law

Is this the best cease and desist letter ever?

June 22, 2010

Sometimes corporate legal stupidity excels itself. ThinkGeek report – and publish – the cease and desist letter they’ve received from lawyers for the US Pork Board pointing out that they have infringed a trademark with the slogan “the other white meat”. What, you may wonder is “this other white meat” that has so challenged the [...]

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Gay rights, consumer choice and individual conscience: has Liberty lost the plot?

May 15, 2010

The story of the B & B owners who turned a gay couple away doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon. First it popped up in a brief media flurry during the election campaign when the now disappeared Shadow Home Secretary said he thought people who ran B & Bs in their own homes [...]

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Lord Laws, Lord Carey and Ruth Gledhill’s misplaced vowel

April 29, 2010

Update: if the original story has changed by the time you read it, see comment 1 below. It means Ruth has finished the school run! I don’t know whether it’s Ruth Gledhill’s or someone else involved in the transcription process, but I had a wry chuckle at the difference a single vowel can make to [...]

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One law for us, one for you: the Carey-a Sharia revisited

April 15, 2010

A few days ago I commented on the previous Archbishop of Canterbury’s latest attempt to claim public attention. Now his witness statement has made his own words public. Ruth Gledhill (who on this issue at least has fallen out of love with the ex-Archbishop) publishes it on her blog. It is at least as bad [...]

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Carey’s Sharia: how to lose the battle before you start?

April 12, 2010

Oh dear. Last week I was critical of Lord Carey’s defence of Shirley Chaplin. This week, however, the former archbishop has decided that any court which doesn’t rule as he wants must be biased. His quite bizarre answer, however, is not simply to call the court biased (an attitude with an honourable and just occasionally [...]

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Jedi to sue Tesco? Will he use Force?

September 21, 2009

I’ve only just caught up with this bizarre story of the “Jedi” who wants to sue Tesco. Daniel Jones, 23, who created the International Church of Jediism, claims he was “victimised over his beliefs” by staff at the supermarket in Bangor, North Wales. Oh what fools these mortals be. Tesco seems to me to get [...]

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What about Anglicans and the Old Testament?

September 20, 2009

(This post is one of a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles) The seventh article stands within the tradition when it stakes a claim to the Hebrew Bible as Old Testament, and seeks to introduce some basic interpretative principles. These are, however, not without their problems. VII. Of the Old Testament The [...]

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Assisted suicide: blowing raspberries at God?

August 3, 2009

Last week the UK saw the latest in an occasional sequence of euthanasia activists pushing at the boundaries of the law. One Debbie Purdy – suffering from MS – believes that there is a time when she will hold that her life has become intolerable, and wants her husband to be able to help her [...]

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Give the devil the benefit of law

July 6, 2009

Today the Church remembers St Thomas More (to say nothing of St John Fisher, an earlier example of how the Church of England dealt with rebellious and recalcitrant bishops of Rochester!) Yes, I know that Robert Bolt’s play idealises More in ways that fit with contemporary rather than historical sensibilities, but here is a great [...]

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Memo to Establishment: don’t give the BNP what it craves

June 23, 2009

I am slightly puzzled by the complete silence of the UK’s political blogs – at least the main ones I read – about the rumours of a potential prosecution of the BNP. One can only suppose they are still distracted by the in-House navel-gazing of electing a new Speaker. The story can be found, among [...]

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