Raising Sand Live 

Tomorrow our homespun music festival “Rock Garden” goes into its 4th year. This time I thought I had got my performing and DJing duties seriously reduced to allow me to enjoy, in particular, the youngsters playing original material. A couple of last minute drop outs (trouble in the oil industry on the Caspian sea etc.), […]

How Spooky 

What, as Harry Hill might say, are the chances of this happening are? Both 2 solicitors on an appeal panel of 3, for a hearing next week, deliberately chosen so that they are “out of area” are JRS clients creating a potential conflict of interest. One afternoon next week available for in-house training then! Otherwise […]

In Overall Command 

I am running the office, probably very ineffectively, by myself this week due to annual leave and Leeds festival induced back problems. Alongside that I have a range of urgent matters to deal with having finalised the course notes for the next shouting tour (the reasons for yesterdays silence). So a contract reconciliation query, a […]

Random Selection 

I discovered the fun of putting my i Pod on “shuffle” during my recent holiday. The result? You become reacquainted with artists you would probably not otherwise seek out or songs which you would not trawl through an album to hear. Today’s song meets both categories, long forgotten artist and a fantastic single which enticed […]

Two thoughts on Shouting* 

I am putting the final touches to my next training course, a national tour with TMT trying to provide a survivors guide to the multiplicity of assessment and audit mechanisms. This and a number of phone queries this week have lead us to the following conclusions. Firstly we always forget that there is a continuing […]

Thought So 

I have to say I was a little cynical about the “amnesty” on UPOA claims achieved in the settlement between TLS and the LSC earlier in the year. This case would seem to reinforce my view. Got an active case to get on with once my next course notes are finalised.

Out of the Mouths of Babes…. 

Yesterday evening Steve’s better half handed the CDS Route Map to their young one, aged 4. “Read this and explain in it to Dad will you?” she asked. “It is full of jokes. WWW dot dummies dot co dot uk” was his response. I know where all future consultation documents are going from now on.

More Migration and Stuff 

The depressing nature of “first week back from holiday syndrome” continues with a failed PR “appeal”. This made worse by a lack of evidence of consideration of some of the arguments put in the response. To a degree no change there then. Of perhaps more import is an update to yesterdays “audit watch”. To follow […]

Interesting 

I always have a quick look at headlines related to costs matters and was therefore attracted to this in the Gazette. Worth a read if your instinct would be, like mine, to terminate your retainer from a cleint who instructs you to pursue a doomed case.

Autumn Looms 

One swallow does not a summer make. The same probably holds for audits – one firm facing a “KPI Audit” in October probably does not indicate the start of a fully blown LSC audit schedule, however that is what one of our clients faces in a couple of months. Quite what data the LSC hold […]