The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers

When Jack Cade in Shakespeare’s Henry VI part 2 is offering his credentials as a King  to urge a rebellion against the King the policies Cade offers are very modest. Seven halfpenny loaves of bread will only cost a penny under his regime a three hooped pot (used for measuring how much each drinker should drink out of a common vessel) shall have ten hoops; it will be a felony to drink small beer, money will be abolished (so buying bread for a halfpenny would not be possible) and everyone will dress in one livery. Dick the Butcher one of Cade’s violent henchmen) offers that the first thing to be done is to kill all the lawyers, and Cade responds that he means to do that.

Cade never achieved power and every politician, whether democratically elected or whether a tyrant or autocrat has never killed all the lawyers but used them in exactly the same way that all people use lawyers – to further their own ends be it for good or for bad.

 

Exorcising Lawyers

My computer is making strange noises, so I had better write a short article today, just in case.  I find that a group of “radical activist performance artists have performed what they describe as a exorcism outside the offices of lawyers King & Spalding in order to publicise and complain about its work in Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership litigation. they fear that the “partnership will enable large corporations to prevent governments from pursuing the interests of their citizens where such interests conflict with those of the large corporations. 

The Great and the Good Leaving Stones Unturned

Corruption in the United Kingdom is a subtle process. The great and the good are the recipients of largess in honours, titles and money doled out by governments. It is inevitably a political process in which the great and the good become greater and better but part of this game is that the great and the good of one party are attacked by the great and the good of another party, all in a perfectly civilised way, and as a result our society becomes more unequal as merit is replaced by connection.