Robin Davis rightly complains that with so may law firms bailing out of publicly funded work it is unlikely that those firms will ever be enticed back into the system (see [2004] Gazette, 19 February, 16).

While I have every sympathy with him, surely politically that is the point.

If you can erode the supply, you can reduce the demand.

If you can extinguish the supply, you have the perfect political answer - 'we have reviewed the position and would dearly like to reinstate whole tranches of legal aid, but the lawyers who have left the system are now doing private work and they refuse to return.'

I doubt wether either myself or Mr Davis will be quite the last legal aid lawyer, as depicted in a recent cartoon in the Gazette, mounted and displayed behind glass.

However, it is a position to which I am well suited, as I already consider myself well and truly stuffed.

Graham Guerin, Hooper Holt & Co, Redhill, Surrey