Now you've gone and destroyed the bar....

When they told me the bar was dying, I thought they were joking.

Ho ho ho, I thought to myself. That just means that if you become a Barrister these days you won't earn £200,000. Instead you'll have to survive on a mere £120,000 instead. That is what I thought, how wrong could I be? Answer: incredibly wrong.

What got me thinking about this was when I saw a guy driving around, who studied at Oxford before going on to the same law school as me. He had got pupillage in a local set (a highly respected one) and was working in the independent bar. He was still practicing, I knew this because he had the White book on his parcel shelf.

So what was he driving? "A Porsche of course! He's a barrister after all! He went to Oxford, he worked his butt off, he is minted!" You're thinking. But no. Not a Porsche, or an Aston martin. Not even a Mondeo or a BMW 3 series. He was driving a banger, no seriously a real banger. Something that would probably cost between £500 and £1,000. Worse than that, I first noticed his car (when he wasn't even in it) because it was tucked away on a side street with the hazards on.... that is to say, he was dodging having to pay to park.

This is a fully qualified barrister, pretty much the top of his class in everything and after 3 years of working he can't afford to pay for parking in a city centre and this isn't in London, this is in a provincial city. "This is taking the mick" I thought to myself. So I decided to do more investigation.

I started talking to other people who also went to law school with me and started working out what the wages were like. The answer: the bar is dead. Well, ok, not dead, there are still people working as barristers, but basically if the bar was a man, he would be stumbling toward the guillotine wondering why he has not been put out of his misery.

"No, you're wrong, I've read about a barrister who charges £200 per hour!" I hear you say. Well thats nice for them, but who cares, of course newspapers are going to focus on the 30 barristers who earn more than £2,000,000. But lets face it the best of any profession is always going to be paid far more than the rest of them. And if we're going to take the highest salaries of the job why not talk about the board of Barclay's Bank who are paid over £8,000,000? The best footballers are paid £30,000,000 but these are always the freaks, the unusual amounts, that is why they are getting reported, if they were getting a normal wage, it wouldn't be in the news.

It was reported not long ago that a man called Paul Dalton charges £5,000 to wash cars. There are usually cars worth a fortune in themselves and cannot be trusted to some chump with a sponge. Now to look at the top barristers and think that all are well paid is to look at Paul Dalton and think that if you get a bucket and sponge you can have £5,000 in your pocket by lunch.

"Fine, but I still know a Barrister who makes £80-100,000." Really? Do you? I guess that sounds like a lot of money but lets put this in perspective, if you are the manager of a Tesco Extra you get £100,000 p/a and a company car. Now lets compare the lifestyles, if you are the manager of Tesco and you make a mistake the tomatoes have to be thrown away and you have to bring in new ones. If you make a mistake as a barrister then someone may lose 15 years of their life when they shouldn't, a man will never get to see his own children again or a murder will walk the streets once more. I don't know about you, but I know which one I'd rather have on my conscience; rotten tomatoes all the way.

"But £80,000 is still a good salary", well first of all, you don't earn £80,000. You start off earning £10,000-£15,000. That is about the same as what you earn while you're working in a shop full time. There are people who work at factories who earn similar amounts and they don't have to pay chambers fees or pay for the fuel to get to court 50 miles away. Some people in Criminal sets (the worst paying) in London, don't even make a profit for the first few years, that is to say their wage does not even cover the cost of living. Which means only those whose parents are going to sub them for the next 3-5 years can even attempt to work as a Barrister.

Does it even pay later on? As I was investigating I found out about one barrister excited at the prospect that by the time they were 40 they may be making £40,000! Wow, how good would that be? Except if you're any good at what you do you could be making £50,000 working for a company.... and if you're not any good then you really shouldn't be working at the bar.

The fact is the only thing left at the bar is the reputation. The latent respect for a profession once filled with intelligent, wonderful people who could use words in ways so brilliant that they alter the mind of the person to whom they speak: persuasion. This one strand of dignity remains in the bar, it means that when you tell someone you're a barrister you receive instant respect. I dearly hope that this gets destroyed sooner rather than later. Why? You ask. Simple at the moment the best people are drawn to law, and then they leave realising it is an empty shell of what it used to be. Those who remain do so either for the faux status or because they are incompetent and they get a good living for an incompetent person. Either way if this is striped away people will start to realise that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

There does need to be reform in the law. I think, this may already be on its way. I worked for a advocacy company and as a starting wage (because I moved) I was earning a decent wage. This was far more than the £10,000 that one gets for their pupillage year. I was doing the same work, I was getting paid more and I was hired on merit by a firm, not on neoptism by chambers. This it appears is far more sensible.

