Now then, what's all this nonsense about pay rises?

Has the law against demanding money with menaces been repealed? Or is it just that the law does not apply to those paid to enforce it? For some boys and girls in blue are threatening to strike for pay, which just happens to be illegal.

Everyone blames the imbroglio on Jacqui Smith. And certainly the Home Secretary's attempt to stagger the 2.5 per cent rise recommended by the arbitration tribunal shows bad faith, even if it is to fund recruitment of more police. It reduces the value of the rise to 1.9 per cent and makes an absurdity of going to arbitration. Jack Straw, privately of course, must be calling this a 'Horlicks'.

But at the risk of asking the unaskable, how hard done by are the rozzers? Sergeants earn £36,021, five grand more than secondary school teachers, who study for a degree and - judging by a typical classroom - have to cope with fairly similar levels of lawlessness.

As for police pensions, they are generous even for the public sector. A bobby can retire on a full pension as young as 48 and a half - against 60 in the health and education services - on half final salary, plus a lump sum of two-and-a-half times final salary. It sure beats a gold carriage clock, and is again substantially better than other state employees. Fewer police now retire early through injury, and one must beware urban myths, but myriad are the yarns of officers injured out of the force only for them to discover a new vitality, and job .

The image presented of police life by Ventris, the old boy who mans the police station on Heartbeat, is no doubt dated; his keen investigation of the Vernons pools coupon disturbed only by the need to apprehend some rich tea biscuits to dunk into a mug of Tetley. And claims that the biggest culprits when it comes to wasting police time are in fact police are equally unkind, though police don't always do themselves any favours by sending officers to arrest a stripper dressed as a policeman: they waited to brandish their handcuffs until the naked police impersonator was seen - we are informed - 'wielding his truncheon', which officers deemed a 'dangerous weapon'.

And it is hardly the fault of police that much of their day is frittered away filling forms about the ethno-sexual-social make up of the criminal classes they are too busy to catch; it is New Labour, not Old Bill, which created this monstrous bureaucracy.

But it was one of the less heroic, conveniently forgotten, aspects of Thatcherism that while the so-called Iron Lady delighted in dragging those toilers she associated with Labour into the modern age, she appeared more lenient towards those she associated with the Conservatives. So she backed away from reforming the Victorian working practices of lawyers and police, thus exposing herself to the charge of double standards and undermining the legitimacy of her revolution. And the irony of officers muttering about illegal strikes will not be lost on the former miners whom police stopped from secondary picketing.

There is, for once, a way out of the Horlicks. If Smith scrapped ID cards - which she will probably be forced to do anyway - she could engage 10,000 more police; far more than the handful she will hire by trimming pay rises.

This would cut crime way more than ID cards. Then, almost with the loose change, she could honour her obligations on police pay. And finally, in return for such a generous settlement, police might be prevailed upon to drag their working practices and retirement rules into the modern age.

Wouldn't that help everyone stay on the right side of the thin blue line, eh officer?

England manager a big job? A big headache, I'd say

Why is 'the England job' referred to incessantly as 'the biggest job in football'? Not since Simon Le Bon announced that as a wordsmith he was rapidly catching up with Shakespeare have we seen quite so much confidence based on, well, a precious talent not yet fully formed. No one would claim being Prime Minister of Britain was still 'the biggest job in politics'.

'Big' does not mean best, or intelligent people would eat Big Macs and aspire to look like Nicholas Soames. And if it did mean best, then the biggest job in football would be managing Brazil, Italy, France, Portugal, Russia, Croatia ... (continue the list at your leisure).

If it simply means 'best paid' then that tells its own story: that it is actually such a dreadful job we have to pay over the odds to tempt Fabio Capello. And that's before it even comes to the football; just picture the expression etched across John Terry's face when the Italian talks the no-nonsense centre half through his extensive collection of modern art.

For 'biggest' job, read 'hardest'. Sure, day-to-day the job is pretty cushy - watching the odd match between the odd dribble through the typing pool. But in no other country is there quite such a gulf between the expectations of fans and the ability of its players to fulfil them.

