September 2008

Global financial crisis: the legislative responses

September 30, 2008

It’s becoming clearer every day that what we’re living through is the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s: Alistair Darling was right in his Isle of Lewis interview with the Guardian a month ago. Of course everyone’s looking to Washington right now, wondering whether Congress will be able to agree a rescue plan. I thought [...]

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Le salaud lumineux

September 25, 2008

David Pannick’s Times column today is about the most famous French advocate of the age, Jacques Vergès, a repellent yet compelling figure whose political extremism and cynicism make radical British lawyers look like naive lackeys of the establishment. He first came to my attention when I was living in France in the mid-eighties and he [...]

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Legislating to abolish child poverty

September 24, 2008

In his speech at the Labour conference yesterday, Gordon Brown proposed new legislation to enshrine his government’s commitment to abolish child poverty by 2020 (or as the article puts it, he vowed to bring in ground-breaking legislation). Mm. Don’t get me wrong: I strongly support his political commitment to achieving this – and just wish [...]

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Head of Legal "wrong" shock

September 23, 2008

I know it’s scarcely credible, but I was wrong in my guess that the government would legislate to avoid competition procedures entirely in the LLoyds TSB-HBOS merger: an anonymous commenter here, and Angelo Basu at ConservativeHome’s CentreRight blog, were right in thinking the government intends to extend the public interest grounds on which ministers can [...]

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Short selling now market abuse

September 19, 2008

Last night it was reported that the FSA would act to clamp down on “short selling“; the objective obviously being to deter speculative attacks on banks such as those on HBOS that went on for some time before the merger announcement with Lloyds TSB. Sure enough, well before markets opened this morning, the FSA had [...]

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The Lloyds TSB HBOS merger

September 18, 2008

I’ve been wondering how, legally, the government will exempt the Lloyds TSB-HBOS merger from competition law; some of the reports about this are understandably fairly vague. So long as both Lloyds TSB and HBOS receive over two thirds of their EU turnover within the UK – turnover in North America and Asia doesn’t count, note [...]

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Electing Labour’s leadership: some thoughts

September 16, 2008

The National Executive Committee has decided not to issue nomination form for the leadership of the Labour Party: the BBC has the story, and Guido Fawkes gives us the text of the press release. And very interesting it is, if you have a lawyer’s mind. The key bit is: A Leadership election when in Government [...]

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Pakistan: some judges reinstated

September 8, 2008

It seems that they’re inching in Islamabad towards restoration of the judges deposed by General Musharraf, and to the constitutional position before the emergency he declared as a means of hanging on to power. The Guardian says three supreme court judges have been reinstated; although Dawn’s more detailed report says they’re in fact judges of [...]

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Meme-tagged!

September 4, 2008

I mostly avoid responding to memes (boring of me, I know) but this one’s quite interesting, and it is still spiritually if not literally August, so I’m going to rise to the challenge of citing five non-law blogs I like. Mind you, I have trouble with numbers so you’ll get a couple more. To start [...]

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The "Kingsnorth Six" Trial

September 3, 2008

Six people are on trial at the moment at Maidstone Crown Court for criminal damage, having painted slogans on Kingsnorth power station last year in protest against climate change, and will be defending themselves on the basis of “lawful excuse”, criminal damage only being an offence if done without lawful excuse, the law allowing for [...]

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