It could well be that some of the bread and butter of the junior bar, £60 applications for this and that, have now been usurped by advocacy companies and therefore there isn't the critical mass of work to sustain a junior member of the bar like there used to be. If there was much more working going around previously I can imagine a day when a junior used to make a decent wage. But not any more.

The problem is, Chambers have made them almost impossible to defend. Advocacy companies can provide (albeit infrequent) work to those people who are based outside of the cities with chambers. They can also dedicate staff to recruitment and essentially they hold little sway for neopotism.

It appears that the advocacy companies take on more people than they can actually provide with sufficient work. Then those who can last and succeed do and those who don't leave, leaving you with those who have lasted.

This system isn't perfect, it means that many advocates don't have much money. But then, how is that different to the rest of the bar? In fact the only thing that should change is the name. Why is a trained barrister who does a barristers work said to be 'not practicing' just because the got into a firm instead of chambers?

But the benefit of this system is that people are taken on and those who want it badly enough can stay around. It isn't glamourous, it isn't well paid but it is a bit more fair.

So you don't like cuts? Who does?

There seems to be a lot of whinging going on at the moment about cut backs to the governments budget.

Every other day there is a document or statement made by a member of a publicly funded department or organisation that says if they are forced to make cut backs [insert public service] will suffer. It is almost like they are taking it in turns, each week a new department.

Yes, we know that cut backs make services suffer, well, that is when they are in the region of 25%. Frankly small cuts of around 5% should make no difference at all if departments do things efficiently but that is another point. The fact of the matter is however, and listen when I say this, because people don't seem to understand it: WE DON'T HAVE ANY CHOICE. Well technically that is a lie, would could just refuse to cut back and then go bankrupt. But then everyone will lose their job and we will be in anarchy. It won't be a case of "I can't afford a new car" rather "there is not point in having a new car because it will just get petrol bombed in the next set of riots".

Cuts of this magnitude suck, but then the reason why they are having to be made is because we over spent in the first place. No one complained when Labour was piddling away hundreds of millions over the years, while claiming to have abolished boom and bust (a natural and inevitable economic occurrence).

Lets do the figures to show what I mean.

You are Mr UK. You earn £100 per week and it costs £100 per week to run the country properly.

When taking advice from Mr Labour you start spending £120 per week meaning you have to borrow £20. You keep doing this until you have a dept of, say £70.

You still earn only £100 per week and it still costs £100 to run the country properly and yet you now have to find more money to pay off the £70.

You could tax more, but that will just kill more companies who won't be able to afford it. So the only thing you can really do is cut back to spending £90 on the country and use the extra £10 to pay off debt. This means that something essential (like the police) has to be cut back more than it ought to be. It is bad for the country, but it is tough luck, you piddled the money that you borrowed away and now you have to pay it back.

So yes, our public services will be cut back too much, but that is the only remedy, if you don't like it you should have kicked off when the government was spending all the money during the good times... but you didn't.

Strikes on the Tube, how refreshing.

"Everyone, stop using your cars and get on public transport!" The message has been barked by politicians and green campaigners for years. It always has been and always will be, unless someone faces the inconvenient truth, or should I say truths.

Politicians want us all to use public transport despite the fact they all have private cars, if you're a minister yours will be driven by someone else. So why don't they use public transport? Well, simply put, it is not reliable and even if it was it is not safe for people of power and it does not convey power or status.... the exact same reasons why many people can't use it. But we will ignore that for now, that is not my point today.

My point today focuses on the tube strikes. London (and big cities generally) are the only places where public transport works: FACT. I'm not saying that as soon as a bus leaves London for Guildford the engine stops, I mean as soon as that critical mass of people disappears buses become too infrequent, stops too distant and the whole system just ceases to function. It all becomes hugely expensive and hugely time consuming. There just isn't the economy of scale to support public transport in the countryside any further than some small buses to take the old and the young around when they have no deadlines to meet.

But the Tube does work in London, even buses, which I think are pointless, generally, work very well in London. They are excellent. The Tube may be smelly, hot and often crowded, but the fact is that even at busy times one is able to navigate around one of the greatest cities in the world without too much problem and do it a lot quicker than in a car (if you need proof think about that Top Gear episode?).

