Jolyon Wrote a Book

[Igneococcus]

I'm not sure if he mentions his battles with GC women in it because the review doesn't mention it but I thought some people here would like to read the review. The reviewer doesn't think much of it and that is putting it mildly :)
"Bringing Down Goliath by Jolyon Maugham review — the pompous bloviating of a Twitter KC" (I had to google "bloviating"):

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dc992f50-dd24-11ed-a0a8-657f9e54fc6a?shareToken=4a9c3689a3318860ea241c733ce5a728

* "The life I have is hard, but I got to choose it, and the road that brought me here I did not.”*

This is amazing. I still don't know what it means.

Poor Jolyon. The hard life of a tax lawyer with delusions of activist righteousness. All that listening to dropping apricots and bludgeoning foxes to death.

I can't get used to KC (in place of QC). It always makes me thing of KFC. But I guess that in his case the chicken association is quite appropriate.

JM an hour ago on Twitter:
'In truth, in the eyes of newspapers like The Times, none of those things matters quite so much as your propensity, if you have a powerful voice, to conform to the destructive and self-serving paradigm it exists to maintain.'
https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1649677911757127681?cxt=HHwWgoC8wcDU6uQtAAAA

Just remind me what 'bloviating' means?
Is there a matching noun?

Nicked this from Shahrar Ali's tweet. Bloviating; like "an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea."

The life I have is hard, but I got to choose it, and the road that brought me here I did not.

The opening line, apparently! The one designed to grab your attention over every other line in the book and set the tone. Where the fuck was his editor???

Also, a KC who has written a book and sits on Twitter all day pontificating, doesn't give the impression of having a hard life.

What a burn, there's smoke coming off my copy of the paper! When it's cooled down, I might leave it in the garden for the local foxes to read 😆

Mr Maugham resigned from his chambers and no longer practises as a tax barrister. He doesn't seem to have left on good terms with his chambers. He blocked the Head of Chambers on Twitter around the time he left. This seems odd behaviour to me from a KC who is still active in the law even if not as a barrister.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/barrister-jolyon-maugham-blacklisted-allen-overy-tweeting-killing-fox-b919879.html

It is hard because judges keep disagreeing with him ergo he is oppressed.

Just as males can now say that women oppress them with their 'cis privilege', white people can now say that they are victims of oppression and racism at the hands of other races. Racism is decoupled from race, just as sexism is decoupled from sex.

This, despite Yuan Yi Zhu affording Maugham's book the respect it demands:

'My review of the most important legal book of 2023.'

https://twitter.com/yuanyi_z/status/1649552930670870528

Well it's fair to say the book didn't go down with that reviewer!

The funniest thing is that Jolyon has now drawn everyone's attention to it, so instead of it dying down quietly, he has both increased the audience for the initial review and tripled everyone's merriment.

Fantastic review. Love JKR’s advice to never go full Jolyon, that feels like good advice for more than just responding to book reviews..

Jolyon is a first time author so perhaps nobody has shared the cardinal rule of bad reviews: Do. Not. Respond. While. Upset.

He is the absolute epitome of confidence overpowering competence. He is just not very bright at all.

He brings all of these cases with no legal merit and still doesn't accept that maybe this is not for him and he should, maybe, stay in his lane. There are plenty of human rights lawyers who are actually experienced and qualified to carry out this work.

He is a PR disaster for anyone involved with him. Most of all himself.

He should stop spitting nails about that review. All these precipitous attacks on the reviewer's character, just makes Jolyon look like the biggest sore loser in sore loser town.

The man is incapable of any dignity. He's proving the reviewer's point, with every imprudent utterance.

I don’t hate him but he’s a rather peculiar character. He’d make a good villain in one of JK’s detective books.

He’s pompous and patronising and prioritises penis-people over people-who-don’t-want-to-see-your-penis-people.

He once beat a fox to death while wearing his wife’s dressing gown (Jolly-On, not the fox, who I presume was wearing fox fur).

Also, he lives in a windmill.

The review is very funny; not a single thing mentioned to redeem it. Clearly the fox killer felt obliged to tweet to prove the reviewers point which is even funnier.

Excellent!

Several chapters are dedicated to cases he brought through the Good Law Project, the Goliath-slaying private company he founded to sue the government with money donated by gullible laymen, with a dismal success rate.

[...]

Give your money to the RSPCA but please do not buy this book. Maugham is a first-time author who should not be encouraged to reoffend ever again.

😂

Here’s Joly’s windmill, 3 mill on Rightmove, if anyone wants to take it off his hands.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/70917429

I'm delighted to report that Owen Jones describes the book as "A mighty blast . . . This is how to challenge the powerful."

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Slingshot-How-Good-Protect-Powerful/dp/0753559781/

Oh please stop, I've got things to do but I can't tear myself away from this thread.

Looking at his bio, yuan yi zhu is an academic. He’s not a full time reporter. Is maugham really suggesting that everyone who writes for the times is pro brexit, racist, transphobic etc? It’s such a petty response.

"Im delighted to report that Owen Jones describes the book as "A mighty blast . . . This is how to challenge the powerful."

And this is why no one can take OJ seriously. He's a zealot. He doesn't understand that he doesn't have to support everything anyone says or does if they are on his 'team'. It's ok to sometimes say 'that's a bit shit, actually' when something is objectively shit. Or not say anything at all.

He says the most ridiculous things and defends the most heinous things just to be 'on the right side'. He has no credibility. Like Billy Bragg too. (I'm waiting for his glowing review too)

That windmill is....expensive. Being a "challenger of the powerful" clearly pays well.

Bloviating; like "an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea."

That's much too generous. It imputes too much intentionality. The full stop should come after "landscape".