I am actually not a great podcast listener, because I don’t drive to work. I would have to do some cleaning or cooking, or maybe even listen when I go for a walk (at the risk of missing my photographs of nuthatches, kingfishers and so on). And when I get the RSS feed of a site like Lifehacker (I must stop getting it, the advice is getting more and more ridiculous) and I find it’s being explained in a podcast or video, I click on.

However, even I have encountered some podcasts, and I must say I find the Without Prejudice podcasts set up by Charon QC (Mike Semple-Pigott, who used to run an online law school) absolutely fantastic. From 1982 on, I taught British background studies at a relatively basic level for many years, and tested students together with colleagues who knew about U.S. and German background studies, and of course also taught English law to translators, but I was poorly off for materials. I started off getting books and real newspapers to show all the UK election results, and later the internet became very useful. But this podcast enables me to listen to lawyers who are not totally one-sided and don’t necessarily agree with what the government is doing, or with each other, having an intelligent discussion about current law, and I find that remarkable.

The best episodes are with Carl Gardner, formerly a government lawyer and therefore with plenty of specialist background knowledge, and David Allen Green, among other things the solicitor for the defendant in the Twitter joke trial, both of whom have blogs (Head of Legal and Jack of Kent respectively). Charon QC does a very smooth job of playing the stooge and introducing the whole podcast. He has other podcasts called Lawcast, but I am not sure how to subscribe to them for the iPod (I’m a bit confused about what happens when I download podcasts in any case). The speakers don’t agree with each other about everything, but they enjoy disputing and do it in a civilized way. You’d have to be in a law firm or barristers’ chambers or law department to hear anything like this conversation.

I’ve also been listening to Joshua Rozenberg’s Law in Action BBC radio series. Joshua Rozenberg, best known as a legal journalist, wrote a book about the current state of the English legal system which was fantastic for teaching purposes at the time it was published. It was called The Search for Justice, but would be too out of date now, so less interesting. Anyway, I heard what must have been his programme on The Quality of Advocacy. These are good programmes, but it reminded me of how much better Without Prejudice is. The subject here was judges criticizing solicitors for poor advocacy. There was one solicitor defending his profession – perhaps not strongly enough – Sundeep Bhatia, and also Baroness Deech, who I hadn’t heard of – there were other speakers but not all in the studio together. When I heard her carefully commenting on the problems while indicating between the lines that advocates must be barristers, I thought she was a barrister rather than an academic, but perhaps she’s both. She is the chairman of the Bar Standards Board, at all events. It’s a while since I listened to this podcast, but I have a vague memory of feeling there was some animosity there which couldn’t be closely investigated. Still, good podcasts (of course there is now a break till the autumn, but some are still online), podcasts with a good lawyer-journalist in charge – but BBC podcasts.

If you’re learning legal English and want to listen to some, the English for Law blog regularly suggests links.

There must be other good law podcasts out there – I would be grateful for suggestions.

My other favourite podcast has nothing to do with law, but I’ve been revising my Chinese again after 35 years’ abstinence and one of the Chinese learning sites, Popup Chinese, hast not only language lessons in podcast form, but also a weekly free Chinese political/cultural podcast called Sinica. It has in common with Without Prejudice that it is extremely well introduced. Its CharonQC equivalent is Kaiser Kuo – his real name apparently (Guo in pinyin) – a Chinese American who has lived in China for many years, originally with a rock band and extensively in internet matters. His equally informed sidekick is Jeremy Goldkorn of the Danwei website. Jeremy is South African but he sounds more British than the British. They talk to a number of China experts and China watchers and every episode concludes with recommendations, not only of books, by the panel (recommendations can be found online after the podcast). Among recent podcasts, the one on Manchu matters is not typical, because a large part of it was more of a monologue, presumably because the talker knew more about the subject than anyone else, so only listen to that if you want to hear about Manchu history. And The All Sinica Federation of Women was good but not with the usual participants.

Sinica has recently been introduced on a US radio show, This American Life, in an episode on Americans in China, which has good information about the history of the podcast.

