Just a random thought no.13.

Seeing a sizeable chunk of the city centre of Birmingham still cordoned off because someone is threatening to commit suicide (apparently) by jumping off the Paradise Circus bridge prompts me to wonder how such a standoff would be managed in other places. I doubt that even in London the Met would allow the inconvenience to continue for what is now 23 hours, and I surmise that the CRS would have been called in twelve hours or more ago if it were Paris. I should have thought that a firehose directed at him would have sorted the matter out a while ago. Let's hope that he is (a) charged with wasting police time; (b) sent a bill for the costs involved in diverting traffic and closing the Central Library etc. A sensible estimate of the costs of disruption to everyone else's lives needs to be made and publicised, so that such people are shown the true costs to  their fellow-citizens of such selfish behaviour.