Tag Archive for 'whatever'

Just passing

By NL on 08/07/2008. 6 Comments

I have been and remain extremely busy, but thankfully there has been nothing of significance to post about. I’m toying with a summary of the fascinating and now very, very lengthy comment thread on the Malcolm post, but that too will have to wait.

While I am here, may I just say that probably the last place I anticipated jaw-dropping procedural topsy-turvydom in a hearing was the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal. A long story that I can’t actually tell here, but damn, that was like Alice in tribunal-land. Or I am being naive?… Read the full post

Posted in Leasehold and shared ownership and Various (non-housing). Tags: , , .

Falling property and other news

By NL on 20/04/2008. 0 Comments

Labyrinth and MinotaurThis week’s award for literalism goes to William Lyttle. Mr Lyttle, apparently not realising that ‘fall’ and ‘collapse’ are usually metaphors when applied to property, spent 40 years excavating a labyrinth of tunnels under his Hackney property. Mr Lyttle, the Daedalus of east London, was this week ordered to pay Hackney Council £300,000 for the cost of making the property safe, after they evicted him in 2006. Mr Lyttle’s excavations had previously caused a 15 foot abyss to appear in the pavement outside the house. Mr Lyttle remains subject to an injunction to keep him from his subterranean labours.

The Shelter strike is back on, sadly. Shelter staff … Read the full post

Posted in Various (non-housing). Tags: , , , , .

How not to pick a fight

By NL on 19/04/2008. 0 Comments

Let us say you were a large US company, looking to throw around your intellectual property muscle for a quick buck by putting a licensing squeeze on small companies. If so, it is probably best not to pick on a small tech company headed by an ex-litigator [link is lengthy but funny].… Read the full post

Posted in Various (non-housing). Tags: .

Libel, fraud and child trafficking

By NL on 14/04/2008. 0 Comments

Or ‘On the Naughty Step…’

Thanks to Mark P for the idea, I bring you news of scandal and criminality from the world of housing, albeit with only the most tangential relationship to housing law.

Gentoo, a Sunderland based RSL and its CEO, Peter Walls, won a £100,000 libel judgment against a website called Dads Place and specifically John Finn, the owner of rival housing firm Pallion and a former local council candidate. The anonymous website had been posting “seriously defamatory allegations ranging from corruption to nepotism and the promotion of female employees in return for sexual favours” said Gentoo’s Counsel. Pallion owned numerous properties in areas earmarked for demolition … Read the full post

Posted in Various (non-housing). Tags: .

Butterfingers

By NL on 08/04/2008. 0 Comments

In what must be probably the worst experience a paralegal could ever have, Penny Wadsworth has inadvertently caused the collapse of a 5 defendant, £100,000 drugs trial [Read the full post

Posted in Various (non-housing). Tags: , .

No more than expected

By NL on 17/03/2008. 0 Comments

LSC introduces new IT system to file matter start funding claims. System promptly doesn’t work. Three months later, system still doesn’t work. Any idea when it will work? Errrr no. So we send in Excel forms instead.

LSC says “It’s not working as well as it could but it’s not meltdown or anything. We are now in the process of a recovery strategy”.

My giggles are not enough to stop me being pedantic. Can one actually be ‘in the process of a strategy’? Does this mean ‘in the process of coming up with a strategy’? Or  ‘in the process of implementing a strategy’? Or, more likely both at once, … Read the full post

Posted in Various (non-housing). Tags: , , , .

The hopeful LiP

By NL on 29/02/2008. 0 Comments

Although the energy to do proper case comments has deserted me until tomorrow, I couldn’t resist this exchange, which is just about all that is reported of Bedi, R (on the application of) v London Borough of Hounslow [2007] EWHC 3311 (Admin)

  1. MR JUSTICE COLLINS: Now, Mr Bedi, as we have discussed, and for the reasons I have indicated, I am afraid I am going to have to refuse permission. As I say, you at least have the advantage that it has not cost you anything, at least not cost you anything so far as court fees and other side’s fees are concerned, and leave it to you to decide

    2. … Read the full post

Posted in Various (non-housing). Tags: , , .
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