I was humiliated by my lawyer today. Not a happy experience. But they have the power and sometimes, you have to do what you have to do.

I have known the man for thirty years but he felt the need to humiliate me in front of his staff. I had to prove my identity.

Since I'm sailing close to the wind in some of my dealings with the Argyll and Bute Council he decided that he needed me to sign his firm's Terms of Business letter, now mandatory by decree of The Law Society of Scotland. So there I was in front of the reception desk in his Colquhoun Square, Helensburgh offices with passport, driving license and utility bill in hand. All set to prove my identity to someone I have known for thirty years. But I couldn't. The utility bill I had was from Vodofone. Not good enough. It has to be a bill for a land based line. I have a two part driving license. I carry the plastic bit which has my photo and address on it. Not good enough. It had to be the paper bit.

As you can imagine, by this time, the blood pressure is a couple of notches higher than it was when I started this identity parade. I went home, got the extra couple of bits of bumph and returned to their offices. With all of the right boxes ticked, I'm a solid citizen again and when I make the one phone call after being arrested, my lawyer will take the call.

Fortunately, I have been dealing with this sort of nonesense for a while and don't take it personally. However there are those who do and take it out on the reception staff who are only doing the job the firm partners pay them to do.

The bottom line? The lawyers of Scotland are allowing their customers to be humiliated and their staff abused because they won't stand up for their rights.

While you might think that I was the one being humiliated, not so.

The lawyers in the law firms in the small towns, the villages and cities of Scotland are being told by some anal compulsive bureacrat in Edinburgh that they lack the professional judgement to decide if they are dealing with a shady character. They don't have any doubts about the identity of 99% of their clients. There may be doubts about 1% who should be asked to prove their identity.

If the 1% alone were asked to prove their identity, no doubt they would claim discrimination. In this PC world we live in, that isn't an option. So the 99% who are respectable, upright members of the community have to prove who they are.

Lawyers who spend years in higher education, earn £170 an hour and up have had their balls cut off (metaphorically speaking with no sexist agenda). Castrated by the rule of law which says that they can abuse their clients in this mindless way. In turn, they ignore the abuse this causes their staff. All in the cause of mindless obedience to a dictat from on high.

The lawyers of Scotland are spineless wimps. Watch out for falsetto notes wafting on the summer breeze from the legal chambers of the land.

In any business, the needs of the customer or client are paramount with the protection of the staff from abusive behaviour a close second. The lawyers of Scotland need to wake up to the reality of the 21st Century. For 99% of their clients, the requirement to hold identification on file is a humiliating and pointless exercise. I don't see why I should suffer because 1% of their clients are crooks and they don't have the balls to confront their problem head on.