Now you've gone and destroyed the bar....

When they told me the bar was dying, I thought they were joking.

Ho ho ho, I thought to myself. That just means that if you become a Barrister these days you won't earn £200,000. Instead you'll have to survive on a mere £120,000 instead. That is what I thought, how wrong could I be? Answer: incredibly wrong.

What got me thinking about this was when I saw a guy driving around, who studied at Oxford before going on to the same law school as me. He had got pupillage in a local set (a highly respected one) and was working in the independent bar. He was still practicing, I knew this because he had the White book on his parcel shelf.

So what was he driving? "A Porsche of course! He's a barrister after all! He went to Oxford, he worked his butt off, he is minted!" You're thinking. But no. Not a Porsche, or an Aston martin. Not even a Mondeo or a BMW 3 series. He was driving a banger, no seriously a real banger. Something that would probably cost between £500 and £1,000. Worse than that, I first noticed his car (when he wasn't even in it) because it was tucked away on a side street with the hazards on.... that is to say, he was dodging having to pay to park.

This is a fully qualified barrister, pretty much the top of his class in everything and after 3 years of working he can't afford to pay for parking in a city centre and this isn't in London, this is in a provincial city. "This is taking the mick" I thought to myself. So I decided to do more investigation.

I started talking to other people who also went to law school with me and started working out what the wages were like. The answer: the bar is dead. Well, ok, not dead, there are still people working as barristers, but basically if the bar was a man, he would be stumbling toward the guillotine wondering why he has not been put out of his misery.

"No, you're wrong, I've read about a barrister who charges £200 per hour!" I hear you say. Well thats nice for them, but who cares, of course newspapers are going to focus on the 30 barristers who earn more than £2,000,000. But lets face it the best of any profession is always going to be paid far more than the rest of them. And if we're going to take the highest salaries of the job why not talk about the board of Barclay's Bank who are paid over £8,000,000? The best footballers are paid £30,000,000 but these are always the freaks, the unusual amounts, that is why they are getting reported, if they were getting a normal wage, it wouldn't be in the news.

It was reported not long ago that a man called Paul Dalton charges £5,000 to wash cars. There are usually cars worth a fortune in themselves and cannot be trusted to some chump with a sponge. Now to look at the top barristers and think that all are well paid is to look at Paul Dalton and think that if you get a bucket and sponge you can have £5,000 in your pocket by lunch.

"Fine, but I still know a Barrister who makes £80-100,000." Really? Do you? I guess that sounds like a lot of money but lets put this in perspective, if you are the manager of a Tesco Extra you get £100,000 p/a and a company car. Now lets compare the lifestyles, if you are the manager of Tesco and you make a mistake the tomatoes have to be thrown away and you have to bring in new ones. If you make a mistake as a barrister then someone may lose 15 years of their life when they shouldn't, a man will never get to see his own children again or a murder will walk the streets once more. I don't know about you, but I know which one I'd rather have on my conscience; rotten tomatoes all the way.

"But £80,000 is still a good salary", well first of all, you don't earn £80,000. You start off earning £10,000-£15,000. That is about the same as what you earn while you're working in a shop full time. There are people who work at factories who earn similar amounts and they don't have to pay chambers fees or pay for the fuel to get to court 50 miles away. Some people in Criminal sets (the worst paying) in London, don't even make a profit for the first few years, that is to say their wage does not even cover the cost of living. Which means only those whose parents are going to sub them for the next 3-5 years can even attempt to work as a Barrister.

Does it even pay later on? As I was investigating I found out about one barrister excited at the prospect that by the time they were 40 they may be making £40,000! Wow, how good would that be? Except if you're any good at what you do you could be making £50,000 working for a company.... and if you're not any good then you really shouldn't be working at the bar.