So what is my complaint? Well lets pretend we live in a world where public transport works everywhere. I know, that takes a lot of imagination but humour me, if you will. All the people who work on that public transport will be members of unions. Unions will inevitably have as their heads self important people with absolutely no concept of commerce but rather the communist ideals that somehow their members are entitled to do their work, and where there is no work they should be paid anyway regardless of the inefficiency that produces. I am convinced that efficiency is the very last thing on the mind of a Union leader. Currently Tube workers are going to go on strike. I don't know what working as a Tube driver is like, I'm told their wage is around £40,000 and they holidays are good to compensate for the shift system but I don't think that is enough to make any real decision about their working lives. What I do know is that their Union is the most militant around and even people from the US brought in to help found that their attitude seemed like they lived in the 1970s.

As a result London's transport network is ceasing to function while they blackmail their employers into capitulating with their demands. Frankly I think this should be banned. The police aren't allowed to strike because it is essential that they work. Likewise the Tube is essential to the running of the London. They shouldn't be able to strike without some form of external acquiescence. I don't know if people are going to be able to get to work while the strike is on, but if they can't that is not the same as BA workers going on strike. There are no other Tube operators and buses won't be able to take up the slack.

....amazingly I still haven't got to my point, how shocking. My point is this, if we all used public transport the Unions would be able to make whatever demands they wanted. Bus drivers would be wearing Armani overalls and being paid more than your local GP. Fine... I exaggerate, but truthfully if everyone used public transport the Unions would be able to make largely whatever demands they wanted. And lets not pretend they wouldn't go against public pressure, everyone knows the British Airways strikes are moronic in a time of recession, but they still happen. Logic does not constrain strikes it seems.

So what should be done? If we can't use public transport because it is ineffective outside of major cities and even if it worked it would be liable to be an easy soft spot for unions, what should we use?

Years ago people used to drive cars. Saloon cars. Cars with 4 doors, 5 seats and a big boot. Today these Saloon cars are even bigger. The BMW 3 series is now bigger than a 5 series used to be years ago, and why? Who knows. 90% of the population these days don't need a car bigger than a 3 series. Everyone has their own car. In years gone by Mum, Dad, brother and sister would all be in the same car. Now Mum and Dad have their own car, the average birthday per woman is only 1.8 and as soon as brother and sister are 17 they get their own car, either a banger or a Ford Ka. So what is the point in having big cars?

Who needs a 5 series? Who needs a 7 series? These cars are obsolete. If you need to show status and wealth then why don't we start producing cars that are small and supremely expensive? Makes gold plated Corsas for all I care.

Private transport is here and here to stay. I wish the government would realise that and get on with it. The sooner they do the sooner we can start pouring money into real solutions to traffic problems like motorcycle lanes or car parking for those with small light cars. The smaller cars get the more confident people will be to get smaller again and this will decrease congestion (see what they have done in Tokyo) and decrease emissions. Who knows eventually we can get rid of those big buses too.

Obama, what were you thinking?

Obama has recently made the 'courageous' decision to support the building of a Mosque near 911 ground zero.

For those of you not familiar with British political sit-com "Yes, Minister" I will clarify that courageous means that the decision will lose votes and/or the next election.

Now, I'm a very pro-freedom kind of guy, so why do I think he made a complete cock up? Well first of all lets be clear, freedom to worship is centrally important to every country. If you can't walk into a church and worship Jesus, then there is something wrong in your country. But I don't believe that people should limit worship in the sense of having an official relgion of the country. Such behaviour usually just attracts the wrong people and as a result the religion often becomes nothing like what it should be, because the adherents are there, not to worship God but because they want to be associated with the states religion.

So if I want to support religious freedom (where it is not damaging a country) why is there a problem with having a mosque near ground zero. Well, for the same reason that I wouldn't want people having a protest against the war at Wootton-bassett (the place where British soldiers who are killed in action are returned to the UK).

If you want to make a point and protest, or if you want to worship that is one thing that is in your choice, however if you want to deliberately offend and annoy people, provoking violence and riots that is something else. The thing is all these things can be done at another time. or another place. Protests against the war would make more sense in London that in Wootton-bassett, a Mosque can be built elsewhere in New York without needing to be near ground zero.

