman of Furmity

Super-Duper Injunction – A lawyer writes

My friend Lord Trencherman has asked a favour of me. He tells me that his charming wife, Ivana has taken to blogging and has told him that she wants to take the genre (for want of a better word) to places that this publicity-hungry strumpet, ‘Belle de Jour’ couldn’t begin to imagine. Apparently Lady Ivana spent a number of years hanging out in Burbank, California, before she met his Lordship and has some rather interesting stories to tell.

He has asked me to check on some of the legal ramifications of describing persons living or dead whom her Ladyship encountered over the years. He says that he cannot fathom why this is really necessary, as he assumes her revelations will be good natured and congenial. But apparently she is really quite insistent. I suspect that he is somewhat in the dark as to the true nature of her Ladyship’s relations and sadly has not twigged why this “Belle de Jour” has fired her up in the first place. But then Reggie always was charmingly naïve about these things.

As an old mate of Reggie’s, I have of course said that I am happy to oblige. Although I did point out to him that I normally ‘act for the other side’. My firm is one of those that has pioneered the use of the ‘super-injunction’ recently and I have to say that in general the application of this exciting new legal tool has been really rather encouraging to date.

Oh, I know that there was a spot of bother recently when one of our competitors tried to muzzle some turbulent parliamentarians. But I say that any fool know; the only way to get members of either Lords or Commons to do your bidding is to wave handfuls of cash under their porcine little snouts. We all know that piggies far prefer carrots to sticks. So yours truly will not be thrusting super-injunctions in the direction of the Mother of all Parliaments any time soon.

One more thing that I will add, before I scarper off to do my home work for dear old Reggie, is that my firm is working on an even more exciting legal tool as I write. This, we are (provisionally at least) giving the ‘working title’ of the Super-Duper Injunction. I know this sounds frivolous, but who knows, for that very reason it perhaps also sounds reassuringly unthreatening.

What we hope to do is go one stage further than the super-injunction. You see, one of the problems in the case of the Guardian super-injunction was the role that the internet played. The law firm that attempted to muzzle the press kicked up a storm in trying to do so. Or to put it another way: The shit hit the Twitter. The news of the injunction and the case that they were trying to suppress spread like wildfire over the World Wide Web, undoing all the good work that the super-injunction had initially done.

So what we are hoping to do now is find a way to shut down entire networks of communication next time we find ourselves in this kind of situation. We would hope to be able to go direct to the operators of, say, Twitter and ensure that any particular strands or threads that violated the terms of the super-injunction would be blocked. Obviously we are hoping to glean some useful information from our friends in the People’s Republic of China and one or two of the Islamic nations, as they already have form in this area. But it would all be rather jolly if we could ensure – through the rule of British law - that certain words or conversation threads were entirely blocked from the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and some of the other squalid little social networking sites.

Anyway, I hope to be able to let you how we are getting on with the technical aspects of this exciting new development in the near future. In the meantime, it is back to investigating and steering Lady Ivana’s lurid excursions into the world of the blogosphere. Let’s hope that I get a case of Reggie’s Mouton 89 for my efforts!
Toodle pip!
The guest blogger today is a partner at the law firm Sheister Ganif and Sheister.

Job vacancy No.197: Religious Leader – Men Only

All of a sudden my wife considers herself to be a seasoned blogger. I gather that her post on Saturday achieved double my average 'hit rate'. As a result she has now concluded that she might have found her new ‘calling’.

I cannot begin to describe the fuss she made on Saturday morning when I begged her to stand in for me. I was a little indisposed after a reunion dinner at my old Cambridge College. And I genuinely thought it might entertain Lady Ivana to do something other than tend her flowers for once. She grudgingly accepted and rattled off an article that in no way adequately addressed the concerns that I’d hoped to raise about ‘broken Britain’. She practically exonerated the wretched Messrs. Cowell and Hirst for their degenerate output and fell back on that old chestnut of ‘human nature’.

Anyway, I thought that this was the end of it. But no, come this morning, she wanted to do another post. I probed her sudden enthusiasm for blogging, and she told me that it was to do with the revelation in the Sunday newspapers of the identity of some strumpet who goes by the name of ‘Belle du Jour’. Lady Trencherman has decided that this might be a good time to start blogging about her own past, and she would like to focus primarily on the years that she spent in Hollywood, California. She thinks that she might capitalize on this Belle girl’s publicity and use the blog to depict some of the matinee idols and film producers with whom she became intimate during her years there. Quite what this has got to do with anything at all in the world of blogging, I am really rather uncertain. It is all terribly, terribly perplexing as I had no idea whatsoever that she’d hung out with ‘film people’, or that she had anything remotely interesting to reveal about her past.

Anyway, in the end I put my foot down and told her that I had plans of my own today. Her revelations would have to wait. I had far weightier issues to consider.

You see, there is a question that I have wanted to pose for quite some time - and one that few people appear terribly bothered about right now. That is: Why is it that religious organizations – be they Catholic, CofE, Jewish or Muslim - in this egalitarian nation of ours are exempt from the 1975 sex discrimination act? Why, after all these years, after all the debates about sexual discrimination over the past decades, are they still allowed to bar women from becoming religious leaders: priests, pastors, ministers, rabbis… or God forbid, Bishops?

I will not dwell on this point for too long as I am told by the people who run this website that nothing is more likely to turn readers off than a post on religion and religious practice. But I will ask this: Why is it, when the Church of England has voluntarily walked away from this exemption is it deemed appropriate for other religious groups to carry on this discrimination?

And equally important, given that we have a Labour government that includes supposed egalitarian firebrands such as the delightful and fragrant Harriet Harperson, why are not more women MPs up in arms, literally shouting from the rooftops of Westminster about this last bastion of discriminatory practices? Why isn’t this great, progressive Labour party of ours currently considering legislation to ensure that everyone, man and woman, has access to every available job in any given organization, commercial, public sector, charity or faith orientated?

My wife, Lady Ivana, who claims to be the grand-daughter of a suffragette no less, may wish to carry on about her baffling experiences in LA-LA land or whatever it is she calls it. But I feel that it is incumbent upon me to consider the questions that are of real import to women here and anywhere else where hypocrisy and humbug do prevail. I hope that this will spark some debate. And if the owners of this blog site truly find that their ‘site stats’ have gone down as a result of my very brief and not irrelevant question, then I do indeed apologize. Maybe they can then ask Lady Ivana to return to the helm in order to get ‘em up again. (The site stats, that is.)
By guest blogger Lord Trencherman of Furmity