Madam, – The interesting article on lobbyists (Weekend, March 27th) omitted three crucial points.
1. Whether or not one accepts that politicians have no idea how to run a country properly, they at least have dozens of highly paid bureaucrats and consultants to tell them what to do. Lobbyists are therefore either superfluous to the good running of the country or they are trying to reverse decisions that the bureaucrats might make on behalf of the people but not in the interests of certain large corporations. 2. If lobbyists are not out to corrupt what little remains of the democratic process but in fact trying desperately to get bureaucrats to do the right thing by the country, we should clearly get rid of the incompetent and, therefore, superfluous bureaucrats. 3. A register of lobbyists in the cesspool that is politics today would be as effective as giving an Aids patient an aspirin. It was probably suggested by a bureaucrat so as to sound useful but not to risk achieving anything. – Yours, etc,