Don’t usually do politics but I loved this letter to the Daily Telegraph sent me by Roger Jones:

The Cowpat Police

SIR – A big idea that David Cameron’s Conservatives should get to work on is to put an end to the compliance culture.

I am a vicar, a chartered surveyor and a farmer. I have the diocese and county council making me prove every five minutes that I am not a pervert. I have the Government and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors poking their noses into the running of my business and ordering me to prove that my clients do not all act as bankers for al-Qaeda, and that I won’t run off with my tenants’ deposits.

My cows have compulsory passports. I cannot bury them if they drop dead, and now I must have a poo policy to prove that they will not plop too much in each paddock. All this has appeared under Messrs Blair and Brown.

If David Cameron wants to mend a broken society, he must get government and all the other self-appointed busybodies off our breaking backs so that we can regain the courage to be neighbourly, and to serve each other without constantly looking over our shoulder.

I want to be trusted again, according to my reputation, not according to the number of boxes that have been ticked.

Rev Simon Shouler
Long Clawson, Leicestershire