It may, however, mean absolutely nothing — a thought that struck me when I read the case last week of youths who stole a moped but were not pursued by the police because they weren’t wearing crash helmets and might therefore have been injured in the chase.

The legitimate owner of the moped felt the balance between victim and perpetrator was definitely askew and made this point forcibly to the police, who listened sympathetically and then did nothing. So, if you are thinking about nicking a moped this afternoon for a quick spin around the ring road, don’t wear a crash helmet and you should be okay, unless you fall off and die.

The main problem in this mooted “rebalancing” exercise, then, is that we are disinclined to allow people to take responsibility for the results of their own criminal actions; in other words, they are victims too and must be protected.

It might even be argued that, in this case, mere ownership of a moped was provocation to someone who didn’t own a moped and wanted one. You think this is absurd? Well, this very point was made in The Guardian last week by a chap from Compass, the centre-left pressure group.

Neal Lawson argued that there is more street crime and theft these days simply because we have more things which can be nicked. This conspicuous affluence is an affront to the criminal who, Lawson argued, should more properly be called a “failed consumer”; ie, exactly the same sort of chap as us except instead of using money to get what he wants, he uses a knife. “The lot of the failed consumer is miserable,” Lawson lamented, lumping the blame for the criminal’ s actions on the convenient shoulders of hated Big Business.

But it is not immoral to own a mobile phone, nor is it to make them. It is immoral to deprive someone of theirs by force or stealth. And if you steal a moped and drive off without wearing a crash helmet it is entirely your lookout if you are maimed in the process. Why is it that only the law-abiding public realises this and not the police, judiciary, government and pressure groups?

• A bit of “rebalancing” would seem to be in order in the case of the Sheffield schoolgirl Shanni Naylor, who was attacked by a classmate with a razor blade, leaving her face horribly disfigured.

  Shanni’s assailant was Somalian and a psychologist was produced in court to assert that in Somalia women apparently routinely solve disputes by scratching each other’s faces. The court had also heard the attacker had herself been beaten up by Shanni the day before and thus was a victim. She was cleared of wounding with intent but convicted of the lesser charge of unlawful wounding.

  This reminded me of the case of Rahella Khanom, who walked free from Southwark crown court in April despite having inflicted severe brain damage upon a five-month-old baby by violently shaking him. The judge concluded Khanom, originally from Bangladesh, “didn’t know how to behave” in the West.

  Shanni required 30 stitches and may have to undergo plastic surgery. It probably won’t console her over the years, as she waits for the scars to heal, to know that in Somalia slashing someone’s face open is a revered social custom.

  Celebrity gets up Tara’s nose

  Poor Tara Palmer-Tomkinson’s nose has imploded, apparently of its own volition. Whereas once it was firm and almost aquiline, now the middle bit has collapsed in a quite extraordinary manner. I am happy to believe Tara’s assertion that cocaine has had nothing to do it, and that her nose took this drastic action without any external provocation. Perhaps one day it simply came to the conclusion that being her nose constituted a meaningless existence and, weighed down by existential doubt, simply collapsed. Perhaps quite soon it will give up the ghost entirely and fall off, followed by other similarly disenchanted parts of her body: her ears, her chin, her epidermis, eventually leaving behind nothing more than a small plastic beaker of lukewarm water. It has happened before. The actress Danniella Westbrook’s nose disintegrated and then one of her breasts exploded while she was watching television. You just suspect that with some celebrities, their bodies have had enough of them.

  Cameron’s eager leap into Ross’s dumb trap

  Should Jonathan Ross be sacked by the BBC for asking David Cameron if he had ever masturbated to visions of Margaret Thatcher? Or should Cameron be upbraided for being so stupid as to appear on such a mind-numbingly vapid television programme? If there’s any justice in the world, “yes!” to both would be the answer. Ross is a narcissistic coward whose sycophancy when faced with monosyllabic two-bit celebrities is matched only by his epic self-regard. But there was a narcissism in Cameron too; he thought he would be afforded the same puerile obsequiousness Ross displays in interviews with the likes of Bruce Willis and the matchlessly unfunny Peter Kay.

  Next time you yearn to connect with the yoof vote, Dave, just whisper to yourself over and over again: “William Hague in a baseball cap, William Hague in a baseball cap.” That should do the trick. And leave Ross well alone: the yoof think he’s a bit of a w***** anyway.

• The Argentinians are getting bellicose about the Falklands again: they want them “back”. Buenos Aires is talking about an anti-colonial coalition of “progressive” nations to force Britain to cede this damp, dismal, outpost. Colonialism indeed should be a thing of the past, but I’m not sure the word is right here.

  The Argentine claim to the Falklands is based solely upon geographical proximity — distant proximity (400 miles) come to that. Of the 2,967 people living there, the majority are of British descent and loathe the Argentinians. A few are indeed of South American ancestry — but Chilean, and hate the Argentinians even more.

  Wouldn’t they be better off forgetting the Malvinas and, instead, practising their penalties?

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