Some people may have noticed the happy new guidance released between Christmas and New Year by the National Police Chief’s Council. This guidance to police in England and Wales was that police officers ought to try to go to properties that have been burgled. Even better, they should try to do so within an hour of the burglary being reported.

This seems to me to be an eminently sensible piece of advice. After all, if you get to the scene of a robbery within an hour, you might be able to track down the stolen goods, log evidence while the crime scene is fresh, or even – imagine – find a burglar.

You might wonder why this guidance needed to be given in the first case. After all, there are more than 1,000 break-ins every day in this country. In England and Wales three-quarters of home break-ins lead to no suspect being identified. And Home Office figures suggest that the reality is even worse. According to this data, someone is charged in less than 4 per cent of cases. Which means the percentage who are actually convicted and go to prison for any time is considerably lower than 4 per cent.

The British police seem to have long ago decided to police everything except for crime

When I first saw those figures, I must admit that I started wondering why I chose to make a living as a writer. If I had chosen instead to make burglary my profession then the odds would be overwhelmingly on my side. If I decided to break into someone’s house and make off with their best cutlery, I’d have a 96 per cent chance of not being caught. Which is easier than a normal day’s work. And I could do with some new cutlery. Doubtless a number of people more criminally inclined than me have come to a similar view of the odds.

When you realise that the police take so little interest in home break-ins, you might wonder what they do spend their time doing. And I have one answer. Because if you arrive into Heathrow Terminal 5 these days, you might notice a rather surprising sign put up by the British police. The notice is addressed to ‘Travellers who have been in Israel/Palestinian Territories’ and it says that if you have been in these areas and ‘have witnessed or been a victim of terrorism, war crimes or crimes against humanity, then you can report this to the UK police’.

The notice goes on to say that the UK police are supporting ‘the work of the International Criminal Court, which is investigating alleged war crimes in Israel and Palestine from June 2014 onwards’.

Much about the intention of this notice can be discerned from the language. For better or for worse, there is no country called ‘Palestine’. There is the disputed territory of the West Bank and there is the Gaza which was handed over to the Palestinians in 2005 and which promptly became a terror state. But as all sides in the conflict agree, there is no such state as Palestine.

The language of the appeal also rather strongly suggests that the British police are interested in Israeli ‘war crimes’ rather than the terrorism, war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and their ilk. In fact, I have a very strong urge to call the hotline in question and say that I have in fact seen a whole heap of war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out by these groups, more than I would ever wish to. But I don’t know what the British police would then propose to do about it.

The British police and security services aren’t even able to do anything to move against Hamas leaders who live in the UK. Perhaps that is why the Heathrow notice does not ask if travellers who have recently been in Israel or Gaza have seen any activity connected to the banned terrorist organisation Hamas. Because that would pose a problem, wouldn’t it? It would suggest that while the British police cannot seem to act against Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the UK, they are right up for going hard on them a couple of thousand miles away.

This strikes me as unlikely. After all, if the British police have to be reminded that they really ought to turn up to the scene of a robbery in England, the likelihood that they will be able to pursue Hamas into Gaza seems remote.

I read the other day of a woman in Hertfordshire whose house was recently broken into. Sharon Allen has the misfortune to live in a county with one of the worst burglary convictions in the UK. There is a good reason why: in St Albans (a sizeable enough place of 148,000 souls) there has been no police station in operation since 2015. Ms Allen was reduced to using the CCTV footage of the crime to do her own detective work and try to find the identifiable figure caught on camera breaking into her home.

It’s all a bit Miss Marpleor Rosemary & Thyme, for aficionados of the cosy mystery genre. The difference is that such series generally rely on a few good women having to supersede some bumbling police detectives. But at least there were detectives. The idea that the land is completely devoid of the fuzz would make these mysteries somewhat darker than usual.

For vast tracts of the country that is no longer the case. The British police seem to have long ago decided to police everything except for crime, and now they would have us believe that their scope for catching criminals extends not to the common burglar but to the uncommon war criminal. Specifically, Israeli war criminals.

Having seen many sights of the current conflict, I can pretty firmly say that what war crimes have been committed were committed on 7 October when Hamas and others chose the softest civilian targets imaginable to carry out their massacre. But I suspect this is out of the scope of the UK constabulary. So why the signs? The term virtue-signalling doesn’t quite cover it. ‘Eunuch-signalling’ might sum it up better. And if you doubt that, call the hotline and report on Hamas and you’ll find a response time that would make the police in St Albans blush.