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Silly season vs. credit crunch austerity [2008]

11th July 2008

Maybe it’s a symptom of our global economic unease combined with July’s mercurial weather but journalists this week can’t seem to reach a consensus on whether we’ve entered Silly Season or we’re in the grip of interminable credit crunch/sub-prime austerity.

Counsel for the Silly Season camp cites the following two stories.

The first looks at state legislation allowing the sale of wine-favoured ice cream in New York. A huge export market had until recently been the basis of a local dairy’s production of the boozy dessert, but now the company intends to expand into territories closer to home. And wine not?

The second discusses the discontinuation of an American blog that ranked lawyers according to their attractiveness or, as the site put it, “hotness”. Taken offline earlier this week, HotAttorney.wordpress.com awarded “HotAtty of the Day” to numerous women who had been unaware of the blog until the reporter tracked them down.

However, given that the emphasis of the story is that the blog has been closed, perhaps it supports the second camp, whose counsel leads with news of the increasing trend in online divorces. According to Mark Keenan of UK-based Divorce Online, couples are logging on “rather than heading down the high street to instruct a solicitor because of the credit crunch and the need to save money” – a story doubly depressing because it not only highlights a nationwide tightening of purse strings, it serves to remind us that people so often want to get divorced in the first place. Oh well – or, to paraphrase Dolly Parton, “pure o-h-w-e-double-l for me”.

Other news does nothing to settle the theme, moving as it does from the archetypically esoteric to the oddly perverse yet sensitive with, respectively, Montana wolf-kill legislation and a test case for a paternity rights-seeking sperm donor in Kansas. Brace yourself for the dreadfully suggestive and unimaginative picture in the latter.

For related UK legislation, see Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.

We end, though, with a modicum of apparently good news from Wales, where the Welsh Secretary Paul Murphy yesterday spoke positively on the delivery of the Government of Wales Act 2006. Following three important statutes being given their final approval, Mr Murphy went on to say that it “really is a bumper day for Welsh legislation”.

Following Royal Assent, these Acts will be added to Justis.

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