"When there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, who ya gonna call?"

Well, the police, it seems:

James Creighton, 25, decorated the outside of his house with skeletons, bloodied corpses and cobwebs in a display dubbed Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The bar owner transforms his house in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, every year to raise money for the Cancer Research UK charity in memory of his grandmother Betty, who died from the disease in 2009.

Awww, how heart-warming! Isn’t it nice to hear a…

Oh.

But he had a nasty shock when two police officers knocked on his door to tell him a parent had complained it was frightening children.

Mr Creighton said: “The police came round knocking on my door. They said they were sorry to disturb me but they had a complaint from a member of the public who walks past my house in the morning.

"Apparently their child starts crying every time they walk past my house. “I was shocked - more to the point that the parent couldn't come to the door themselves and speak to me personally, but had to get the police involved and waste their time."

Oh, please, don’t waste any sympathy on them! They are wasting their own time, and trying to resolve the situation by making you compromise, rather than having the balls to tell the offended party that what you are doing isn't illegal and so they have no jurisdiction, now mind how you go sir/madam...

And this is yet another incident which gives the lie to the constant police whinging about how they are so stretched and short of staff, because if that were really true, they wouldn't feel obliged to hot foot it round every time some cretin gets it into his/her head to screech about being 'distressed'.

"Police have asked me to put black tarpaulin along the fence so the kids can't see it, but why should I do that? It ruins the whole rest of the display for everyone else.

“All the other kids love it. It is just this one who doesn't like it."

Yes, and sadly, today, that one person wields power beyond measure, because the police have become the kind of spineless, 'let's see if we can work out a compromise here', social workers with uniforms and radios, and not the simple crime-fighting service they were envisioned to be.

No more, it seems, do new recruits long to kick in doors and face hardened villains with shooters. Now, it seems, they long to broker 'peace' between Mrs Grimethorpe and Mrs McTavish over noise issues with the former's kids and the latter's barking dog.

Well, if that's the case, can we make them wear the blue berets of the UN Peacekeeping Forces and no longer have to pretend they are 'our finest boys in blue'?

Inspector Simon Tabert told the BBC that officers had visited Mr Creighton "to discuss the matter." He said: "We had a complaint (from a parent) that it was so realistic, it was going to upset their children.

“Mr Creighton offered to create a barrier, but it's my understanding we did not ask him to do so.

"We asked him to tone it down, because people were being distressed by it."

Then you are every bit as much a snivelling little weed of a man as the complainer, and as for your role as 'Safer Neighbourhood Team Member, a role you seem unusually proud to claim, it seems what Stevenage really needs is someone to keep them safe from cretins like you and your team...

As Leg-Iron points out, it is indeed a funny old world.