I don't recognise the descriptions of death intoned by solemn media voices discussing last night's broadcast suicide of Craig Ewert. All seem to agree that these moments of death are amazingly powerful: striking to witness. “Hugely moving,” goes the language: “one of the most primal things we'll ever see.”

I've seen a few - and, no, in no way striking. An anticlimax, just a gentle closing-down: gradual, not instantaneous, there's often no “moment” at all. The emotional charge comes from nothing inherent in the event, but from the feelings of the witness. We humans are capable of cheerfully wringing a chicken's neck, then reeling at the last minutes of a favourite pet.

The most moving moment of death I ever experienced was that of a mouse. All at once - bang - scores of tiny black dots emerged from its fur and scattered. For these mites - vermin to the vermin - the cessation of the heartbeat was like a fire alarm, giving parasites only minutes to find new life-support. Like watching colleagues flee a sinking politician.

Old bill and coo

There's something else I haven't recognised this week: a new ancient tradition: the operational independence of the police, or Oip. Supporters of our Home Secretary's three-wise-monkeys approach to a police raid on Westminster offer this nostrum a respectful nod. “Ah, indeed,” we murmur wisely, “of course; the Oip” - supposing that clever people somewhere must have looked it up.

In fact, most references to this supposedly long-hallowed rule were coined in the past month. And when it has mattered enough, ministers have always stuck their oar in. On Monday, reading about the career of the late Roy Jenkins, I smiled at an episode in 1966 when, as Labour Home Secretary, he had to deal with the escape from Wormwood Scrubs of a spy who was (it much later emerged) still at large in the vicinity: “Roy at once called a meeting at the Home Office on the Sunday morning but it was pretty futile, and Roy was not at all pleased by the contributions of the police and the security representatives.”

The Oip is not so much a fiction as the over-weighty expression of some useful advice: that, especially where suspicions of self-interest may arise, ministers and mandarins should be wary of involving themselves in a particular investigation. But that's sharply different from saying that they may never do so. Imagine that tomorrow, seeking a dangerous Muslim suspect, the Metropolitan Police decide to throw a cordon around London and search every vehicle driven by an Asian. Do you suppose that no means should be found for the Home Secretary to convey the Cabinet's alarm?

There was no reason why Jacqui Smith should not have been told about a planned police raid on a Westminster office, nor why her department couldn't have relayed to the Met her (fairly neutral) advice that this would cause an almighty Commons row. She's hiding behind her Oip.

Many a slip

Gordon Brown's Freudian slip in the Commons yesterday, in which he started to say he had saved the world, is not his first. In July 2000, at the dispatch box as Chancellor, he said: “I have three policy announcements to underspin... underpin... the strength of our public finances.”

Brick wall

A friend in the South East, a small, long-established, family builder, respected, busy, and never in any financial trouble, went to his bank of many years last week to ask for an overdraft facility (his first ever) of £1,000 to cover a gap in payments due. It was refused point-blank: “All our branches have had a general directive: ‘No credit to self-employed builders.' It's bank policy.”

Washout

In the shower yesterday, I was struggling with some idiotic substance called “shower scrub”. (It was in a bottle that you couldn't hold, squeeze and collect from, while at the same time trying to wash yourself with the other hand. You lost most of it down the plughole.) And I remembered the late Alan Coren's column about things invented in the wrong order.

So here, Alan, is another for your list: that brilliant new invention for the shower: a washing agent in solid form; self-cleaning; economical; easily handled; no caps to lift or seal; no packaging but a discardable paper wrap; unable to be spilt down the plughole; and giving an all-day perfume to your bathroom! It's called “soap”.

Spent items

Overheard in London on the Docklands Light Railway: “Colleagues in the City don't get sacked any more. They just get Gmail addresses.”

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