How typical this is, too. Whenever normal people are the victims of anything, somehow it is impossible for the police or the authorities to do anything about it.


Anti-social behaviour in your street? So sorry. We'll drive by for two minutes and then never come back, and that's if you're lucky.


Your neighbour smokes illegal drugs in his back garden and perfumes the air with marijuana? Not interested. Burgled? Fill in a form. Protesters stopping you from earning a living? Sorry, but we're too busy. But a convoy of politicians through the streets comes with an arrogant and bullying escort, all motorbikes, whistles and 'Stay Back!', as if it were Vladimir Putin going by in his special Kremlin lane. And an offended transgender person on Twitter can summon teams of cybercops to descend ferociously on a critic, while a man who calls on the IRA to murder the Cabinet gets a gentle, kindly letter, promising he is not in trouble.

Don't you know what the police are for, Stevie? They are there so that them as have nothing shouldn't take anything away from them who have.

Shropshire Lad XL

A. E. Housman - 1859-1936

Into my heart on air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again.