I was alarmed to hear that Alastair Brett had lost his job as legal manager of The Times, after working at the newspaper for 33 years. It appears that he was called in last Friday afternoon and told that he had been sacked.

No reason has been given for his dismissal, prompting speculation that he was sacked for losing too many test cases and costing his employers too much money. The Times has along tradition of fighting points of principle on behalf of newspapers as a whole.

If all this was becoming too expensive , the answer should surely have been to drop the cases -- not the lawyer.