When party leaflets drop through the letterbox before an election none of them say "When elected we propose to chop down all the fruit trees along your road in case someone slips on the fruit and sues us." But that is what the council in Havering, East London, plans to do at a cost of £150,000 of its council taxpayers' money.

And the reason that they don't tell us of their intended legally defensive initiatives is because they have a pretty shrewd idea that we will decline to vote for them as they are clearly potty.

Nor, for similar reasons, do they say "Your vote will guarantee that we site our speed cameras in places that will really irritate you all because they are demonstrably about revenue gathering rather than accident prevention. Furthermore when you draw this to our attention we will refuse to let you know the conviction rate (or Income Stream as we refer to it).

"Who do you think you are? You've had your say and in five years you can have another go, but we won't tell you then either!"

I am sure that prospective Sussex councillors promised any number of things but somehow contrived to omit to promise to ban the use of egg boxes in handicraft and art "in order to reduce the (non-existent) risk of salmonella poisoning."

A Lewes School has been reluctantly compelled to follow this inane ruling from the mad hatter and March hare whom the good folk of Lewes have clearly elected as their local representatives and who have underlined their credentials as comedy bureaucrats by banning the use of toilet rolls for similar health reasons. I am surprised they allow us to bring our nasty germ-ridden children into their schools!

I urge a university to commission immediately a research study into the effects on thitherto sensible and public spirited citizens of the post-elective euphoria that induces the delusional imperative to create and enforce unnecessary and ludicrous regulations.

Perhaps they could start by examining the decision of the British Board of Film Classification to prevent under 12s from viewing the recent Doctor Who episode in which a Dalek is kept in chains and maltreated, on the basis that it encourages children to see violence as an acceptable means of resolving disputes.

Dalek "Exterminate, exterminate!"

Bureaucrat "No conciliate, arbitrate AAAARGH!"

The rest of us, (trying hard not to smirk), "Oh dear!"