Without Prejudice and Sinica are both the same kind of podcast, experts having a civilized and informative discussion.

In London they have Boris bikes:

and in Nuremberg they have NorisBikes:

No, not me – I’m not a match for Constance Shacklock, at least not in voice. But it seems that the Pocket Opera Company is putting on the masque about King Alfred by Thomas Arne in which Rule, Britannia! was first heard at Schloss Burgfarrnbach. Apparently it was first performed at the country home of the then Prince of Wales, who then died before his father and never became king (goodness, let’s not conjure anything up).

Frederick, a German prince who had grown up in Hanover, arrived in Britain as an adult and was on very bad terms with his father. He made considerable efforts to ingratiate himself and build a following among his subjects-to-be (although he never ultimately reigned, as he died before his father in 1751 and never became king). A masque linking the prince with both the ancient hero-king Alfred the Great’s victories over the Vikings, together with the contemporary issue of building British sea-power, went well with his political plans and aspirations.

Superficially this sounds like fun. I did enjoy the Pocket Opera Company’s baroque opera night in 2005 (earlier entry).

Here’s the blurb: German English. This begins to be worrying: the title has become ‘The Mystery of the Monastery’ and we learn that many British people still revere Alfred and regard him as their patron saint. Those are the millions I have yet to meet.

The Pocket Opera Company launches, with a new adaptation and British humour, this exciting overlooked Opera, that not only has rediscovered the incredible music of this British composer but also awakens the cloudy world of Britain. An opera about the mystery and enigma of Britain, about drinks that disturb the senses, that flow into the olfactory perceptions of the protagonists.

A positive review in the local press is also a worrying sign:

Heinrich VIII. ist dabei, leider hat er den Henker im Schlepptau, was nicht allen seinen Ehefrauen bekommt. Endlos-Queen Victoria tritt auf und natürlich die unermüdliche Elizabeth unserer Tage. Und, nein, wir müssen nicht auf lovely Diana und sweet Kate verzichten, denen eigentlich nur ein hinreißend kauziger Prinz Philip den Rang ablaufen kann.

Regisseur Tilman Hecker hat dafür ein wunderbar schlichtes und klug reduziertes Konzept entwickelt. Jeder Schritt scheint durchdacht und öffnet den Blick auf ein Heer von Anspielungen.

Elsewhere (Cool Britannia!) you can see a photo of the castle at night and read (in German) about all the special British foods that will be available before the performance. There is also reference to a murder in the drawing room, Paddington Bear, British TV series and big bands, and an exhibition showing many surprising connections between Great Britain and Fürth. All this is in the honour of the coming London Olympics.

Mit britischem Humor entführen wir Sie in unserer Opernproduktion in die Geheimnisse und nebulösen Rätsel Britanniens, lösen einen kniffligen Mordfall im Salon, begleiten Paddington Bär zu seinem ersten Konzert, hören die Musik britischer Kultserien und knüpfen an die große Tradition britischer Big Bands, Blechbläser und A-Capella-Popgruppen an. Unsere Ausstellung „British Connection“ zeigt vielfältige und überraschende Verbindungen zwischen Fürth und Großbritannien.

Under Gastronomie:

Das Team von ROSEGARDENS zeigt, was alles aus Rosen gezaubert werden kann: Rosenblüten-Secco, Rosenmarmeladen, Rosensalate, Rosen-Mascarpone-Quark, Lachshäppchen mit Senfrosen u.s.w. Leckere Cookies & Pies und original englische Booja Booja Eiscreme kitzeln den Gaumen.

Düfte und Körperpflegeprodukte altenglischer Königshauslieferanten, ausgefallene Accessoires und ein Bobby-Deckenverleih für kalte Sommerabende runden das Sortiment ab.

PERMANENT SCOTTISH PROMOTION und die Schottland-Expertin EVI STENZ werden Sie mit „Warmups“ wie Roastbeef, Guiness Gulasch, Cockey Leakey Soup, Scotch Eggs, Wildpastete, Scottish Trifle, Scones & Clotted Cream u.s.w. verwöhnen. Dazu serviert sie schottische Malt Whiskies und ihren lizensierten Whiskypunsch und Cocktailmix aus der „Edition Lord Calvert“.

