Quintin Jardine's blog

Half an hour ago, I took a call on my mobile, from a number I didn’t recognise. The caller advised me that he was from ‘Personal Injury Lawyers’, or some such, and that was as far as he got. I am afraid that I was less than patient, advising him that I was in Spain, and that answering his unwanted call was costing me money. I intimated that if he ever did it again he would be in need of his own services.

I know, I shouldn’t have taken it out on the lad. He has a job, where thousands don’t, even if it is in the Derek and Clive class. (RIP Jayne Mansfield.) Instead I should call the chief executive of the Law Society and rip into him, as should everyone else who is as pissed off as I am with cold calls and texts from repellant ambulance chasing lawyers. There was a time when lawyers were not allowed to advertise their services. That may have been a little restrictive but the profession has gone to the other extreme. There is no escape from the bastards.

I have tried to do something about it, through the legal services ombudsman, but its complaint machinery seems designed to protect rather than stop such abuses, and spent so long waiting for ‘live chat’ that I began to suspect the the Zombie Apocalypse has already swept through London. My next step will probably be the aforementioned Law Society itself, and its Scottish equivalent, but I don’t expect too much joy from them, as they set the abuse in motion in the first place by voting to give their profession free rein.

After that? Maybe I’ll have a chat with George Kerevan, my new MP.