It’s hard to deny that the police have a hard job to do, dealing with some of the scummiest elements in society and putting their own lives at risk to save people from serious harm.

Which probably explains why most coppers prefer to avoid such dangerous situations, and instead arrest non-scummy people for entirely harmless drunken idiocy. After all, unarmed, non-driving middle-aged professional types who’ve had a few pints are unlikely to do you much harm, beyond possibly hurting your feelings when they’re arrogant at you.

The drunken judge in this particular case would have been better advised to avoid the “do you know who I am” / “my cousin’s a QC” routine. But I can’t help thinking the main issue here is one of the relevant policemen being idiots, trying to get one over on people who they perceive as their ‘superiors’, and utterly mishandling the situation.

Of course, this may be more of a reflection on the characters of some of the uniformed policemen that people of my acquaintance and I have met, rather than an entirely reasonable assessment of this particular case.