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These are the bright guys, recall?

The ruling class?

Barrister misses rape hearing after travelling 150 miles to wrong Newport
London-based Brad Lawlor travelled over the Severn Bridge to Welsh Newport instead of crossing on the ferry to the Isle of Wight

28 thoughts on “These are the bright guys, recall?”

  1. They tell themselves that.

    Some of the stupidest people that I’ve met have been lawyers and doctors. Unfortunately coppers top the list.

  2. Years ago, a round of It’s a Knock Out was held in Arundel. The local authority and hence, local team name, was Arun. A surprising number of continentals travelled to (and I hope enjoyed their stay in) Arran.

  3. Brad Lawlor, who attended Oxford University and achieved a first class degree
    Submitted without comment.

  4. My father-in-law volunteers on the Watercress Line steam preservation railway. One end links with the main network at the market town of Alton in Hampshire. One day a bloke turned up with his wife and three excited children in tow, having got off the service from London.

    “Good morning!” he said. “Are the Towers within walking distance, or do we need a taxi?”

  5. “Brad Lawlor, who attended Oxford University and achieved a first class degree
    Submitted without comment.”

    Another IYI, Intellectual Yet Idiot. We are ruled by such people.

    I think its instructive that Churchill could both write books, paint paintings and build walls. OK, maybe the books were largely done to raise money, and the paintings hardly Turners, and the walls he built may or may not still be standing, but having done all those activities to a reasonable standard proves that he covered all the bases of a rounded intelligence. And thus proved to be a great leader.

  6. There’s a story from many years ago (before satnav) of a foreign driver coming to a village just south of Burnley instead of a massive city on the south coast. Somehow he had managed to find Southampton in Lancashire (which is more a hamlet than a village) rather than Southampton on the coast.

    I can understand someone searching for Newport and clicking the first find and accepting it because lots of people know that Wales is where it is. And that they don’t think that the Isle of Wight can have towns, so it can’t be that one. But mixing up a tiny hamlet in the middle of nowhere with a major city……

  7. Let’s hope when WW III kicks off that the US missile targeting grunts do not mistake the hamlet of Moscow in East Ayrshire (pop c 120) with the slightly bigger Moscow.

  8. “Blame the satnav mate…”

    I thought that inputting a post code was the usual way of telling it where you want to go?

  9. The Legal Aid people are probably sighing with relief they weren’t billed for a return business class ticket to Boston*, Mass.

    *Closest international airport to Newport, RI.

    Hang on. What am I saying? An Oxford educated barrister? It would have been JFK, a hotel & day in NY for the shopping & a domestic into RI. One thing they do teach at OU is how to maximise expenses claims. Probably there’s a degree course in it.

  10. His CV includes the fact that he is a member of the “Young Fraud Lawyers Association”.

    There are at least two ways of looking at that.

  11. There was a story a few years ago about a couple who booked a flight to Sydney Oz and endedup in Sydney Nova Scotia.

    Marconi’s shed is there and Louisbourg is not far, so there is stuff to see. But the town itself is a right dump.

  12. “…can’t find his own arse with two hands and a map” is a fairly good description of most of the ruling class.
    I blame the barristers’ clerk for not fitting him with a tracking device.

  13. My favourite is Cambridge, Gloucestershire. Not to be confused with either that town in East Anglia owned by the upstart university, or the town over the river from “Boston” full of yank universities.

  14. “There was a story a few years ago about a couple who booked a flight to Sydney Oz and endedup in Sydney Nova Scotia.”

    The writer/actress/comedienne Sara Pascoe appeared on the panel show ‘Would I lie to you’ where her truth/lie statement was that she booked a holiday to Costa Rica thinking it was in Spain, and only realised her error when she was sat on the plane and the TV screen in front of her was showing the projected flight route and duration. She then declared the statement was true. One assumes it is based in some sort of truth, if somewhat doctored for light entertainment purposes.

  15. When people hereabouts confess to being from Croydon they always hurry to say “Not the London one.”

    Why might that be?

  16. Dennis, Gold Medalist In Unnecessary Snark

    Let’s hope when WW III kicks off that the US missile targeting grunts do not mistake the hamlet of Moscow in East Ayrshire (pop c 120) with the slightly bigger Moscow.

    Don’t worry. Given the present state of the US military, they’ll target Moscow, Ohio (pop c 185).

  17. I know someone who booked a holiday in Lanzarote but booked the flight to Alicante…

    I find it amazing that so many people are clueless about geography, even of their own country. It’s more or less excusable not to know where Boise, Idaho, or Geelong, Victoria are but you would think that even a focussed prat like a barrister, who probably travels widely in England & Wales, would have a nodding acquaintance with cities & towns here and roughly where they are in relation to each other.

  18. Armadale is a town in West Lothian, in Scotland’s erstwhile mining and industrial Central Belt. An apocryphal tale tells of a large truck transporting a delivery of heavy mining equipment some 300 miles north of there, to the 2 – 3 ? house hamlet of Armadale in Sutherland, which is at the end of a single track road (off the single track main road), and asking where he should unload his cargo. Having turned my car round at the end of that road . . .

  19. Dennis, As Snuggly As An Agitated Eel

    Some of the stupidest people that I’ve met have been lawyers and doctors.

    That would be my experience as well… Both on a personal level and a professional level.

    When I’m representing a client in a dispute (for some odd reason I’m considered combative as well as results oriented… go figure), I pray the opposing party is represented by a lawyer. 99 times out of 100 they’re over-confident, under-prepared and taken completely by surprise when a non-lawyer tells them they’re not a big fucking deal to their face.

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