So, my dears, Paddington and his pals all lived unhappily ever after

Paddington Bear is to be granted a new story. And as is the fashion for children's literature, this is to be made more life-like. That is, grim. So the bear's creator, Michael Bond, says poor Paddington will be interrogated by police about his iffy immigration status.

What next? Pooh Bear moves on from honey after Christopher Robin introduces him to the joys of smack? Goldilocks put on a government register after being found in Baby Bear's bed? Rupert Bear outed after a quite extraordinary adventure with Michael Barrymore? As for the big surprise waiting for the teddy bears when they go down to the woods, well, one bear turns out to be called Mohamed and before they've munched their first sarnie there's a mass stoning going on ...

It can be heavy pounding being innocent these days. But the greater awareness of our children is not entirely negative. My son, aged three, piled up all his toys recently to 'give to the world's poor people'. True, he later decided the world's poor could survive without his favourite sword, but it was a noble gesture.

Alas, all this awareness can grow just too earnest. I've just read a story about how crotchety Father Christmas is, leading my daughter to beg: 'Daddy, please can you block the chimney so Father Christmas can't come into my house?' Still, even if the new Paddington does sound rather like the Harold Pinter remix, the bear should count himself lucky. As a South American immigrant with a penchant for wandering on to the tube for no good reason, it's a good job police marksmen didn't shoot him. Sweet dreams, my darling ...

The real tale of the Princess and the Pa

So, an inquest to reach a conclusion we arrived at a decade earlier might not be quite how I'd invest £10m of public funds, but I'm mildly grateful to the Diana inquest for three quite intriguing twists in this creaking costume drama.

Firstly, it cruelly outs Phil the Duke as quite a nice bloke. Fiendishly, he has harboured his dark secret for 86 years, but 'Pa' comes out of these letters as really rather human. I was editing the Times diary when Diana died and was forever hearing that Philip had referred to her at a private lunch as 'that dreadful woman'. Either Philip is not a monster and merely surrounds himself with lively imaginations, or he is a terrific actor. Either way, his reputation is enhanced.

The second twist is more a reminder. That for all this talk of 'the people's princess', Diana was straight out of the Penelope Keith Finishing School, despite the later lustre of her Fayed-funded role as international playgirl of mystery. Who else would refer to themselves as a 'chick' or write that it was 'a bit of [an] "oh my God" situation!!' Her letters took us back to the Kings Road, circa 1982, of upturned collars and upturned noses. Spooky.

The third was courtesy of Rosa Monckton, Diana's friend. She admitted 'someone close to me is connected with the SIS' (Secret Intelligence Service). Her sister-in-law Nigella Lawson has said she was approached by the security services.

And Monckton's husband, Dominic Lawson, has dismissed as 'complete rubbish' claims that he was an MI6 spy with the codename 'Smallbrow'. ('Highbrow', surely?) And then there is Monckton's brother, Christopher, whose family have done discreet service for the Crown since the first Queen Elizabeth and who now devotes his life to proving climate change is all a conspiracy got up by environmentalists. Hmm. Is that another inquiry I feel coming on?

· Delighted, naturally, that Charlie Falconer is joining Lord Goldsmith in opposing Gordon Brown's ruse to extend detention without charge to 42 days. Are we to take it, then, that as Lord Chancellor, Falconer argued tenaciously behind the scenes against attempts by his ex-flatmate Tony Blair to bang folk up without charge for 90 days, and we simply never got to hear about it?

· He is the newscaster with a keen eye for the weather forecast: Ed Mitchell, late of Sky, now sleeping under the stars. His life could scarcely be worse, although thanks to all the coverage, he seems to be back reporting live from his park bench. Perhaps he will soon dine at The Ivy, feted as a celebrity tramp. Still, his tale of being down and out in Hove can only horrify the middle classes: with a shaming 400,000 Brits homeless, there are many 'white-collar' tramps. If Mitchell, why not you or me?