Someone should tell them the difference between leeky and leaky. Booja Booja ice cream is apparently organic, but Google says its website may download malicious software.

I can see what is going on here. The music may be good, but it will be a nugget enclosed in a very large rock. No wonder it lasts four hours. It’s not clear how an Agatha-Christie-style murder mystery could fit into Arne’s masque. There’s some director in Nuremberg who mucks up operettas like this. I think I’ll have to leave this enjoyment to the locals.

As has been widely reported in Germany and abroad, in May Cologne Regional Court (Landgericht – a court sitting with one professional judge and two lay judges) decided that circumcising a child unable to give consent, for religious reasons, with no medical indication, constitutes bodily harm and is therefore a criminal offence.

In the case in question, a doctor had been prosecuted because it appeared he had caused unnecessary bleeding, but his medical skilled was found to be perfectly OK. The court, on appeal, held that he would have committed bodily harm but he was unable to know that what he was doing was unlawful – he was subject to a mistake as to the law (Verbotsirrtum). But of course doctors can’t claim not to know the law in future after the publicity this case has had.

On weighing the interests of the parents in the religious upbringing of their child against the child’s interest in physical integrity, the court found that the circumcision was unconstitutional.

There have been a number of objections to the decision, not just by Jews and Muslims, but also by German lawyers. For instance, the court rejected the argument that the parents could justify the act (German criminal defences are divided into grounds of excuse and grounds of justification).

This decision doesn’t bind German courts, but it may be followed.

At the UK Human Rights Blog, Adam Wagner (German court rules child’s religious circumcision can be a criminal offence) actually got the court to send him the original judgments (I noticed that at least one German law blog linked to this British site for the text). He also translated it through Google Translate (alas, that version is not up there, but it could be reconstructed), and on the basis of this he got the full gist of the judgment, as far as I could see. However, I decided to translate the judgment myself and see if I could improve on Google, and my relatively quick and dirty translation can be found through a link on the UK Human Rights Blog article. I omitted all the literature references (I suppose these came from the judge rather than the two post office employees who were the lay judges!).

From an Austrian judgment: Es war wie im Spruch zu entscheiden. My translation: The case was decided as in the operative part of this judgment.

Judgments are divided into named sections, for instance in Germany Tenor means the operative part – Spruch is the Austrian equivalent. These words are printed in the judgment, but they are used in referring to it, and Austrian judgments happen to use it in this way.

This standard wording has been discussed by translators on the internet too. Literally, it means It was necessary to decide (es war … zu entscheiden), not It was decided. Personally, I don’t think that adds any shade of meaning to the more usual English It was decided.

Repetitorium Hofmann, a cramming institute, has a very nice PDF file for trainee lawyers on the structure and wording of judgments. Probably worth saving to disc – link may not work for ever.

There’s apparently a similar expression, Es war spruchgemäß zu entscheiden. A LEO discussion has a comment containing this:

“Es war daher spruchgemäß zu entscheiden” bedeutet sinngemäß: Es war daher so zu entscheiden, wie es das Gericht getan hat. Oder: Die Entscheidung war so zu treffen, wie sie im Urteilsspruch niedergelegt ist.Die Formulierung wird üblicherweise am Ende der Urteilsgründe verwendet, um zur Abrundung noch einmal auf den Tenor (also den Kern der gerichtlichen Entscheidung, der ganz oben über der Begründung steht) Bezug zu nehmen. Der Satz besagt im Grunde genommen gar nichts und ist vollkommen überflüssig.

From a recent visit to London – this was outside Bromley-by-Bow tube station at the beginning of a walk near the Olympic Park:

Here’s some more text from London. Herman ze German is at 19 Villiers Street:

And finally, a cautiously worded notice prohibiting busking on the building site at Tottenham Court Road tube station: