This is just a short message to let y’all know that I’m off to Gran Canaria for 7 nights on Monday, so I won’t be posting on this blog for a while.
If you’re desperate enough to want a piece of me in the meantime, keep checking this page for any twitter updates in the right column under “Out and about”. Alternatively, check out my twitter page. I’ll update it now and again using my mobile while I’m in Gran Canaria.
It snowed on Sunday night, and we had a thin blanket of snow the following morning. Here’s the proof.
It didn’t last long, alas – it was more or less gone by lunchtime.
Further to my post about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s memoirs, Living History, after receiving Bill Clinton’s autobiography for my 24th birthday back in 2004, I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve finished it at long last!
I have to say that Bill does certainly know how to waffle. However, I appreciated the detail, honesty and frankness of his account. He has certainly had an interesting life. I liked the way he brushed over the Monica Lewinsky issue; he simply said that he’d done something inappropriate that he was incredibly ashamed of.
What I’d like to pick up on is the partisan nature of American politics. On pages 862-863, Bill states:
“When the New Right Republicans had taken power in Congress in 1995, I had blocked their most extreme designs and had made further progress in economic, social, and environmental justice the price of our co-operation. I understood why the people who equated political, economic, and social conservatism with God’s will hated me. I wanted an America of shared benefits, shared responsibilities, and equal participation in a democratic community. The New Right Republicans wanted an America in which wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of the “right” people, who maintained majority support by demonizing a rolling succession of minorities whose demands for inclusion threatened their hold on power. They also hated me because I was so apostate, a white southern Protestant who could appeal to the very people they had always taken for granted.”
That sums it all up really, doesn’t it? While the Democrats are more concerned about improving the lives of the working and middle classes, and asking the upper classes to pay a bit more in taxes, the Republicans want the upper classes to pay less and the lower and middle classes to pay more in taxes. Republicans aren’t interested in human rights and the environment. They weren’t interested in working with Bill; they just wanted to bring him down because he was such a good President.
I realise that I have only read one side of the story; Bill and Hillary’s. So I will see if I can get hold of a book published by a Republican, perhaps Newt Gringrich, and see what I think thereafter.
For now, however, I would say that I’d rather be a Democrat than a Republican. Does that make me a Democrat?
I’ll look into how the UK Conservatives and Labour parties compare with the US Democrats and Republicans in a later post.
This?
Or this?
I’ve been at Hugh James Solicitors for almost three months now, which means that I’m almost two months away from qualifying as a solicitor.
It really struck home recently on how near I am to qualifying, as I received a letter from the Solicitors Regulation Authority at, which is independent of the Law Society, asking me to complete a CRB application form, so that I may be admitted to the roll of solicitors. It has to be completed 6-8 weeks prior to my intended admission date, which will be 28 May 2007.
Getting to this stage has taken me six years, two of those were taken up with hard studies at UWE and Cardiff, and then I became an Advice Worker at RAD, a role that continued until 28 November 2005, which was when I started my secondment/training contract at South West London Law Centres. Strictly speaking, I have two roles at RAD. As well as being a trainee solicitor, I’m also a casework supervisor, supervising the casework of six members of staff, as well as four members of staff at deafPLUS. This basically entails the provision of information about various issues, advising advisers on how to deal with difficult clients or situations, and conducting regular file reviews of cases, to assess whether the advice being provided is comprehensive and of sufficient quality.
However, as I wanted more experience in employment law, I arranged a further secondment to Hugh James Solicitors, in their Employment and HR Services department in Cardiff. I have learnt a lot in the short time I have been there, and with each day, I’m more confident about working in private practice as an Employment Solicitor.
My aim is to secure a job as an Employment Solicitor post May 2007, in a private practice firm in either Cardiff or Bristol. I have been put forward for a number of posts, and I am still waiting to hear whether I will be offered an interview. So watch this space.
All in all, it’s quite an exciting period of my life, in that I don’t know what’s going to happen to me this year. Will I continue working for RAD as a qualified solicitor? Will I be leaving RAD and become fully immersed into the private sector? Where will I be working?