Robert Sharp

Barrister

Author: Robert (Page 40 of 327)

All the UK and Ireland Bank Sort Codes

25 November 2017 / / 12 Comments

As well as debating politics, human rights and free speech, this blog is also interested in spreadsheets. Regular readers may recall my triumphant post about UK Postcode Areas, or the deeply honest and uncompromising account of the Excel spreadsheet function VLOOKUP.

As part of my job I’ve recently had cause to look up the bank name and address for a given set of sort codes. To begin with, I simply Googled each sort code and then copied-and-pasted whatever information was revealed.

This is extremely tiresome, so I’ve made myself a spreadsheet. I scraped the web for the information, and have put it in a handy Google Sheets file.

Continue reading

Blogging as a Mode of Thinking

24 November 2017 / / 0 Comments

I’ve updated my WordPress blog software to version 4.9 and in doing so thought I would try their latest default theme. So the website looks a little different but all the content is the same as it was last week.
While doing the update I messed up something with the server permissions and everyone was locked out. This is something of a test post to check we’re back to normal.
Over on another eponymous blog, Austin Kleon writes about his experiment in daily blogging. This observation feels true to me:

I had forgotten how wonderful blogging is as a mode of thinking. Blogging is, for me, more about discovering what I have to say, and tweeting more about having a thought, then saying it the right way.

Indeed. Blogging is iterative writing. Continue reading

The Daily Mail and Stephen Lawrence

9 November 2017 / / 1 Comment

It’s nearly 25 years since the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in Eltham, south London. His death has become a pivotal moment in race relations in the U.K. It has become, in retrospect, the moment when the country woke up to the shoddy justice available to people of colour. It prompted the MacPherson Inquiry which famously branded the Metropolitan Police as ‘institutionally racist’.
In the 25 years since the murder, the Daily Mail has claimed for itself a central role in bringing justice for Stephen Lawrence. Its campaigning is hailed as an example of public interest journalism, and is often cited as a refutation of the charge that the newspaper itself is inherently racist.
In an enlightening paper for Political Quarterly, Professor Brian Cathcart examined every word that the Daily Mail published on the Stephen Lawrence case. He suggests that the newspaper has systematically exaggerated its influence over the case. He’s written OpenDemocracy article summarises the main findings. Continue reading

Crises and Conflicts Reviewed in the BSFA Review

7 November 2017 / / 0 Comments

Heh. I just noticed that Crisis and Conflicts was reviewed in Issue 2 (Winter 2017) edition of the BSFA Review. Stuart Carter channels militant General ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross to summarise the stories.

Captain Robert Sharp’s ‘Round Trip’ slips into the anthology as an examination of crisis, rather than conflict. The theft of a long-range military transport ship from the Moon is no joking matter, and is traditionally a court martial offence. However, the Captain’s account of a bereaved hijacker’s attempting to win back his love may tug at the heart-strings of a few impressionable snowflakes uninterested in the virtues of heroism or patriotism.

Michael Longley on Poetry and Propaganda

6 November 2017 / / 0 Comments

Last month I was honoured to be in the audience as the Northern Irish poet Michael Longley received the 2017 PEN Pinter Prize, and to hear his address, ‘Songs for Dead Children: Poetry in Violent Times.’ The entire event, including Longley’s speech, is available to listen to online.
The speech is a generous and lyrical discussion of how poets and artists can respond, with the appropriate outrage and humanity, to violent acts. Longley makes a eloquent point about the importance of literature to the ideas of free speech and democracy: Continue reading

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