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A New Job, and (Hopefully) a Return to the Blog

Last month I began a pupillage at Field Court Chambers. It is a civil set with a strong Public Law team, and I am enjoying spending time in the Court of Protection and the Administrative Court. The power of the state over the individual, and the rights that the individual might have against the exercise of state power, was a theme of my undergraduate studies and my career since (at least) 2007. 

So I find myself in a state of eudaimonia (εὐδαιμονία), the good spirit of feeling I am doing exactly what I should doing. I cannot wait to begin taking instructions and building a practice.

My new job has got me thinking about this old blog. My conversion to the law and subsequent legal work in the County Courts and for the Royal Borough of Greenwich has kept me away. 

The activism of writing was entirely in keeping with my work at English PEN. But in recent years, I felt I had to refrain. There were many reasons for this. 

Continue reading “A New Job, and (Hopefully) a Return to the Blog”
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Call to the Bar

Both readers of this blog will have noticed that posting has slowed in recent months. Only three additions in all of 2022! A decade ago I would easily post that many in a week.

The reason for this has been a major distraction: I’ve been studying for a Bar Practice LLM. This year I conceived of myself as living in a movie study montage, with a singular focus on the work required for upcoming seminars. Resisting the urge to distract myself with a 2,000 word blog-rant about free speech or the Bill of Rights (et cetera) has been difficult but necessary. And I haven’t read a novel in months.

But the sacrifice paid off. I was called to the Bar at Middle Temple in July. Here’s the proof:

Of course, the demands on my time have not been alleviated. I’m now doing advocacy work and seeking pupillage, so logging my thoughts on current affairs is still a lower priority, and the paucity of posts will be prolonged.

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Cory Doctorow and the Memex Method

Cory Doctorow, China Mieville and Robert Sharp

Cory Doctorow has been blogging for 20 years. In this marvellous post he reflects on how the process has helped his writing and thinking. A blog can be a commonplace book, an ‘annotated web history,’ nucleation, and a memex or brain-extension.

I’m sixteen years a blogger. Back when I started, meta-blogging (i.e. blogging about blogging) was a big chunk of the discourse, with everyone trying to justify their hobby to themselves, to other bloggers and, perhaps most importantly, to the naysayers who mocked us as freaks in pyjamas bashing away at our keyboards.

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Employment Tribunals: The New Free Speech Front Line

Back in February I wrote a post on the judgment of the Employment Tribunal in Seyi Omooba v Michael Garret Associates Ltd. The main conclusion: Employment Tribunals have become the free speech front line.

Last week I went to look for the post in order to tweet it at Sean Jones QC (see above), only to discover I had never actually published it!

I have now made it live and it appears further down this blog’s timeline. You can read it here.

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Blogging as a Mode of Thinking

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 “Blogging as a Mode of Thinking”