Employment law means you can’t lose your job just for lying or cheating, or boorish unpleasantness or immorality. It seems you must first be warned that these are against company policy.

There are exceptions. If your wickedness also falls into one of the new capital crime categories (i.e. old fashioned racial or sexual insensitivity) you might be gone by lunchtime. Otherwise you’ll have to be caught with your hand in the till, or convicted beyond reasonable doubt, or so stupid that you ignore three warnings and fail to take advantage of some tiny ‘inappropriateness” of procedure.

Clint Rickard’s case probably falls into the capital crime exception to the general immunity from sacking. Schollum’s video could qualify any cops involved for both that exception and the stupidity one.

But perhaps they’ll be reprieved. Sooner or later  someone important will remember the Wishart factor.

It sounds as if the Schollum video shows nothing much that would be morally distinguishable from the consensual depravities alleged by Mr Ian Wishart to be enjoyed by a sitting Cabinet Minister. It could hardly do to hound some humble policemen into early retirement for their unpleasant off duty  proclivities, when there has been a resolute adherence to the order – “do nothing, pretend no one has said anything”,  in relation to similar allegations about one of the highest in the land.