The golden rule is that there are no golden rules...

The problem with rules is that they are.... well, rules. Very often you can see the basic sense behind them, but those enforcing them are given - or feel they have - no discretion which they can exercise, and then the rule becomes silly, or draconian, or whatever. This was brought to mind by the story last month of the lady who found a stray cat. She made all the obvious moves to find the owner, but with no success, so she had a few posters printed out and went round attaching them to lamp-posts. Pretty sensible, and very kind-hearted, you would think. But all it got her was a visit from a council official, warning her that you needed council permission to put posters up on lamp-posts, and that as she had failed to make the proper application she had to take them down or face a fine. Now you can see that the council would wish to retain control over fly-posting, and that therefore the basis of the rule is sensible and sound, but clearly this was a case where discretion - or one might even say common sense - could and should have been exercised. They could, for example, have simply looked the other way, or given her retrospective permission - but no, it's a RULE and that's an end of it. All very sad and pathetic, isn't it?