Two letters in the Irish Times can speak for themselves.




This is the first:

Sir, – I read that Trinity College Dublin plans to pilot a radical new approach where student interviews, personal statements and teacher references are used for college entry to law, starting in 2014, (Home News, August 21st).

While Trinity College has always enjoyed imitating the Oxbridge universities, this development should concern all citizens who value equality and indeed equality of access.

Whatever one may say about the CAO system, it is not open to the type of manipulation that I am certain will happen once the ridiculous “personal statement, teacher references, etc” are included in the entry selection process.

Clearly the thin end of the wedge, this development should be seen in the context of the introduction of the HPat exam, namely another attempt by the professional classes to reduce competition for college places for their privately schooled sons and daughters.

As Winston Churchill might have said, the CAO points systems is the worst system for college entrance, except for all the other entry systems that have been tried from time to time. Shameful. – Yours, etc,

CATHAL O’SULLIVAN,

Leinster Road, West,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.

This is the second:

Sir, – Further to Cathal O’Sullivan’s recent letter (August 24th), I would like to reassure your readers that my colleagues and I at Trinity Law School are acutely aware of the challenges involved in attempting to formulate an alternative university entry system to the existing CAO route.

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Image: In a classroom full of pupils and their lawyers, one child responds to his teacher:

Caption: Miss Finch, my attorney has advised me that I’m not obligated to address the question of what I did on my summer vacation. Nonetheless, I would like to respond.…

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This post is just a quick note to congratulate Jack Beatson (pictured left) on his elevation to the Court of Appeal in London. Before he became a judge, Jack was Rouse Ball Professor of English Law at Cambridge and a Fellow of St John’s College, and in that capacity he supervised my PhD thesis. (Adopting a line I saw elsewhere, we both survived).

I’m delighted to learn today that, in the formal wording of such announcements, the Queen has been pleased to approve the appointment of The Honourable Mr Justice Beatson as a Lord Justice of Appeal to fill a forthcoming vacancy in the Court of Appeal. In Debrett’s, he lists his recreations as “trying to relax”. I fear he might not have much time for that in his new role.

Congratulations, Jack!…

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As I explained for this date last year, I spent lunch-time listening to Our Lady’s Choral Society‘s annual performance of highlights from Handel’s Messiah on the site on Fishamble Street, Dublin, on which it had its world première on this day in 1742. The image above is a photo of the performance (click on it for a larger image). Unusually for Dublin, and thankfully, the rain stayed away! Update: here’s a report in the Irish Times and another in the Irish Independent.

And the performance was great, especially the audience-participation “Hallelujah Chorus” encore. I’m looking forward to next year already. …

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