The fact is the only thing left at the bar is the reputation. The latent respect for a profession once filled with intelligent, wonderful people who could use words in ways so brilliant that they alter the mind of the person to whom they speak: persuasion. This one strand of dignity remains in the bar, it means that when you tell someone you're a barrister you receive instant respect. I dearly hope that this gets destroyed sooner rather than later. Why? You ask. Simple at the moment the best people are drawn to law, and then they leave realising it is an empty shell of what it used to be. Those who remain do so either for the faux status or because they are incompetent and they get a good living for an incompetent person. Either way if this is striped away people will start to realise that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

There does need to be reform in the law. I think, this may already be on its way. I worked for a advocacy company and as a starting wage (because I moved) I was earning a decent wage. This was far more than the £10,000 that one gets for their pupillage year. I was doing the same work, I was getting paid more and I was hired on merit by a firm, not on neoptism by chambers. This it appears is far more sensible.

It could well be that some of the bread and butter of the junior bar, £60 applications for this and that, have now been usurped by advocacy companies and therefore there isn't the critical mass of work to sustain a junior member of the bar like there used to be. If there was much more working going around previously I can imagine a day when a junior used to make a decent wage. But not any more.

The problem is, Chambers have made them almost impossible to defend. Advocacy companies can provide (albeit infrequent) work to those people who are based outside of the cities with chambers. They can also dedicate staff to recruitment and essentially they hold little sway for neopotism.

It appears that the advocacy companies take on more people than they can actually provide with sufficient work. Then those who can last and succeed do and those who don't leave, leaving you with those who have lasted.

This system isn't perfect, it means that many advocates don't have much money. But then, how is that different to the rest of the bar? In fact the only thing that should change is the name. Why is a trained barrister who does a barristers work said to be 'not practicing' just because the got into a firm instead of chambers?

But the benefit of this system is that people are taken on and those who want it badly enough can stay around. It isn't glamourous, it isn't well paid but it is a bit more fair.

So you don't like cuts? Who does?

There seems to be a lot of whinging going on at the moment about cut backs to the governments budget.

Every other day there is a document or statement made by a member of a publicly funded department or organisation that says if they are forced to make cut backs [insert public service] will suffer. It is almost like they are taking it in turns, each week a new department.

Yes, we know that cut backs make services suffer, well, that is when they are in the region of 25%. Frankly small cuts of around 5% should make no difference at all if departments do things efficiently but that is another point. The fact of the matter is however, and listen when I say this, because people don't seem to understand it: WE DON'T HAVE ANY CHOICE. Well technically that is a lie, would could just refuse to cut back and then go bankrupt. But then everyone will lose their job and we will be in anarchy. It won't be a case of "I can't afford a new car" rather "there is not point in having a new car because it will just get petrol bombed in the next set of riots".

Cuts of this magnitude suck, but then the reason why they are having to be made is because we over spent in the first place. No one complained when Labour was piddling away hundreds of millions over the years, while claiming to have abolished boom and bust (a natural and inevitable economic occurrence).

Lets do the figures to show what I mean.

You are Mr UK. You earn £100 per week and it costs £100 per week to run the country properly.

When taking advice from Mr Labour you start spending £120 per week meaning you have to borrow £20. You keep doing this until you have a dept of, say £70.

You still earn only £100 per week and it still costs £100 to run the country properly and yet you now have to find more money to pay off the £70.

You could tax more, but that will just kill more companies who won't be able to afford it. So the only thing you can really do is cut back to spending £90 on the country and use the extra £10 to pay off debt. This means that something essential (like the police) has to be cut back more than it ought to be. It is bad for the country, but it is tough luck, you piddled the money that you borrowed away and now you have to pay it back.

So yes, our public services will be cut back too much, but that is the only remedy, if you don't like it you should have kicked off when the government was spending all the money during the good times... but you didn't.

Strikes on the Tube, how refreshing.

"Everyone, stop using your cars and get on public transport!" The message has been barked by politicians and green campaigners for years. It always has been and always will be, unless someone faces the inconvenient truth, or should I say truths.

