Jonathan Gibson

Professor Jonathan Gibson MB BS MD FRCSEd, FRCOphth (1966-1971) is a Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon for the Heart of England NHS Trust, Birmingham and a Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Aston. He looks back at his time at Merchant Taylors’ and his career.

A coherent doctrine of Estoppel

A paper on the coherence of estoppel as a form of reliance-based claims in private law.

Reaching the bar

Reports on the issues addressed at the Bar Council-Aimhigher widening participation conference, "How to get to the Bar" held at St Philips Chambers, Birmingham on July 12, 2010 and attended by 80 sixth form students.

Reporting and managing risk:a look at current practice at Tesco, RBS, local and central government

These case studies from CIMA highlight the need to embed risk management within more easily understood behaviours, consistent with the overall organisational culture. In each case, some form of internal audit team provides either an oversight function or acts as an expert link in that feedback loop. Frontline staff, managers and specialists should be completely aligned on risk, in part just to ensure that there is a consistency of approach. They should understand instinctively that good performance includes good risk management. Tesco has continued to thrive during the recession and remains a robust and efficient group of businesses despite the emergence of potential threats around consumer spending and the supply chain. RBS, by contrast, has suffered catastrophic and very public failures of risk management despite a large in-house function and stiff regulation of risk controls. Birmingham City Council, like all local authorities, is adapting to more commercial modes of operation and is facing diverse threats and opportunities emerging as a result of social change. And DCMS, like many other public sector organisations, has to handle an incredibly complex network of delivery partners within the context of a relatively recent overhaul of central government risk management processes. Key Findings: •Risk management is no longer solely a financial discipline, nor is it simply a concern for the internal control function. •Where organisations retain a discrete risk management cadre – often specialists at monitoring and evaluating a range of risks – their success is dependent on embedding risk awareness in the wider culture of the enterprise. •Risk management is most successful when it is explicitly linked to operational performance. •Clear leadership, specific goals, excellent influencing skills and open-mindedness to potential threats and opportunities are essential for effective risk management. •Bureaucratic processes and systems can hamper good risk management – either as a result of a ‘box-ticking mentality’ or because managers and staff believe they do not need to consider risk themselves.

A legal realist approach to unjust enrichment

This paper was concerned with the realist critique and why it is incompatible with the modern law of unjust enrichment.

Interpreting "D.I.Y." documents:severance, release, trusts, certainty, vesting and undue influence

Comments on the Chancery Division decision in Wallbank v Price on whether a home-made ("DIY") document signed by a wife and purporting to revoke her rights as a beneficial joint tenant in the matrimonial home, which was acquired under the right-to-buy scheme, should be set aside for duress or undue influence. Details the court's analysis of the principles supporting a successful claim of undue influence, the nature of the DIY document, its meaning and its effect. Considers possible reasons for the parties' use of the document. Cases Wallbank v Price (2007) EWHC 3001 (Ch); (2008) 2 FLR 501 (Ch D (Birmingham)) : Royal Bank of Scotland Plc v Etridge (No.2) (2001) UKHL 44; (2002) 2 AC 773 (HL) : Paul v Constance (1977) 1 WLR 527 (CA (Civ Div)) Statutes Housing Act 1985

Overlapping of legal concepts:classifying the law of trusts

The purpose of this piece is to explain how the trust concept fits the overlapping analysis, presenting an example of why discrete categorisation is often unhelpful in understanding the operation of legal concepts.

