It never rains …

There I was, thinking that I could happily get away with a bit of time digesting, on the Eurostar, the government's response to its consultation on competition policy before posting anything (which is available here: http://www.bis.gov.uk/Consultations/competition-regime-for-growth) and possibly including the General Court's decision in Cases t-29 and 33/10 Netherlands and ING v Commission, judgment of 2 March 2012, which is the first case to deal with the legality of decisions in the financial crisis, when certain other things happened. To wit, the OFT is consulting on changes to its procedures for antitrust cases, as a follow on from the UK government's decisions on reform of competition policy (available at: http://www.oft.gov.uk/OFTwork/consultations/ca98-investigation-procedures/), the General Court has decided Cases T-336/07 and T-398/07 Telefónica, Telefónica de España and Spain v Commission, judgment of 29 March 2012 on margin squeeze (the court press release is here: http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-03/cp120040en.pdf - no English language version yet) and the Northern Irish gas regulator has referred a price control case to the Competition Commission (http://www.competition-commission.org.uk/our-work/phoenix-natural-gas-limited-price-determination). By now, it is old news that John Fingleton will be leaving the OFT in September (although he had interesting things to say in a newspaper interview: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/profiles/9105975/John-Fingleton-Im-not-sure-if-companies-are-more-compliant-or-just-more-devious.html ). So, apologies, as things may well come out in a somewhat bitty fashion, especially as the weather's nice and the garden needs some work …