I voted for them in the last general election and they seemed to start well, but my faith in Bunter Johnson’s government is beginning to waver. Before they came to power, one of their pledges was to stop prosecutions of soldiers who served in Northern Ireland during the so called ‘troubles.’

Yet later this month, seventy-eight year old Dennis Hutchings will come to trial on a charge of attempted murder. The government are strangely quiet about it but surely this must be wrong? The IRA and other terrorist groups were responsible for well over three thousand deaths during that time while British military personnel accounted for three hundred and sixty one. Every needless death is a tragedy but surely there should be some balance in justice.

Mr Hutchings’s case follows the fatal shooting of a twenty-seven year old man with a mental age of between six and ten in 1974. After a three-month police inquiry, patrol leader Hutchings and two others were cleared of any criminal act. He was investigated again in 2011 and police concluded that ‘there was no ground for taking any action.’ However, despite that assurance, in 2016 he was charged with attempted murder. 

Meanwhile, over two hundred IRA suspects, linked to nearly three hundred murder investigations are exempt from fear of prosecution due to ‘letters of comfort’ given to possible terrorists, many who were on the run, by Tony Blair’s government in 1999. Blair justified the letters as crucial to keep the peace accord on track. 

Terrible things happen in any war, particularly guerrilla or terrorist conflicts. In the heat of the moment, fear, weariness and adrenaline combine to make killers out of the meekest of men, but it all happens in an instant and how men like Mr Hutchings are supposed to remember exactly what happened forty-five years later, I have no idea.

I do feel though that this farce of a trial is a disgrace to the British nation. Way back in the nineteenth century, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about how the ‘Tommy’ is despised in times of peace but is relied upon and courted when the fighting breaks out and ordinary folk need protecting.

Has nobody learned in two hundred years?

I have been fortunate in life inasmuch as I have never lost a child of my own. I have enormous sympathy for anyone who has and my heart goes out to them, but of late, we have heard a great deal about how stretched for cash and resources are the Metropolitan Police.

I can understand them feeling somewhat aggrieved at the additional costs of keeping the Royal Biscuit and his family protected, but they seem to lose sight of priorities. It has been nearly thirteen years since Madeleine McCann disappeared in Portugal. That was a terrible time for the family and the British people were largely full of sympathy. But twelve million pounds has already been spent by police searching for her, with another three hundred thousand last year. Now the Met has asked for more. Thousands of children go missing every year and their parents endure the same anguish that the McCanns have, but rarely – if ever – has so much money been poured into searching for one little girl. Painful as it is for Kate and Gerry McCann, there has to come a moment when the cash-strapped police force draws a line.

Quite apart from the regular preachers of the Woke brigade, it seems that dissent in any form cannot be tolerated nowadays. Let me give you a couple of particularly daft examples. A market trader in Loughborough was warned by the local council in 2017 that following a complaint, she must stop selling ‘offensive’ items on her stall.

The ‘offending’ objects were pottery mugs decorated with images of 12th Century monks, the Knights Templar. Because they had murdered Muslims during the Crusades, claimed the complainant, any Muslim shopper passing the stall might be offended.

When the stall-holder ignored the warning because she felt it seemed ridiculous – as it undoubtedly was –  the council withdrew her licence to trade anywhere in the town.

Meanwhile in Bristol, police officers painted their fingernails blue to highlight the problem of ‘slavery in nail bars.’ These were experienced coppers for God’s sake!

When this daft stunt attracted witty comments on Twitter such as, ‘What about nailing some criminals for a change?’ the pathetic senior officers of the Avon and Somerset Police reacted by issuing a statement saying: ‘If anyone found these comments offensive, please report them to Twitter. If you feel that you were targeted and are the victim of a hate crime, please report this to us. We take this issue extremely seriously.’

A few weeks later, the Church of England instructed its nearly five thousand primary schools that regardless of parental wishes, boys as young as five should be told that they were allowed to wear high heels, tiaras or tutus, and that girls should not have to wear skirts, so as to avoid offending ‘transgender’ children who might wish to change sex. 

When will the twenty-first century world wake up to what it is doing to itself? I forget who it was that originally said ‘ the law is an ass’ but he – am I allowed to say that I wonder? – would doubtless take that back today.

The average ass shows far more common sense than the average person, while our politicians promise the world but quickly forget their promises.

Perhaps Private Frazer was correct – we are all doomed!