Obiter was encouraged to learn that the ‘below-the-line’, ever feisty commentators on the Gazette’s website are not wasting their cyber-breath.

In fact, their sometimes witty, often acerbic, musings on legal developments are being picked up far beyond the environs of 113 Chancery Lane.

Bigwigs from the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Competition and Markets Authority and the chief legal ombudsman revealed their brushes with our readers at last week’s compliance officers conference hosted by the SRA.

CMA assistant director Paul Kellaway read out two of his favourites. One was a comparatively gentle offering dismissing a detailed CMA report into publishing prices as ‘compiled by people who understand the price of everything but the value of nothing’. The next, at the other end of the spectrum, described the CMA as ‘the face of global corruption’ – a tad harsh, surely.

Our favourite, however, was cited by chief ombudsman Kathryn Stone. ‘She doesn’t appear to be wearing a tie,’ one reader sniffed on reading of Stone’s appointment in 2015.

Mmm. If the great and good think those are bad, they should see the comments that our monitoring team is duty-bound to delete.

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