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I resigned as an FCA after 35 years because the ICAEW changed the goalposts and issued a new requirement that I have an expensive practising certificate for work that requires no formal qualifications (tax advice). Not for nothing is an accountant's favourite bookeeping entry i----Debit Cash!

As I do not engage in reserved activities I have managed to stay a non-practising solicitor since 1991. I have just retired but intend to have my name removed from the roll as a pathetic valedictory protest against the antics of the Solicitors Persecution Authority towards others.

We professionals have had it coming to us. To earn a meagre living we have been forced to suffer the SRA, ludicrous and unpaid anti-moneylending gatekeeping for HMG, their destruction of legal aid save for drug dealers and Jack Shepherd, and a PI cartel that has driven out of business not only the incompetent and venal.

Our representative bodies may well be trying to save us from potential HMG nationalisation and reprisals but their confronting the establishment more than deferentially and occasionally would be refreshing.
In the seventies I attracted some vulgar popularity for an article in the Gazette excoriating HMRC for its intellectual dishonesty, a Procrustean approach to what constitutes tax avoidance, and having an insatiable appetite for litigation plus a blank cheque with which to finance it. A tax silk of my acquaintance said: "Someone had to say it Jack. I'm glad it wasn't me".
I've shovelled tons of it but I won't eat any. Naturally ther has been a cost. Most who post here do so anonymously and who can blame them.
So now its just real ale and county cricket, another great institution held in contempt by its Regulators.