I'M glad I don't have to earn my living as a full-time satirist. Any absurdity a satirist might invent in the morning will be 'out-dafted' by real life come the afternoon, now that the world has gone completely insane.

For example, I quote two factual reports I have read over the weekend. I must stress that this is not an attempt at satire: these are events that really happened.

The owner of a small hotel heard a noise downstairs in the middle of the night. He went to investigate and found a burglar with his hand in the till. What was he supposed to do? The official advice is that he should hold the intruder and phone the police. This was nigh on impossible since the hotel owner was on his own. How was he supposed to contain the thief with one hand while dialling for the police with the other? He managed to push the thief into a storeroom and lock the door. Then he phoned the police. When the police arrived two arrests were made. First that of the thief, who was let off with a caution. But the hotel owner was found guilty of assault - though he used only minimal force when he shoved the intruder into the storeroom - and of "unlawfully detaining" the thief. He was fined £250 and ordered to do 200 hours community service.

Example number two: The Metropolitan Police have been given a grant of £500,000 to get their officers to slim down. With some of this money they have produced a sort of idiots' cookbook which, among other inanities, tells the fat coppers how to make beans on toast. This cookbook will be distributed in two specially-adapted vans, fitted out with health-testing equipment. And staffed by health advisers ready to measure policemen's body fat and cholesterol. So now we really do have a Health Police. The vans will also carry a one-and-a-half stone false belly which they will strap on to officers to give them a taste of what it feels like to be really fat.

Meanwhile, police officers have been advised that they can get compensation if members of the public accuse them of being fat. An actual case in point: a 14 stone copper in Cumbria was awarded £100 by the courts because a youth rudely called him "a fat bastard". The really interesting part of this true story is all in the words of the magistrate who told the policeman that the award had been made to compensate him for his "mental anguish". My God, I would like to think that the policemen who are supposedly guarding us against the ravages of vicious criminals could stand up to a bit more stick before collapsing into a state of mental anguish.

Meanwhile, seriously violent crimes have increased from 10,000 to 11,800 in a single year. The annual figures for murder show that this most serious crime has exceeded 1,000 for the first time. Sexual offences increased from 12,900 to 14,000. These are not conjectures, they are the official figures. As I said at the start, this is no satire. I won't even make a comment. Let the facts themselves demonstrate what sort of a society we are living in.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.