The police are a law unto themselves

The journos weren’t very impressed with Nicola Sturgeon’s house. Never mind the plod staring like morons at her barbecue or heaving out sacks of half-completed pools coupons to their summer marquee on the front lawn – the southern hacks were more interested in the paucity of this real estate. Her house was, we were assured, ‘modest’ and ‘humble’ and ‘unfashionable’, and most damningly of all, a ‘new-build’. Actually, not most damningly of all – that would be ‘on a new-build estate’. They were clearly appalled that it wasn’t a Georgian rectory in three acres of manicured lawns with a cottage garden, or that it didn’t have a basement kitchen-diner.

Are these people not aware that this is the sort of house where their readers, viewers and listeners live – if they are lucky – and so the scorn is both insulting and a bit of a giveaway? Sturgeon’s gaff is valued at £360,000 – almost double the average price of a home in Scotland and about £70,000 dearer than the average across the UK.