Does anyone know what Keeling Schedules are? If you are familiar with the law, you probably will. Put simply, they comprise the text of a piece of legislation with bits in bold showing any wording inserted by a subsequent piece of legislation and drawing a line through what’s been taken out. With me so far? I thought I might find out a bit more about Keeling Schedules so I could pass on some interesting information to members of the association for whom I work, via my weekly newsletter, especially since one of these extraordinarily useful devices had recently been issued which was of significant interest to them, what with the European elections looming and all.

I reckoned they must have been named in honour of the chap who came up with the idea and so, very early one Friday morning (about 10, I think), I commenced using the power of the internet to assist my investigations. I got quite excited when I came across the name of Dr. David Keeling linked to Schedules, only to be disappointed to discover that he is merely the head of the Department of Geography and Geology at West Kentucky University, and the Schedules are simply his term timetable; why they are not called that as opposed to “semester schedules” (pron. skedules) is beyond me. I glossed over the flight schedule for the Jet Charter and Air Charter Service to and from Cocos Keeling Island (no, neither do I) as being irrelevant, as was the list of TV Schedules for Liise Keeling, who is, apparently, a stunt woman who has performed in many films and TV series from 2001 to date, including the memorable “Monk”; unfortunately, imdb.com fails to tell us what role she played in the episode “Mr Monk Meets Dale the Whale” (2002). Her listings reveal that she was mostly a “stunt double”, “stunt performer” or “stunt driver” but I did wonder what particular qualities were necessary to bring to the set of the 2008 film The Rocker as a “stunt waitress”. Perhaps, as most American waitresses are, she was adept at juggling with eggs over easy, pastrami on rye, bagels, cookies, and interminable steaming jugs of black coffee, all probably whilst wearing roller skates.

I was becoming a little dispirited by now and the only vaguely interesting information I could come up with was the schedule of rowing events in the 2008 Olympics, involving the South African, Shaun Keeling, all you would ever need to know about scheduling a conference call between the Cocos Keeling Islands and Luxembourg (bearing in mind the time difference) and the service schedule of the funeral for Jimmy Keeling in Allegre, Kentucky, in July 2008. Finally, I had some success. Wikipedia – of all things – tells us that Keeling was the MP for Twickenham between 1935 and 1954, the year of his death. I am unsure of the circumstances surrounding the development of his Schedule (pron. “shedule”) but I found one or two references, despite being riddled with mental fatigue by then. The well-known work Legislative Drafting by V. C. R. A. C. Crabbe explains (at p. 147) that the device is named after Mr E H Keeling (later Sir Edward Keeling) who, with Mr R P Croom‑Johnson (later Mr Justice Croom-Johnson) came up with the proposal.

A bloke called Bennion who subsequently rubbished Keeling’s system in Statute Law (at pp. 278-9) came up with something called a Jamaica Schedule, but I reckon he was just jealous and I dismissed that out of hand as well as a summary of Montesquieu’s Principles, Thring’s Rules and Ilbert’s Questions and Advice. In my book, Keeling is a hero and anyone who can come up with something that can be used to demonstrate the practical effect of the Loan Relationships and Derivative Contracts (Disregard and Bringing Into Account of Profits and Losses) Regulations 2004 and the effect of the Deregulation (Weights & Measures) Order on the Weights and Measures Act 1985 has to be worthy of commemoration.

That’s what I think anyway. Don’t you?