Thousands of people have taken part in events across Sussex to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
More than 80 street parties were held in East Sussex, at least 70 in Brighton and scores of celebrations were enjoyed in West Sussex.
Eastbourne's newest lifeboat, named Diamond Jubilee, was among the vessels taking part in London's Thames Pageant.
In West Hoathly and Sharpthorne up to 100 scarecrows lined the streets.
Residents in villages in this part of West Sussex regularly create novelty scarecrows for big national occasions.
Among them are effigies depicting the Queen and Irish Guards.
“Start Quote
End Quote Julie WaltersI am standing in for the Queen”
Scarecrow creator Sean Patrick O'Callaghan said: "There are probably about 100 scarecrows in the area, many made by children."
Actress Julie Walters has taken part in a Diamond Jubilee party in the village of Plaistow, West Sussex.
The star of Educating Rita, Mamma Mia and the Harry Potter series joked: "I am standing in for the Queen. She couldn't be bothered."
In East Grinstead hundreds of people lined High Street to watch a special Jubilee parade.
Young and old cheered as marching bands, charity floats and old military vehicles made their way past the crowds in the town centre.
Eastbourne will host a musical special Diamond Jubilee firework display later.
Councillor Neil Stanley, of Eastbourne Borough Council, said "This is our treat for music fans with free entry while the temporary works continue at the bandstand.
"This is the perfect opportunity to enjoy a free concert on the beach and get a taste of what a great programme we have on offer when the bandstand reopens in July."
Residents in Brighton and Hove were also treated to music from the city's seafront bandstand earlier.
Trees are also being planted throughout the city in 2012 to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee year.
See all the latest Diamond Jubilee news and features at bbc.co.uk/diamondjubilee
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrated in Kent - BBC News
Thousands of people in towns and villages across Kent have taken part in street parties to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
In Dover, visitors joined in the Big Lunch and watched events in London on the BBC's big screen.
More than a dozen Kent boats - including World War II supply ship Vic96 - have been among the hundreds of vessels in London's Jubilee Pageant.
Skipper Derek Gransden said: "It's all very exciting."
His vessel was part of the Avenue of Sail which features boats that are too tall to travel under bridges and stretches from London Bridge to Wapping.
Before the event started, he said: "We're just between Tower Bridge and London Bridge opposite the Belfast, we're lined up with lots of Thames barges.
“Start Quote
End Quote Barbara MacnabThe Queen's done a marvellous job considering how young she was when she started”
"Believe it or not the banks have been jam-packed with people since about six o'clock this morning despite the fact that it's been pouring with rain.
"We get the luxury of watching it [the pageant] all go up, as it has done this morning to get on station, and then watching them come back this afternoon."
Floating parliamentA replica of the Houses of Parliament has also been unveiled in Goudhurst.
The 30ft-long (9m) plywood structure, which includes a 14ft (4.3m) high Big Ben bell tower, was created over four weeks and is now floating in the village pond.
Hundreds of small wooden boats made by local schoolchildren were placed in the water on Sunday at 15:00 BST to recreate the pageant taking place in London.
A replica of the Houses of Parliament was floated on the pond to mark the Queen's Coronation in 1953.
In Tunbridge Wells, young and old braved the weather to enjoy a picnic and slices of Jubilee cake.
Barbara Macnab, 44, of Ticehurst, said: "We came down because we wanted to join in the celebration of the Jubilee and there wasn't anything in our village.
"It's a big thing for the children because they won't see anything like this again. I want them to remember it and be able to tell their grandchildren. It's nice to see everybody getting involved and celebrating - united."
She added: "The Queen's done a marvellous job considering how young she was when she started."
A tea party and mass zumba dance challenge involving 1,000 people is being held in Ramsgate.
Meanwhile people in Gillingham were invited to dress up as as a famous personality from the past 60 years to mark the Queen' Diamond Jubilee at the town's Big Lunch event.
See all the latest Diamond Jubilee news and features at bbc.co.uk/diamondjubilee
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
For new law school grads, the job outlook is still bleak - Philadelphia Daily News
Tony Chiaramonte, a Drexel University law school graduate, is one of the fortunate ones.
He landed a coveted clerkship with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin at the start of his third year in school. To get the job, which he will start in September, Chiaramonte sent out 200 to 300 applications.
Total yield? Two return calls.
"I think I hit every state," said Chiaramonte, 29, who graduated May 17. "I was not discriminating against any state."
Even as a robust employment market has emerged for lawyers with several years’ experience, a sobering new reality awaits this year’s crop of law school graduates: The market for those fresh out of school has rebounded only slightly from its recessionary lows and remains very weak.
