Many congratulations to the Gazette for focusing so crisply upon the real issues over the misconceived proposals for unsociable magistrates’ court hours.

The Law Society’s president is also on the case. Her language may need to be relatively diplomatic. That said, these proposals are either half-baked gimmicks with a weather eye to some supposed electoral advantage, or, yet more worryingly, another assault on the rule of law and due process to no good purpose. Riot courts are riot courts; the rule of law and due process are precisely that and never the twain can, or should, mix.

Your editorial has it right: if crisis management should become the norm, then where would we ever find extra capacity for the abnormal?

Malcolm Fowler, Dennings, Tipton