An introduction to forensic linguistics:language in evidence

From the accusation of plagiarism in The Da Vinci Code, to the infamous hoaxer in the Yorkshire Ripper case, the use of linguistic evidence in court and the number of linguists called to act as expert witnesses in court trials has increased rapidly in the past fifteen years. An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics: Language in Evidence provides a timely and accessible introduction to this rapidly expanding subject. Using knowledge and experience gained in legal settings – Malcolm Coulthard in his work as an expert witness and Alison Johnson in her work as a West Midlands police officer – the two authors combine an array of perspectives into a distinctly unified textbook, focusing throughout on evidence from real and often high profile cases including serial killer Harold Shipman, the Bridgewater Four and the Birmingham Six. Divided into two sections, 'The Language of the Legal Process' and 'Language as Evidence', the book covers the key topics of the field. The first section looks at legal language, the structures of legal genres and the collection and testing of evidence from the initial police interview through to examination and cross-examination in the courtroom. The second section focuses on the role of the forensic linguist, the forensic phonetician and the document examiner, as well as examining in detail the linguistic investigation of authorship and plagiarism. With research tasks, suggested reading and website references provided at the end of each chapter, An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics: Language in Evidence is the essential textbook for courses in forensic linguistics and language of the law.

Evaluating the performance of a EuroDivisia index using artificial intelligence techniques

We compare two methods in order to predict inflation rates in Europe. One method uses a standard back propagation neural network and the other uses an evolutionary approach, where the network weights and the network architecture is evolved. Results indicate that back propagation produces superior results. However, the evolving network still produces reasonable results with the advantage that the experimental set-up is minimal. Also of interest is the fact that the Divisia measure of money is superior as a predictive tool over simple sum.

Evolution, recurrency and kernels in learning to model inflation

This paper provides the most fully comprehensive evidence to date on whether or not monetary aggregates are valuable for forecasting US inflation in the early to mid 2000s. We explore a wide range of different definitions of money, including different methods of aggregation and different collections of included monetary assets. We use non-linear, artificial intelligence techniques, namely, recurrent neural networks, evolution strategies and kernel methods in our forecasting experiment. In the experiment, these three methodologies compete to find the best fitting US inflation forecasting models and are then compared to forecasts from a naive random walk model. The best models were non-linear autoregressive models based on kernel methods. Our findings do not provide much support for the usefulness of monetary aggregates in forecasting inflation. There is evidence in the literature that evolutionary methods can be used to evolve kernels hence our future work should combine the evolutionary and kernel methods to get the benefits of both.

Use of general practice prescribing data as a surrogate estimate of statin compliance

Background and Objective: To maximise the benefit from statin therapy, patients must maintain regular therapy indefinitely. Non-compliance is thought to be common in those taking medication at regular intervals over long periods of time, especially where they may perceive no immediate benefit (News editorial, 2002). This study extends previous work in which commonly held prescribing data is used as a surrogate marker of compliance and was designed to examine compliance in those stabilised on statins in a large General Practice. Design: Following ethical approval, details of all patients who had a single statin for 12 consecutive months with no changes in drug, frequency or dose, between December 1999 and March 2003, were obtained. Setting: An Eastern Birmingham Primary Care Trust GP surgery. Main Outcome Measures: A compliance ratio was calculated by dividing the number of days treatment by the number of doses prescribed. For a once daily regimen the ratio for full compliance_1. Results: 324 patients were identified. The average compliance ratio for the first six months of the study was 1.06 ± 0.01 (range 0.46 – 2.13) and for the full twelve months was 1.05 ± 0.01 (range 0.58 – 2.08). Conclusions: The data shown here indicates that as a group, long-term, stabilised statin users appear compliant. However, the range of values obtained show that there are identifiable subsets of patients who are not taking their therapy as prescribed. Although the apparent use of more doses than prescribed in some patients may result from medication hording, this cannot be the case in the patients who apparently take less. It has been demonstrated here that the compliance ratio can be used as an early indicator of problems allowing targeted compliance advice can be given where it will have the most benefit. References: News Editorial. Pharmacy records could be used to enhance statin compliance in elderly. Pharm. J. 2002; 269: 121.

