LETTERS At the Bar
Sir: As I perused Lord Hailsham's article (`How to ruin the professions', 26 March), I was sure that I heard his inimitable chuckle in the background. Then I listened to his endearing account of himself on Desert Island Discs, and realised that perhaps his article had not after all been ironic.
For whatever the professions may have been like in Lord Hailsham's salad days, anyone who has to deal with them nowa- days as an ordinary client knows that in general their standards of competence, value-for-money, and even conduct are alarmingly low. As for 'self-regulation and control', there is in my perception a general and well-placed disillusion with such regulatory mechanisms as do exist.
Between reading Lord Hailsham's arti- cle and hearing his radio broadcast, I happened upon Psalm 15. I was led to reflect that very few of the so-called professional classes ought to rest upon [the] holy hill. Of no profession is that more true than of the one to which I myself had the misfortune to belong — the higher civil service. Why is that most powerful, most esoteric, and most unregulated profession exempt from the current debate?
Ray Petch
53 Gold Street, Saffr in Walden, Essex
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