Big law firms in Philadelphia and across the nation report that hiring of graduates is well down from its peak of just a few years ago, when legal work was plentiful and firms competed for first-year lawyers. This year, firms are showing a little more flexibility in hiring summer interns and first-year lawyers, but the change is incremental. Most important, law-firm leaders who once hoped that the hiring of young lawyers would return to its past peak now say it will likely stay down for years.
The struggling economy, continuing downward pressure on rates, and insistence by clients that their matters be staffed with experienced lawyers all are playing roles.
"I have a stack of resumes on my desk and a number of phone calls that I have put off making," said Stephen A. Madva, managing partner of the Center City firm Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads L.L.P.
In years past, the firm brought in eight or nine new graduates each fall and hosted a class of about a dozen summer interns. This year, Madva doesn’t anticipate hiring any first years, and the firm has only two summer interns. Instead, it has been recruiting lawyers with several years’ experience and established client relationships.
"Our clients are not willing to pay us to train [young lawyers], and the numbers in the firm now are a pretty good match to the amount of work we have," he said.
Most law schools still are collecting employment data on this year’s graduates, so the best information available is for the job search of last year’s class. Figures compiled through February showed that, except for graduates of the very top schools, a great number of law school graduates hadn’t found jobs as lawyers.
Law schools say they expect this year’s results to be about the same. The hiring plans of law firms back up that assessment.
"It is not so terribly different from the way it has been for the past few years," said Drexel law school dean Roger Dennis. "We are about even in absolute numbers with last year, and our sense is that the quality of the jobs is somewhat up."
Yet it is an extremely tough market. Through Feb. 15, Drexel reported that 57 of its 131 graduates had full-time permanent work as lawyers, with nine more employed in full-time jobs in which a law school education was deemed to be an advantage. Others had found work in non-law jobs, while 17 still were looking for jobs.
At Villanova University, 132 graduates out of 252 were employed full time as lawyers, with 19 more in full-time jobs for which a law degree was an advantage. Fifty-nine graduates still were seeking employment at the time of the survey’s conclusion.
At Temple, 177 graduates were employed full time as lawyers out of total of 319 graduates, while 32 had full-time jobs in which a law degree was considered an advantage although not required. About 18 were without jobs.
Even for graduates of the University of Pennsylvania law school, who typically enjoy a high rate of success, the battered economy has exacted a price. The overwhelming majority of last year’s class found employment, 95 percent of the 274 graduates. Yet there was a slight downward trend in the number of graduates employed in sought-after jobs with big firms, those with 500 or more lawyers. That number went down from 152 in 2008 to 125 last year, even though the class size had gone up.
The city’s major law firms report hiring plans that track closely with the law-school statistics. Drinker Biddle & Reath L.L.P. will take on 23 first-year lawyers in the fall, up from 19 in 2010, when the legal world was still adjusting to the financial collapse, but still down from 37 in 2009. Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis L.L.P. plans to hire three first-year lawyers in the fall, down from nine in 2009.
Cozen O’Connor has increased its hiring of first years slightly, from 13 in 2009 to 19 this year, but for a 575-lawyer firm, its program is relatively small.
Though big firms remain highly profitable, it has come in part through severe cost-cutting and layoffs. At the same time, competition among firms for work has sharpened, placing even greater pressure on hourly billing rates. The unraveling of New York-based Dewey & LeBoeuf, which filed for bankruptcy Tuesday, reinforced the idea that the business remains fragile. Dewey once was a global powerhouse.
"The Dewey collapse put a chill in the air and fear in people’s hearts," said James Leipold, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement, which tracks the legal-employment market.
This deep anxiety appears not to be a momentary blip. In a survey of managing partners and chairmen at 238 U.S.-based law firms conducted in March and April, Altman Weil, a Newtown Square-based legal-consulting firm, reported that those firm leaders overwhelmingly said the profession faced long-term financial pressures, and that firms would adjust, in part, by outsourcing work and hiring fewer inexperienced lawyers.
About 55 percent of respondents said they expected that smaller classes of first-year lawyers had become a permanent trend; in 2009, just over 10 percent said they anticipated hiring fewer new law school graduates. There were similarly large increases in respondents who said they expected that outsourcing of legal work, hiring of more contract lawyers, and lower law-firm profits all were part of the new normal.
"The prerecession associate-hiring binge is over, replaced by much more cautious and conservative hiring policies," Altman Weil said.
With such a grim employment market, it likely helped that Chiaramonte, who plans a career in public-interest law, kept a positive outlook. When he started his job search, he didn’t focus on the odds, and he was willing to go anywhere.
"I felt I would go wherever the job was," he said. "I was pretty lucky, and this job came around."
Source: www.philly.com
No comments:
Post a Comment