Legalblog

The 13th Act

I was very pleased the other day to see that the Construction Contracts Act 34 of 2013 has now been passed into law in Ireland.  The legislation was brought in by Senator Feargal Quinn as a private member’s Bill, and it is apparently somewhat rare for private members’ measures to pass their way through the legislative process in Ireland.  By my reckoning, this brings to fifteen the number of jurisdictions around the world which have now adopted a legislative scheme for the adjudication of construction disputes.  But it is the thirteenth Act, because the UK legislation covers three jurisdictions (England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland).  I was involved in the process of advancing the cause via the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 in the United Kingdom, and whilst the quality of the legislation has varied considerably from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, it is good to see that the undoubted benefits of adjudication are spreading around the world.

There are two particular reasons why I am especially pleased in this case.  The first is that Senator Quinn took the trouble…

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Flannelblog

I wondered why this blog got more hits than usual this morning; it is because James Delingpole posted this overnight:

As you’ll see at this website, one of the few things that Flannery is indisputably brilliant at is making idiotic statements and alarmist, pseudo-scientific predictions which seem to bear no relationship whatsoever to observed reality

A Universal Speculation

When Jane Austen wrote, in the opening words of Pride and Prejudice about universal truth (“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”) she almost certainly assumed that there was only one universe.  As did I, as a schoolboy, when I wrote my address as

34 Beaufort Road

Ealing

London

England

United Kingdom

Europe

The World

The Solar System

The Universe.

I might of course have identified our galaxy after the solar system bit if I had known that there are in fact a couple of hundred billion other galaxies.

LinkedIn, LinkedOut

Some time or the other, I suppose, I must have signed up to LinkedIn, since I get many notifications from people asked to be linked to me. Some of these people I know, and some I don’t.

Having recently got a bunch of requests from people I do not know, I clicked the button that gets to add people. Lots of them popped up on screen.  I added some people who I know and like, just for balance really.  After a few minutes, I realised that it keeps on and on suggesting names, with surprising insight into the extent of my acquaintance. If I had nothing better to do, I could have kept going for hours. But I really have no idea what useful purpose the whole thing serves,

Louise Woodhouse Flowers opens on-line shop

Poppies

Louise has today opened her shop, not on the local high street, but on-line.

It is all beautiful, I reckon. But for those who really love flowers generally, and Louise Woodhouse Flowers in particular, the Flower Addict is pretty good stuff: someone (who could be you if you live in South Australia) gets fresh flowers delivered every month for a year.