I often ponder about the fundamentals of life, the universe and everything. Why are we here? What’s next? Who is really in charge of it all?

I am not on to pontificate about religion or life after death - not today at least – but to scale down the questions. Even without worrying about spiritual matters, I wonder about what the law actually is.

Ok, I did jurisprudence and constitutional law, and each day I can describe the legal underpinning and remedies of whatever my clients come in to ask about. I can even do the pub debates about ignorance of the law being no defence (though I have always been uneasy about that one – they should teach law as a separate subject in schools from primary 1 onwards. How can you be say a car mechanic without knowing how a car engine is assembled?) .

So what has got me thinking? Bizarrely it was Hazel Blears. I am a pacifist and totally against any form of unnecessary violence , but whenever I see her grinning grin and hear her patronising tone, the phrase “ a face you would never tire of punching” swims up to the surface of my consciousness.

She was one of our lawmakers , in charge of a Government department and in the top stratum of our constitution’s leaders and trustees. But I would not have her to clean my lavvy. It was interesting to read of her ultimate great regret and guilt at resigning before the Euro election, but this will not expunge the sight of her holding up her cheque for £13,000 for the avoided capital gains tax as if she had got one over us instead of being racked by shame.

And that then made me think of the Euro elections. I went into my booth and cast my vote. I know it’s a private matter, but can I reassure you I am not one of the 27,000 who voted for the BNP. I perused the list of parties and the odd individual, and thought to myself what a long and slender string there is from me as a Euro citizen to the levers of power that actually run the Euro zone and have authority over me. Yes the votes add up and then count in causing one person or party to win, and more to lose, but I do not feel empowered at all. It would not have mattered in fact if I had voted or not.

Ok, it would have mattered if thousands or millions or everyone had not voted, but to cut to the chase, I don’t get any sensation of politicians in power really having any daily recollection of being in a job for the benefit and safety of people who voted for them ( or indeed who didn’t vote for them, for and to whom they are equally responsible). I’m not saying they just ignore us and treat us all with contempt, but the organs of state are vast, and remote from the people. Small wonder politicians are wrapped up in their place on party and departmental pecking orders, and get swamped in the insularity and venality of being in whichever parliament they are elected to. I believe there is a definite sense of being “on the inside” when office is taken, instead of being merely a conduit for flow of power up and down between populace and rulers.

Let’s take the thing right back to ground level now. Example - home reports that you now need for selling houses. The Scottish Government’s brilliant hefty crossbow bolt shot right into the heart of an already dying property market comprises an energy assessment, a questionnaire (both excellent things in their own right) and a mandatory souped-up survey, all costing between £350 for a wee flat to £750 or more for a large property before you even put your property on the market. Putting to one side that this was brought in by a minority-elected government after a spectacularly abject failure of a trial, we recently got a letter from the local trading standards office asking us if all the properties we have on our books were in possession of this home report. They are, and I replied to this effect. On the one hand there was no need to reply – I could have binned the circular, but at the end of the spiel it said if I did not answer, they would make an office visit to check.

Now, the libertarian redneck part of me says I won’t let you in. You don’t have a warrant to search my office, and if you have no evidence of me failing in my legal duty, you can F*** off. But for a quiet life I would have co-operated and shown them what they want to see.

We have drifted, if not sleepwalked, into a society which accepts petty - and not so petty- authority without demur or challenge. We are conditioned to it. We don’t have a tradition of equality, but are probably still living in the shadow of a class-based authoritarian society that is based ultimately on the divine right of the monarch, from whose God-appointed reign flows down all levels of authority. Indeed judges and sheriffs in our own courts have a regal panoply of dress, a royal crest above their benches, and are to be addressed in a feudal way. Actually the divine right is just a figleaf for me way back having a bigger and meaner army than you, fellow warlord, if it comes to that.

I never liked calling someone else My Lord (my late father hated it with a passion when he practised) , as … he’s not, he was as solicitor or advocate like me and a commoner, if that’s the right term…… and of course a growing number of them are people I worked with or was at uni with, so a title is even more artificial. And in this 21st Century surely dressing up as a 17th Century gentleman and having to be paid obeisance is past its venerable sell-by date. The gowns , the wigs, the sitting high up above everyone else – all redundant. In modern society respect should be earned, not inherited.

Politicians , judges, and officials throughout our nation should all remember that they are servants, not rulers. Although we have a quirky business of all being subjects of the Crown and not actual citizens, practical governance is on behalf of the common good. So when I see Hazel Blears pontificating arrogantly it make my blood boil. Not only is she in a position of huge privilege, she is there by the trust – now broken - of the rest of us. Her ultimate climbdown and abject apology were appropriate if too late, and only wrenched from her as the last of resorts. All human authority is artificial. Nature only knows the law of the jungle and survival of the fittest. The least our officials can do is to maintain and express humility and gratitude every day.

When a Roman general or emperor came back from the wars and had a triumphal procession through the streets of the eternal city, along with all the captured foreigners , the elephants, the ranks of troops and the golden plunder, he had a wee slave behind him on his chariot whose job was to whisper into his ear “ Remember man that thou are mortal”.

It should be a message stapled to the forehead of everyone with the merest whiff of authority.