Politicians want us all to use public transport despite the fact they all have private cars, if you're a minister yours will be driven by someone else. So why don't they use public transport? Well, simply put, it is not reliable and even if it was it is not safe for people of power and it does not convey power or status.... the exact same reasons why many people can't use it. But we will ignore that for now, that is not my point today.

My point today focuses on the tube strikes. London (and big cities generally) are the only places where public transport works: FACT. I'm not saying that as soon as a bus leaves London for Guildford the engine stops, I mean as soon as that critical mass of people disappears buses become too infrequent, stops too distant and the whole system just ceases to function. It all becomes hugely expensive and hugely time consuming. There just isn't the economy of scale to support public transport in the countryside any further than some small buses to take the old and the young around when they have no deadlines to meet.

But the Tube does work in London, even buses, which I think are pointless, generally, work very well in London. They are excellent. The Tube may be smelly, hot and often crowded, but the fact is that even at busy times one is able to navigate around one of the greatest cities in the world without too much problem and do it a lot quicker than in a car (if you need proof think about that Top Gear episode?).

So what is my complaint? Well lets pretend we live in a world where public transport works everywhere. I know, that takes a lot of imagination but humour me, if you will. All the people who work on that public transport will be members of unions. Unions will inevitably have as their heads self important people with absolutely no concept of commerce but rather the communist ideals that somehow their members are entitled to do their work, and where there is no work they should be paid anyway regardless of the inefficiency that produces. I am convinced that efficiency is the very last thing on the mind of a Union leader. Currently Tube workers are going to go on strike. I don't know what working as a Tube driver is like, I'm told their wage is around £40,000 and they holidays are good to compensate for the shift system but I don't think that is enough to make any real decision about their working lives. What I do know is that their Union is the most militant around and even people from the US brought in to help found that their attitude seemed like they lived in the 1970s.

As a result London's transport network is ceasing to function while they blackmail their employers into capitulating with their demands. Frankly I think this should be banned. The police aren't allowed to strike because it is essential that they work. Likewise the Tube is essential to the running of the London. They shouldn't be able to strike without some form of external acquiescence. I don't know if people are going to be able to get to work while the strike is on, but if they can't that is not the same as BA workers going on strike. There are no other Tube operators and buses won't be able to take up the slack.

....amazingly I still haven't got to my point, how shocking. My point is this, if we all used public transport the Unions would be able to make whatever demands they wanted. Bus drivers would be wearing Armani overalls and being paid more than your local GP. Fine... I exaggerate, but truthfully if everyone used public transport the Unions would be able to make largely whatever demands they wanted. And lets not pretend they wouldn't go against public pressure, everyone knows the British Airways strikes are moronic in a time of recession, but they still happen. Logic does not constrain strikes it seems.

So what should be done? If we can't use public transport because it is ineffective outside of major cities and even if it worked it would be liable to be an easy soft spot for unions, what should we use?

Years ago people used to drive cars. Saloon cars. Cars with 4 doors, 5 seats and a big boot. Today these Saloon cars are even bigger. The BMW 3 series is now bigger than a 5 series used to be years ago, and why? Who knows. 90% of the population these days don't need a car bigger than a 3 series. Everyone has their own car. In years gone by Mum, Dad, brother and sister would all be in the same car. Now Mum and Dad have their own car, the average birthday per woman is only 1.8 and as soon as brother and sister are 17 they get their own car, either a banger or a Ford Ka. So what is the point in having big cars?

Who needs a 5 series? Who needs a 7 series? These cars are obsolete. If you need to show status and wealth then why don't we start producing cars that are small and supremely expensive? Makes gold plated Corsas for all I care.

Private transport is here and here to stay. I wish the government would realise that and get on with it. The sooner they do the sooner we can start pouring money into real solutions to traffic problems like motorcycle lanes or car parking for those with small light cars. The smaller cars get the more confident people will be to get smaller again and this will decrease congestion (see what they have done in Tokyo) and decrease emissions. Who knows eventually we can get rid of those big buses too.