S&M stands accused

Sweet & Maxwell has nailed its colours to the mast and the message is unambiguous: we don't like journalists.

What else could explain the competition it has launched that amounts to little more than the legal equivalent of schoolboys looking up dirty words in the dictionary - although the latest edition of Stroud's Judicial Dictionary of Words and Phrases contains some slightly more erudite abuse heard in the courts.

The challenge is to work out which of four insulting words or phrases have been ruled slanderous or libellous, such as writing that a lawyer is a 'pettifogging shyster' (for those, like Obiter, who need a dictionary to understand a dictionary, a 'pettifogger' is an inferior legal practitioner).

Anyway, normal lawyers who enter Sweet & Maxwell's competition (for more details on how to enter, see www.sweetandmaxwell/stroud) and win will receive a copy of Stroud's dictionary; however, the first journalist to win will be 'rewarded' with two tickets to see Jeffrey Archer's new play, 'The Accused'.

Now that is what we call abuse.