The difficulty with this of course is where does one draw the line. Recently Christians were arrested for giving out Christian literature at an Arab festival. Could they have done that at another time? Of course, but that is not the point, the point is to reach Arab Muslims. What about pro-gay and non-pro gay people protesting at the same time? What about the really strange decisions in the UK where they allow English Defence league (EDL- anti-Islamisiation) and anti-EDL protests to go on in the same city at the same time?

Surely the anti-EDL protest doesn't think that by having a protest themselves at the same time they are going to convince those of the EDL to change their minds? So surely it must be for the purpose of confrontation and altercation?

It is a difficult line to draw in some cases but in this case one thing is clear, Obama has made a very courageous decision.

Environmentalists, how long until they start wearing long flowing white robes?

This one is going to be a proper rant. Something needs to be said, as it is starting to really grind on me whenever this is mentioned. I speak of: environmentalism.

This is a pretty big topic. When I say big, I don't mean large, I mean controversial. One of those topics where if you bring it up at a dinner party someone is going to end up upset, someone will be annoyed, there will be tears and a few people won't talk again. Very much the same as if you talk about politics and/or religion... and there, there, lies the problem.

Why do people care so much about green issues? Is it because the sake of the earth rests on the out come of the conversation? Well no, some of those involved may believe it does but lets face it we don't really know that.

What we know is for the last ten years the earth (overall) has actually got cooler, not warmer. Is this a blip? Well maybe so, but that leads me on to my next point. How long do records of the earths overall temperature go back? 10 years? 20? 30 maybe? Lets call it 50 just to give it a good chance. Right and how long has the weather been changing on this planet? Well if you're a literal-creationist you may say 10,000 years. If you're not then you will say 4.5 Billion years old.

So at best our records cover 0.5% of the whole of history and at worst 50/45 million years my calulator cannot work out what that is but I think it works out as about 0.000001% so one millionth of the earths history. Now tell me what other complicated system you can define patterns in having only that size fraction of the data involved? Answer, none.

I'm not saying there is climate change, I'm not saying there isn't. I'm not saying it is our fault, I'm not saying its not. I'm just saying anyone who thinks they know, is probably guessing or a fraud (in light of further evidence).

So why do people (notably those who believe that it is certain and scientific fact) care so much when there is so little data. Well first of all the government don't help by backing the whole thing to the hilt. Lets remember green issues means green taxes. So climate change is the governments chance to tax everything you need, but unlike with cigarettes and alcohol it won't come back to bite them in the form of a big NHS bill.

But this doesn't explain why people themselves go for this stuff... but I think I have an answer.

Which news papers adore ranting on about green issues more than anyone? Well judging by the big green ENVIRONMENT tab in the Guardian (notably absent from my beloved 'Times') I'd say it is the left wing Guardian. Which, perhaps not coincidently is also the paper that is the most anti-god or at least most leaning to an atheist slant.

This could of course be total co-incidence. No doubt about that, but I don't think it is. If you don't believe in God then you're forced to believe that you're a worthless peon with no relevance or purpose in history and that you are essentially just the result of a giant comic fart. Since we're oddly designed with the desire for purpose this poses a problem for atheists. Accept that you're pointless and that there is little reason for you to get out of bed in the morning or make up some really important reason and then get irritate about it in dinner parties if the subject is brought up. In other words make it a religion. Not one based on love and kindness as such but one based on ritual.

Think about it, it fits so well! You need ritual so sort your plastics from your glass. You need to believe that your doing something important, so believe you're saving the world! Although try not to think about the fact that evolution should have taught you that trying to save other worthless peons is pointless and probably counter productive, since they are you competitors).

So this gives you a reason to get up in the morning, but you still need something else. You need righteousness, something to make you feel good about yourself. Something to make you feel like you can work towards your own righteousness... you need a Toyota Pious... I mean, err... Prius! What an excellent machine! You can pump slightly more carbon into the atmosphere than if you owned a small European diesel, but with the added bonus of feeling like you are good and set apart from the evil non-pious driving masses. Sure your car does the same, if not slightly more damage to the environment, but you are seen to up more upstanding in your own eyes and the eyes of other adherents to your religion.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with recycling and frankly the destruction of the rain forest is just stupidity on so many levels. The fact is we live in this environment and so it is moronic not to take care of it... but really? If you're missing God is your life then it is your call if you want to replace it with a bit faith in climate change, go plant some trees.

