Like everybody else I’m relieved that the UK government has been able to get the coking coal it needs to keep the Scunthorpe blast furnaces working. But what a disgrace that we had to rely on other countries halfway around the world to get that coking coal, when it’s already buried beneath our feet. What would have happened if the US and Australia had said ‘No’? Talk about shooting ourselves in the foot. Stupid!
My heart always sinks when I see news footage of hobby eco-protesters standing outside a court building, waving placards, and celebrating the stalling of yet another commercial project. This time It was the Rosebank oil exploration project, off Shetland, in which Shell had invested £800 million and involved one of the largest undeveloped oil and gas fields in the UK continental shelf, containing an estimated 300 million barrels. And why do our most senior judiciary seem to think it is their mission to wave their green credentials to tease out the tiniest administrative flaw in the regulatory approval process, to send everything back to the drawing board? Who appoints these people? It follows hot on the heels of another court judgment crushing implementation of proposals to open Britain’s first new coal mine at Whitehaven, for more than 30 years. In each case, the judicial mantra was the same. “That the proposals failed to adequately assess the greenhouse gas emissions tied to burning fossil fuels.” And we know that with a government energy minister so opposed to fossil fuel extraction, that none of these projects are ever likely to happen. But haven’t these eminent legal brains slightly missed the point?
Yes – we know that burning fossil fuels causes climate change. Which is why we need to put in place viable alternatives .But neither the Rosebank nor the Whitehaven projects were about burning fossil fuels. They were about extracting fossil fuels so that we don’t have to import them from abroad. Either way. fossil fuels will still be burnt, because at the moment we have nothing else. And of course those projects would have also created thousands of well-paid jobs. So what is the point they are making? And it is entirely appropriate for me to refer to these eco-protesters as hobbyists, as none of them would have suffered direct personal detriment as a result of either of these projects. It is all about the big abstract ‘we’. And what message does it send to the outside world? A Britain which is so up itself that it is prepared to cut off its nose to spite its commercial face. Who would want to invest in us? The next big battle is going to be about the proposed third runway at Heathrow Airport. Even if it goes ahead, I’m not sure that I will still be around when it is completed. But that’s no reason not to support it.
I really blame the last conservative government for this farce. They had 14 years to drive these projects through. But instead they preferred to spend their time posturing about Brexit and their precious Rwanda scheme, as everything else around them fell apart. And they were a government which was in hock to the NIMBY lobby, which is why the cost of HS2 ballooned almost to the point of cancellation.
When it comes to the third Heathrow runway, I’m with Rachel Reeves. I know she’s had a bad press, but I’m convinced that she’s trying to do her best to grow the British economy. Again, so different from the last lot, the ‘party of business’. But even now, opposition to the third runway is cranking into gear, not least from London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has promised court proceedings to try to stall the project.
Spending my money to fight a court case against his own parliamentary party? What is that all about? And he hasn’t even consulted me. A case of public money fighting public money. How wasteful. But that is Britain today.
It seems strange that in today’s corporate world, the only people to have full secretarial support are those who are least likely to need it. They are the captains of industry who spend most of their time in meetings instead of sitting in front of a screen pushing out documentation in volume. For the rest of us, it’s about making the best of what limited support is available to us. One of the positives coming out of the covid lockdowns was a permanent change in working habits, which means that we can do more of our work from the back bedroom instead of traipsing through the morning and evening rush hours. Who would want to go back to that? It was also fortuitous that this change in working habits coincided with technical developments which enable us to meet on teams at the moment’s notice instead of taking an afternoon out of the office to meet face to face. So what has all this got to do with New Year’s resolutions? Just this! In conveyancing, time is money. A delayed completion often means a delayed rental stream or a delayed capital receipt. And everyone loses.
If progress on a transaction stalls completely, other things will supervene and it will begin to unravel. One of the issues I have with traditional time recording is that it rewards inefficiency, with the slowest most inexperienced fee earner charging out the most time for a transaction. When it should be all about unit-cost, meaning that the faster you are able to work without compromising on quality or accuracy, the better value you are providing to your corporate client. In this post, I provide suggestions for ten New Year work-resolutions which can help you become one of the most efficient conveyancers in your team, simply by making the best use of the resources which are available to you . Here they are:
Tuesday December 24th. 1 hour to midnight. Thought I would have a glass of Sherry to celebrate Christmas. Nothing in the house. Hmm! Oh well! Glass of Ribena instead.
Christmas Day. Everything closed. Had some guests for lunch. Ordered a takeaway from the local karahi. After some rummaging, I found a tiny bottle of wine tucked away at the back of the dresser. It was a Marks and Spencer St Michael’s own label. Don’t know how old it is. But wine keeps, doesn’t it? Every year divers dredge up ancient bottles of wine from a sunken shipwreck. Then somebody drinks it. But nobody wanted to drink this. So it’s gone back in the cupboard for next year.
Is it me, or is Christmas- New Year break getting longer? Closing everything down for a week now seems par for the course. When I started work many years ago, we actually worked New Year’s Day. Wasn’t an issue. Then somebody decided to make it a bank holiday. And until a couple of years ago, there was also a few days between Boxing Day and New Year when you could catch up with stuff. Never understood why there are no trains or buses on Christmas Day but you can still catch a plane to New York.
Have you seen the faces of the 50 guilty men? Nor have I. I’m talking about the men convicted of raping an unconscious woman. I was expecting to see their faces splashed over the front pages of this morning’s tabloids. Instead, another picture of the brave Gisele.
So I don’t understand why those guilty men have been permitted to hide their modesty. Why has no-one ripped the masks from their faces?
As an armchair criminologist, I want to know the motive behind these crimes. Was it the impotent rage of a cuckolded husband smoldering behind a smiling facade until it erupted like Mount Etna? A man who hated his wife but would rather savour his revenge instead of simply divorcing and moving on with his life? But that doesn’t explain why he upskirted other women. Maybe he just hated women.
And what does a sentence of 20 years imprisonment really mean under French law? Is he going to have to serve every day of that 20 years? Or is it like Britain, where 20 years imprisonment means 10 years. Because that’s when you get automatic release. Let’s hope not. Otherwise, it barely amounts to a month’s imprisonment for each rape. Hardly justice.
BRUCE AND HOLLY 