For anyone who has ever started a sentence with ‘If I were running the country…’, the launch of Nick Clegg’s ‘Your freedom’ website last week must have been manna from heaven. The site gives Joe Public a forum for suggesting ideas for how Nick (pictured) and Dave should ‘redress the balance between government and state’, repealing unnecessary laws and restoring lost liberties. Once submitted, a suggestion can be voted on and commented on by others.

A scroll through the ‘justice’ category of the site reveals a fascinating mix of ideas, some more plausible than others. Suggestions include scrapping the defence of provocation for murder; forcing prisoners to do charity work; giving voting rights to expats; and – submitted by a defence solicitor, perhaps? – giving an automatic right to legal representation at the police station.

Obiter was particularly impressed by one submission suggesting the government ‘scrap the police’. As the writer explained: ‘The police should be scrapped and the general public should be encouraged to enforce the laws of this land themselves as they see fit. As well as getting a phone book every year you could get a "Law Book" which lists all this country’s laws, and then use it to catch crims and lock them up in your pantry, or spare room if you don’t have a pantry’.

But perhaps most pertinent to the profession is a suggestion by one anonymous contributor that government should ‘repeal the monopoly that regulated lawyers have on conducting litigation’. As he points out, the prosecution already allows associate prosecutors who are not qualified lawyers, and litigants in person can also conduct their own litigation. What incentive would there be for the government to introduce such a measure? ‘It would benefit from being seen to take on probably one of the most despised special-interest groups in the country’. Ouch! Something tells Obiter that not many solicitors will be voting for that one.