No. I won’t be sending you a stupid GDPR email.

No. I won’t be sending you a stupid GDPR email even though you have not heard from me for over a decade and are pretty sure you never bought anything from me in the first place.

No. I won’t be sending you several reminders to check if you’re really sure about the withdrawal of consent I’ve just pointlessly procured from you.

No. I won’t be doing any of that (You’re welcome).

I have (finally) added a damned cookie thing on the blog, but I hope that’s a minor irritation amidst a sea of GDPR lemmingitis. I’m not completely convinced it is really necessary, but hey. Click it and it will go away for ever, I promise.

In fact I’ve been told off this week for NOT sending out my Monday morning emails. So Rebecca, this is your fault.

In other ‘what is the world coming to’ news, HMCTS security continues to delight and entertain us with it’s popular confiscation roulette. Confiscation of ipad stands is last week’s special – this week’s was the confiscation of an advocate’s high heels (and somewhat more unsually a septagenarian’s cake slice). Back in the West Country however, my opponent trotted back from the coffee run in high heels with a massive borrowed metal roasting tin full of half a dozen lattes, unhindered by security staff. Neither the heels, nor the tin were confiscated as potential weapons, and nor was she required to sip or prod the froth on any of those coffees. For lawyers, who value consistency and predictability above much else, this is a cruel and unusual punishment indeed. We wince when our shoes are confiscated. We wince when they are not. These small daily trials of pointless arbitrariness and caprice have us lovers of logic and rules unhelpfully tense and ruffled before we’ve even crossed the threshold. The CEO of HMCTS is still gamely promising ID cards for us.

It doesn’t get any better once you’re in. The MoJ has put together some excellent public information materials for the unsuspecting litigant in person (pics thanks to @itsdavegreen). Of course, when I say excellent I mean utterly daft. And just plain wrong. Who knew that barristers give evidence on behalf of their clients? And who recognises the depiction of a courtroom populated with barristers AND solicitors and entirely devoid of mckenzie friends or litigants in person… Admittedly everyone is slightly green looking, but I don’t think that is meant to be a visual pun…

Other obvious flaws in the poster (apart from the fact it clearly doesn’t describe the shape of many family court hearings where there are more than two parties and a bench) are :

• the fact that anyone is physically in a courtroom at all – wot no video links?
• litigants in person will be unable to identify from the poster which of the lawyers are barefoot
• although the posters probably meant to show equality of arms in action, there is a notable absence of any limbs at all. An armless omission perhaps…
• I’m hoping that the fact there seems to be  single advocate for both parties is not portentous…

I wonder how many green lawyers at how many hearings the money spent on those posters could have paid for?

Anyway, in acknowledgment of the fact that this is a somewhat lacklustre blog post, do feel free to click unsubscribe if on its arrival in your bank holiday inbox you feel the need to cut me out of your life… *sniffs*

And if you have just arrived her under your own steam and think ‘Meh’ – well, you know… Maybe don’t subscribe to my Monday mailshot.

Simples.