Iain Dale has a shocking tale from the UK. The Police Service, as Brits are now supposed to call it (see the movie Hot Fuzz for more explanation), has defended two police officers who failed to save a drowning child on the grounds that they were “not trained” to deal with the situation. This is where you get to once you enshrine the precautionary principle, that we should not act unless we are sure we know what we’re doing.

What makes this even more astonishing is that this makes Greater Manchester Police less praiseworthy than the U.S. Postal Service. That’s something they should truly be ashamed of.