The police are faced with an increasingly difficult environment in which to do the job that we expect them to do.

It is not just "Why aren't they out catching criminals, instead of penalising motorists for minor traffic infringements?" although that undoubtedly plays a part in the public's perception that the force is less user-friendly than it used to be.

It is more about the fact that understaffing and underfunding have moved the policeman further away from the citizen.

Excluding the seemingly abundant supply of traffic police, most of us only get to see a policeman if we go to a football match or report a crime.

And if you report a crime like criminal damage or vandalism, you get the definite feeling that you are creating a statistic and not instigating a quest for a solution or justice.

I recently asked the police to help me trace the driver of a vehicle that pulled out in front of a car driven by my wife causing her to swerve and hit another car.

No one got the registration number, but we were able to discover from the premises they were leaving the name of the firm for which the driver worked.

The firm refused to identify the driver to either us or to the police, who then wrote to me saying they could do no more without the registration number.

That wouldn't happen in Morse or The Bill and maybe that is part of the problem. TV cops are a hard act to follow and we don't get shown them working their way through all that paperwork.

The police now have to do their job within the same restraints faced by our teachers targets, endless paperwork and codes of practice.

Combine this with a fear of litigation and wall-to-wall Health and Safety regulations and you apply a stranglehold on law enforcement that the streetwise ungodly can and do use to their advantage.

Local police stations have all been gradually depopulated and when you ring them, you end up speaking to someone in Milton Keynes.

And I don't understand why this has happened.

The standard answer is that there were fewer of us 40 years ago, so we were easier to police on a local basis. But that doesn't hold water.

More people, more tax, therefore more money for more policemen surely?

And, in all the publicity about the jailed and now mercifully released teacher who was provoked by a bunch of yobs to the point that she discharged an airgun in their direction, I haven't heard a word about any action against her tormentors. The inescapable conclusion is that the average citizen who puts a foot wrong is a much softer policing target than the habitual criminal who knows the ropes.

Somehow we have to re-write the script.