Today I talk to Liam Pike, solicitor with PJHLaw and one of the authors of their excellent Employment Law blog.

The topics: The “No Smoking” laws due to come into force at 6.00 am on 1st July 2007 and the Employment Law implications for bloggers who are employed. Liam took time out of a busy day to provide detailed answers to my questions. I now know where I stand on the No Smoking laws… perhaps I may have to jack it in… and the advice for bloggers who are employed is most useful!

Podcast 14: Liam Pike, PJH Solicitors: No Smoking Laws / Employment Law implications for bloggers

UPDATE: Amused by the description of ‘Charon’ on the PJH Law blog…

OneRoof works to place people from rural, low-caste communities in good jobs. Many of these have been women who are becoming economically productive for the first time in their lives. Listen to this podcast to hear Dwight explain how OneRoof is doing this work and how the communities and families of these women are reacting.

Back in April 2006, PJH Law webcasted its inaugral Employment Law Podcast on the subject of the TUPE Regulaions 2006. We believe that podcasts are a more lively and interesting way to keep up to date with changes in Employment Law than the traditional written articles. Instead of getting sent to sleep with a good book you can now get sent to sleep by listening to the latest update on this fascinating topic on an ipod, mp3 player or mediaplayer.

Download tupe_2006_final_mp3_only.mp3

Click here to open the PowerPoint slides to accompany the TUPE Regulations 2006 Podcast

It has long been known that dyslexics are drawn to running their own businesses, where they can get around their weaknesses in reading and writing and play on their strengths. But a new study of entrepreneurs in the United States suggests that dyslexia is much more common among small-business owners than even the experts had thought.

The report, compiled by Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that more than a third of the entrepreneurs she had surveyed — 35 percent — identified themselves as dyslexic. The study also concluded that dyslexics were more likely than nondyslexics to delegate authority, to excel in oral communication and problem solving and were twice as likely to own two or more businesses.

“We found that dyslexics who succeed had overcome an awful lot in their lives by developing compensatory skills,” Professor Logan said in an interview. “If you tell your friends and acquaintances that you plan to start a business, you’ll hear over and over, ‘It won’t work. It can’t be done.’ But dyslexics are extraordinarily creative about maneuvering their way around problems.”

The study was based on a survey of 139 business owners in a wide range of fields across the United States. Professor Logan called the number who said they were dyslexic “staggering,” and said it was significantly higher than the 20 percent of British entrepreneurs who said they were dyslexic in a poll she conducted in 2001.

She attributed the greater share in the United States to earlier and more effective intervention by American schools to help dyslexic students deal with their learning problems. Approximately 10 percent of Americans are believed to have dyslexia, experts say.

One reason that dyslexics are drawn to entrepreneurship, Professor Logan said, is that strategies they have used since childhood to offset their weaknesses in written communication and organizational ability — identifying trustworthy people and handing over major responsibilities to them — can be applied to businesses.

“The willingness to delegate authority gives them a significant advantage over nondyslexic entrepreneurs, who tend to view their business as their baby and like to be in total control,” she said.

Approximately 30 percent of Texas adults have a criminal conviction. Ex-offenders who are employed are three-times less likely to re-offend and much more likely to pay restitution and child support. However, one reason some are unemployed or underemployed are state regulations that can be used to exclude them from over 150 different licensed occupations. Also, hiring ex-offenders can expose an employer to civil liability, and there is a lack of vocational opportunities in state and local lockups that correspond to available jobs in the economy.

An impressive program described at that forum - the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) - trains inmates to become legitimate entrepreneurs when they leave prison. Several of their program's graduates so far have become significant success stories to tell.

I wonder what's the relationship if any of inmates with dyslexia and participation in PEP?

These are just initial thoughts from disparate research that perhaps raise more questions than answers. Would dyslexics who turn to crime be more likely to launch their own legitimate business enterprises if they received specialized education support, plus training that prepares them with entrepreneurial skills they'll likely need to cope with their disabilities throughout their lives? We can't know for sure from these data, but the possibilities are intriguing:

This post is a recording of a fast and furious guitar performance of a fiddle tune called “Kiss My Lady” which was transcribed in 1800 (or so) by a ship’s musician named William Litten.

Musically I wanted something energetic and raw. I didn’t care about mistakes except if they were bad enough to really mar the listening. The final performance definitely has mistakes, and both my dogs got into the action by barking.

It usually takes me a lot of takes to get something with the right feel and no fatal mistakes. In this case I did a few takes a day for a few days before I got one I liked.

I don’t have sheet music for this because I got it from a book which is not online. Here’s the story.

Litten was employed as a ship’s musician, and along the way he wrote down a lot of music. I think that this was more like a notebook to aid his memory than a book for the public. His manuscript was brought home to Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts, by a local guy named Allen Coffin. The Martha’s Vineyard economy was based on fishing, sailing, etc, until it became a touristy beach destination in the late 20th century, and Coffin was probably on the ship with Litten. The manuscript ended up in the library of the historical society in Edgartown, the biggest town on the island.

In the 1970s a musicologist named Gail Huntington copied it into more readable notation, made some corrections and other tidying up, cross-referenced the songs in contemporaneous publications, and eventually published it. Her publication is copyright 1977 by Hines Point Publishers, Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts 02568. This was either self-publishing or a very small-time operation.

Here’s a description of the situation by somebody else familiar with the book:

William Litten was a ship’s fiddler in Royal Navy in the first years of the nineteenth century. What makes Litten remarkable amongst his peers was his ability to transcribe music. In the years 1800 to 1802 he was aboard the HMS Gorgon, leaving England in May 1800, arriving in China in February 1801 and passing through St Helena in 1802. During the voyage he wrote down much of his repertoire, thus giving us a unique snapshot of the musical and, in particular, the fiddle repertoire of his time. The original and now unprocurable book was assembled and published in 1977. Extensive searches failed to find the publishers. The book was reproduced from a copy on interlibrary loan from New Mexico for the purposes of study at a a workshop at the National Folk Festival in Canberra in 2006. A few copies remain and are offered here.

The copyright situation of the sheet music is messy. Huntington’s substantive contributions to the original entitle her to a copyright on her contributions. However figuring out what is a copyrighted addition and what is a public domain part of the original is totally up in the air. Since she and her publisher seem to have disappeared, this has turned into an orphaned work. The good news is that a public domain performance of the underlying composition and arrangement is completely legal as far as I can tell.

My own copyrights in these recordings are released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license per my boilerplate licensing statement.

These are the real keepers:

Kiss My Lady sept 23 2007 (mp3)

Kiss My Lady sept 23 2007 (vorbis)

These are scratch recordings that I figured might be handy for sampling or comparison:

Kiss My Lady sept 20 2007 (mp3)

Kiss My Lady sept 20 2007 (vorbis)

Kiss My Lady sept 21 2007 (mp3)

Kiss My Lady sept 21 2007 (vorbis)