Raumerkundungen:Der Erzähler Klaus Böldl

Mit stillen, unaufdringlichen Erzähltexten hat sich Klaus Böldl seit seinem vielgelobten Debüt Studie in Kristallbildung (1997) einen vorderen Rang in der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur erschrieben. Seine Bücher, die zumeist den Norden Europas zum Ort der Handlung machen, loten die Untiefen eines Lebens an der Peripherie aus und schildern eindringlich die stillen Katastrophen, die sich im Inneren der Menschen abspielen. Dieser Materialienband versammelt erstmalig Beiträge namhafter internationaler Wissenschaftler zum bislang unzureichend erforschten Werk Böldls, die dem Versuch gewidmet sind, dem eigenwilligen Ton dieses Erzählers auf die Spur zu kommen. Ergänzt werden die Aufsätze durch einen poetologischen Essay des Autors, ein Interview mit Böldl sowie eine Bibliografie und Zeittafel. Die Herausgeber Claudia Gremler, Studium der Germanistik, Anglistik und Skandinavistik in Göttingen. 2001 Promotion über Herman Bang und Thomas Mann. Senior Lecturer in German an der Aston University, Birmingham. Veröffentlichungen zur Literatur des zwanzigsten und einundzwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Uwe Schütte, promovierte 1997 an der University of East Anglia bei W.G. Sebald. Reader in German an der Aston University, Birmingham. Zahlreiche Monografien zur deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur. Zuletzt erschien: „Interventionen. Literaturkritik als Widerspruch bei W.G. Sebald“ (2014).

Interventionen:Literaturkritik als Widerspruch bei W. G. Sebald

"Ich habe einen Horror vor allen billigen Formen der Fiktionalisierung. Mein Medium ist die Prosa, nicht der Roman", begründet W. G. Sebald seine Neigung zum essayistischen Schreiben. Und eben diese Erzählprosa W. G. Sebalds bildet den Stoff, auf dem Uwe Schüttes eindrückliche und kritische Beobachtungen zum biografischen, literaturwissenschaftlichen und literarischen Werdegang des Autors von "Austerlitz" fußen. W. G. Sebald ist einer der anerkanntesten und zugleich umstrittensten Schriftsteller der deutschen Literatur des späten 20. Jahrhunderts. Sein vielgerühmtes literarisches Werk ruht auf einem Fundament, das größtenteils kaum bekannt ist, nämlich die im Verlauf von rund 30 Jahren entstandenen kritischen Schriften. "Interventionen" bietet erstmals einen so tiefschürfenden wie umfassenden Überblick über die Literaturkritik Sebalds unter Einbezug zuvor unveröffentlichter Archivdokumente. Uwe Schütte, der bei Sebald promoviert hat, legt anschaulich dar, wie sich Sebalds eigenwillige Literaturkritik – von der Magisterarbeit über Carl Sternheim bis zum polemischen Essay "Luftkrieg und Literatur" – entwickelt hat. Seine Studie skizziert damit die intellektuelle Biografie des vom Allgäu in die Provinz East Anglias entlaufenen Germanisten. Vor allem aber zeichnet "Interventionen" nach, wie Sebald im kritischen Widerspruch zu Germanistik und deutscher Nachkriegsliteratur selbst zum Schriftsteller wurde. Der Autor Uwe Schütte, geb. 1967, promovierte 1997 bei W. G. Sebald an der University of East Anglia und ist Reader in German an der Aston University in Birmingham, England.

Satisfaction with primary care:the perspectives of people with schizophrenia

Background. Schizophrenia affects up to 1% of the population in the UK. People with schizophrenia use the National Health Service frequently and over a long period of time. However, their views on satisfaction with primary care are rarely sought. Objectives. This study aimed to explore the elements of satisfaction with primary care for people with schizophrenia. Method. A primary care-based study was carried out using semi-structured interviews with 45 patients with schizophrenia receiving shared care with the Northern Birmingham Mental Health Trust between 1999 and 2000. Results. Five major themes that affect satisfaction emerged from the data: the exceptional potential of the consultation itself; the importance of aspects of the organization of primary care; the construction of the user in the doctor-patient relationship; the influence of stereotypes on GP behaviour; and the importance of hope for recovery. Conclusion. Satisfaction with primary care is multiply mediated. It is also rarely expected or achieved by this group of patients. There is a significant gap between the rhetoric and the reality of user involvement in primary care consultations. Acknowledging the tensions between societal and GP views of schizophrenia as an incurable life sentence and the importance to patients of hope for recovery is likely to lead to greater satisfaction with primary health care for people with schizophrenia.