The real villains of the piece are us, the politicians, with our cavalier approach to the trashing of our constituents’ civil liberties. For the past eight months, we have removed these liberties almost without a second thought, relying on the overstretched police to enforce our panoply of new and wretched laws.

I did not vote for these appalling laws but accept that I am part of the political collective that has forced them on our constituents. Merely to suggest that we may be ‘over-cooking the goose’ is to invite the wrath of the ‘high-ups’ in Parliament. It is tantamount to heresy to point out that criminalising parents for seeing their children strikes many as grotesque.