Bankrowling Labour!

JK Rowling has given £1 million to the Labour Party. She must be the only person in the world at this time propping up a failing organisation, other than those using other peoples' money! Rather primly, she says that New Labour has done an awful lot of good for underprivileged children. That's a little at odds with what certain charities say. However, no doubt it makes her feel good.

In some ways this is a redistribution of wealth. Children pay large sums for her Harry Potter books and she gives some back, supposedly for children. I suspect a large slice of her cash will go to pay off Labour debts!

This is a bit more of a publicity stunt and political statement than it is sound financial thinking. If she wants to help children then give it to them straight!

Judge thinks Harry Potter is gibberish

Joanne Rowling, renamed JK by her publishers so that she could sound "more masculine", has had a taste of off-the-cuff judicial thinking. Judge Robert Patterson Jr, who is overseeing the copyright trial in New York, admitted that he was not a Harry Potter fan. So much so that he described Rowling's works as "full of gibberish" and "extremely complex". Not exactly sentiments Ms.Rowling wanted to hear.

Although she says she is vehemently anti-censorship, she wants to censor this particular book. However, Judge Patterson suggested there was genuine worth in an encyclopaedia like The Harry Potter Lexicon, written by Steven vander Ark, that Rowling is attempting to block by claiming that it breaches her copyright. He mentioned the case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House about the pain and damage of a long drawn-out suit.

I can't think what she wanted to embark on such a thing for. It's not as though he's writing a copycat book. It's a reference book. I think she did herself no favours by saying, in a rather loud way, “I believe the floodgates will open. Are we the owners of our own work?” Such a question could get people thinking. It got the judge thinking!

I've never read a Harry Potter book, or seen a Harry Potter movie, but my wife thinks the whole thing fantastic. We've got the books and the movies! Gibberish is not a word I think my wife would concur with. What this is all about is that Ms Rowling got left behind in the reference book stakes. Mr vander Ark beat her to it. She says she has been planning her own. Umm!