Yellow pack – what’s that then your honour?

THE row between Justice Minister David Ford and the legions of lawyers rumbles on with impoverished legal eagles having to auction the Astin Martin and buy some of the cheaper Scotch from supermarket shelves.

Amidst the tooing and froing a curious phrase emerged from one of the legal combatants in this curious strike action. He alleged that the Minister wanted “Yellow Pack justice”.

Younger listeners and viewers will, no doubt have been bemused by that turn-of-phrase from Pearse MacDermott of the Solicitors Criminal Bar Association.

For those of you who recall the halcyon days of Stewarts and Crazy Prices supermarkets, Yellow Pack products were own label products deliberately marketed as being cheap and cheerful without any frills.

So, it seems that Mr MacDermott chose an apt metaphor in his allegation.

But wait a cotton-picking moment, Yellow Pack goods slipped from the shelves around 20 years ago.

We can deduce from this that perhaps it is the case that Mr MacDermott has not done any food shopping in supermarkets for around 20 years, as he has someone do it for him.

Or was it a very deliberate attempt to force those who were too young to remember Stewarts and Crazy Prices to extrapolate the metaphor, thereby achieving a tortuous victory...

We’re not sure which it was, but it was a strange choice of words, but still one that caught the mood of this increasingly rancorous dispute.

Still, now the English firms are threatening to poach the home turf, we’ll see how firm some of the law firms hold as revenue trickles away to some solicitor from across the North Channel.