Why you should never trust opinion polls

Put simply, why you should never trust polls:

"A survey by Lib Dem Voice finds that 90% of some 347 party members who responded support the decision to enter talks with the Tories"

...

"The first question was asked, however, in a way that meant they could hardly say no: respondents were first asked "Do you support Nick Clegg’s decision that the party with the most seats and most votes has the right to first seek to govern, either alone or with support from other parties?"

then asked: "Given the Conservatives won most votes and most seats, do you support Nick Clegg’s decision to enter into discussions with the Conservative party?""

So, basically, first decide what you want the answer to be, then thing of a question that elicits this answer.

http://timesonline.typepad.com/election10/

Tesco is taking over the world, apparently...

Tesco is building houses now, yes, that is right, they are building thousands of houses in the South East. So soon you will be able to buy a Tesco House on a Tesco Bank Mortgage, kit it out with Tesco Home goods on a Tesco Credit Card. You may be surprised to know, the Tesco bit, I couldn't care less about.

I know the obvious thing is to take shots at how Tesco is taking over the world and how they will have more information on you than the government, etc etc. But frankly it just doesn't bother me at the moment. Tesco doesn't rule to world, it rules the UK. Which frankly is just a slice of the world (even if it is the best slice) the world has many huge retailers and Tesco is just one of them. If it doesn't grow just like the rest of them, it will be taken over by Wall Mart or Macro or something and then everyone in the UK will be out of a job. Not good.

No what I think is idiocy is building houses in the South East... yes, the South East, one of the most densely populated areas of Europe, and they want to put MORE houses in. Presumable they have found a patch of green that still exists.

But this is just the underlying problem. The reason everyone goes to the South East is two fold:

1) all the good jobs are there;

2) because then you can make fun of Northerners.

Usually people go there for one of those two reasons, or a mix of both. And don't get me wrong, we all know bashing Northerners is good fun (in a light hearted manner). You've all heard the jibes... you live in the North if you live anywhere North of Luton and all that.

But mainly people go for the work. All the best jobs go to the South this draws everyone with a brain from the rest of the UK and so as a result everyone in the South can feel like an elite little club and look down on everyone else. But there is a problem, namely this is truely, monumentally idiotic, on a Gordon Brown scale!

The South East has all the good jobs so you HAVE to go there if you want one. This means that the house prices shoot up, because whether you like the place or not you HAVE to live there if you want to earn over £3.50 per annum.

As a result houses all cost £7,000,000 even if it is for a complete dive, it could be a one bedroom flat and it would still cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. This means employers have to pay more and crucially... my main point more of your wage goes on rent/mortgage payments.

So lets look at what would happen if all the jobs were not focused in the SE. Well, your company can afford to pay you ££55,000 per year. They must be able to, because they do. Of this £55, most of it will go on your mortgage, in fact if you had a £600,000 house and you were paying it off over 20 years (interest at 3%) your annual repayments would be £39,931.08. That's right £40,000 of your Great British Pounds just to like in bricks and mortar.

That is £40,000 that you could be spending on real things, but instead you are spending on a roof, that is before you've got to higher council tax, rates, etc.

If however jobs were spread out over the whole country that means there would be less demand for houses and prices would go down. If you buy a house in Wales, the West Country or the North it would cost you a fraction of the price and you would be able to buy somewhere twice as big and twice as nice. More to the point your company is going to be paying you the same amount of money. Lets remember there is no conversion rate for taking your money to Yorkshire, you'll still be on £55,000 per year. The difference is now your house costs £300,000 so your annual mortgage bill is £19,965.48.

So lets sum up, you have the same wage, you have a bigger house, you have more room, your garden is huge, the drive to work involved less congestion (so you have more time) and you now have an extra £20,000 per year to spend on whatever your heart desires! That is a new BMW 3 series every year!

The only people who would lose out are those who have paid off their whole house in the South East already, and lets face it, they are going to be rich enough and probably own a couple of houses in the provinces anyway (which will go up in value) so everyone is a winner.

Finally, I hear you nasally whine "but then I'd have to live in the North". Well even if you do want to assume the North is a dive, filled with the tasteless and the toothless (which I'm not saying it is) as soon as the jobs are moved then the intelligent and the refined will be moving with them... all the fun of the South, but for half the cost. Frankly, I have no idea why someone hasn't done all this before.