THERE appears to be one law for the lawyers and one law for the rest.
We take the case of Mr David Martin Scagell, an Ayrshire solicitor
recently found guilty of professional misconduct by the Law Society of
Scotland discipline tribunal. Mr Scagell issued a fee note for #3900
which mislead a bank into releasing funds to his client. He kept a #600
cheque for work done from another client for his own use.
He was found to have ignored letters and telephone calls from clients,
to have been inefficient in administering three wills, and to have
failed to answer investigatory letters from the Law Society.
For these offences, Mr Scagell has suffered the condign punishment of
a #2000 fine and being allowed to carry on working but only under the
supervision of a practitioner approved by the Law Society. This he has
managed to do.
Readers of the People on the Move column in this very paper might feel
that Mr Scagell, this black sheep of the Ayrshire bar, has landed on his
feet. For do we not read a notice saying that ''Jim Gibson, sole partner
of Messrs Gibsons, Solicitors, Troon, is delighted to announce . . .
that he has amalgamated his practice with that of Martin Scagell,
Solicitor, Prestwick, hitherto senior partner of the former firm of . .
.
''The very considerable experience of both partners in family and
business law will enable the new practice to continue the provision of
their full range of legal services.''
In the news
KENNETH Roy recalls in his autobiography that he was once interviewed
as a murder suspect. There was no basis to the suspicions, of course,
but that did not prevent Oor Ken going through a particularly nasty
grilling by an inspector from the London polis who turned up at the BBC
in Glasgow all unexpected. The inspector who called said that a photofit
of the perpetrator had been issued and a member of the public had phoned
in to say it looked very like Kenneth Roy.
We have to say we are not surprised. Mr Roy's wee book (The Closing
Headlines, #11.95) contains a photograph of the author (below) which
looks like any photofit picture you have ever seen in your life of a man
guilty as charged. Fortunately for all of us he has matured into an awfy
handsome cove, a lovely man, and a fine writer.
Putting the boot in
ONE of the greatest newspaper columnists of all time was Myles na
Gopaleen of the Irish Times and one of the treats of his column was the
Catechism of Cliche. John Dougan of Newmains pines for the na Gopaleen
catechetical days and suggests that the great man would have found
fertile territory in the football coverage to be heard on our airwaves.
He has come up with a few examples:
What do we have, and where, when a team pulls back to only 2-1 down
with 15 minutes to play?
A game; on our hands.
When returning to the ground of his former employers, how many does a
player wish to put over on his old mates?
One.
What is concealed in the left boot of certain peculiarly gifted
footballers?
A peg.
We fear there may be more extracts from the football catechism out
there.
A hitch in time
THE normally sensible wee resort of Dunoon is the latest victim of the
plague that is jazz. This weekend the place was overrun with half of
Glasgow as Dunoon held its second jazz festival.
Jazz is all about improvisation, which explains why the festival's
press officer (who doubled as drum removal man) had as his HQ a phone
box on the promenade. Continuing this theme, we had an appearance by
Lech Walesa-lookalike Janusz Carmello described as ''the man who stands
unchallenged as Europe's finest pocket trumpet player''. This does not
mean he plays the trumpet in his pooch but simply that he has only got a
small one. The whole thing was a bit like Twin Peaks meets Tutti Frutti,
especially in the Queen's Hall where the candles were stuck in yule logs
because someone had forgotten to get in bottles.
The jazz festival faced a minor technical hitch on Saturday morning
when the drum removal man was refused entry to the Queen's Hall where he
was supposed to be collecting a set of urgently required drums. The
problem was that a convention of lady quilters were also in town and
didn't want their slide show disrupted. The purchase of several raffle
tickets from the rather irate lady organising the quilting event did the
trick.
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