6 New QCs, but 'in practice' only 5...

Well it looks despite 6 new Queen's Counsel appointments, Gibraltar will only actually benefit from having 5 of them in practice for the next 4 years.

The six new appointments are:

• Robert Vasquez
• Mark Isola
• Keith Azopardi
• Gilbert Licudi
• Michael Llamas
• Gillian Guzman

As a small place, it is only natural that many of thouse active in their own professional spheres are also active and prominant members of the comunity in many others, including politics.

Robert Vasquez has been increasingly politically active, almost putting his name forward on the ballot paper at the last general election, and Keith Azopardi led a full slate offering of the PDP.

This however takes us on to Gilbert Licudi.

While it is one thing to practice while being a member of Her Majesty's opposition in Gibraltar, it would be quite another to do so while sitting on the government benches in parliament. And that is exactly where Mr Licudi now finds himelf as Minister for Justice. As such we will have to wait at least another 4 years before we see Mr Licudi practicing in his silk.

Thouse thinking this results in us 'loosing' a QC can comfort themselves that, as new Leader of the Opposition, Peter Caruana QC might be again able to practice?

Visiting GHA website NOT good for your health!

Anyone attempting to access the GHA website under either of its domain names (www.gha.gi, www.gha.gov.gi) using the Firefox web browser is being presented with a message that the site has been blocked as it is hosting attack ware.

Clicking on the link offering information about why this page has been blocked returns the page linked below, with the folllowing:

Of the 92 pages that we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 2 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time that Google visited this site was on 2011-05-20, and the last time that suspicious content was found on this site was on 2011-05-20.

Malicious software is hosted on 1 domain(s), including imgbbb.net/.

http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?client=Firefox&hl=en-GB&site=http://www.gha.gi/httpdocs/index.htm

So, on Googles site crawler visit of 2011-05-20, 2 pages on the GHA website were linking to harmfull content on the imgbbb.net domain.

If the GHA webmaster has removed the links to the compromising content then they just need to follow the instructions here to get the block removed.

While compromising content (and presumably compromised site security to enable it to be there) is a bad thing, this is not quite as bad as the time when the website on the DTTI domain name (and referenced in adverts running internationally at the time encouraging people to setup their ebusiness in Gibraltar) just returned a hacker 'bage of honour page' - or that it took MONTHS for it to be fixed!

Trilateral Topics

With the next ministerial level round of the Trilateral Forum of Dialogue - involving the 3 governments of Spain, the UK and Gibraltar - due to meet in Gibraltar on Tuesday, lets review the 6 topics currently with the forum for agreement.

The six topics were confirmed at the last ministerial meeting in London (2nd July 2008) confirming the initial list released following a technical party meeting earlier in the year in Gibraltar.

1. Co-operation on the environment

2. Maritime communications

3. Judicial, customs and police co-operation

4. Financial Services and Taxation

5. Visa related Issues

6. Education

In the pervious forum agreements, Spanish acceptance of Gibraltar's ITU assigned international-direct dial country code (+350) and the lifting of air restrictions was essentially bought with payment of undue up-rated pensions to Spanish former cross border workers who were with drawn by General Franco.

However, it is less clear on these topics where the payment could be made to Spain. Especially since, areas 3 & 4, despite being what Spain will portray as 'breakthroughs' for her, is exactly what Gibraltar has been seeking from Spain for years.

Are we going to see the first fair unquestionable win-win agreement? And will the financial services cooperation be portrayed incorrectly in the Spanish press as being a change from Gibraltar? (despite it being what we've been seeking and offering for years!)