It is worth remembering that the Council of Europe includes many nations whose record of human rights, justice, call it what you will has been dismal despite all these fine words. One of its member states, Russia executed one of its own citizens without trial right here in London and another one, France persecuted Roma people. They both got away with it.

The regimes in Maoist China and the Soviet Union along with many other dictatorships had written constitutions giving guarantees of all manner of good things such as religious freedom, freedom of expression, etc. but as we know these rights were routinely abused.

I used to admire the Magna Carter and or Bill of Rights but the guarantees enshrined in them are now overruled every day thanks to our EU membership.

Perhaps politicians should not concern themselves with enshrining this and that and instead work at getting rid of the old declarations, conventions and constitutions so that the paper work is less confusing and we all know where we stand. When the Israelites broke their covenant, Moses smashed up the tablets of stone on which the document was written. Isn’t it time to do the same with our backlog of declarations, charters, conventions and constitutions?

Politicians do like to overwrite laws again and again. They do not seem to get it that it is the will to uphold laws which is the key. Take for example the widespread problem of binge-drinking which makes the centres of our cities and towns so unpleasant and which creates mayhem and distress for any sober person seeking medical attention at an A&E department on a Saturday night.

Forests have felled to supply the paper for all the opinions about changes to the existing laws; the reports about it, the reports of speeches about it, the articles written, the minutes of the committees considering it, etc. but we already have plenty of laws. There is, drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace, affray, resisting arrest, drinking under the age limit, selling alcohol to an underage person but the problem persists, as does the pontificating. These drunks are not armed with nuclear weapons and even if they were, they would not be in the right state of mind to use them effectively. Why can’t politicians just sort it out?