IF they’re not aware of it when they join up, there’s something anyone in public life very soon gets to learn: when it comes to making decisions, you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

It can be anything from failing to anticipate this year’s ‘snow event’ (goodness knows where the forecasters got that term from) to ordering large stocks of Tamiflu against a possible pandemic. The dilemma is obvious: you’re either criticised for shelling out precious reserves on buying and storing expensive supplies on the off chance, or you’re taking the flack for risking trauma and disruption whipped up by unforgiving critics.

The illustrious front line of the damned is, not surprisingly, populated by individuals or institutions charged with exercising any sort of authority or influence – traditionally, politics, the legal profession and the police. Who’d be Chancellor of the Exchequer, for example, written off by turns as Scrooge or wastrel? Or a high court judge, lampooned if perceived too light on sentencing or branded a tyrant if minor wrong-doing is rewarded with custodial vigour?

Social workers run them a close third. If they remove children at risk, they are branded ‘Nazi baby-snatchers’; if they take the word of dodgy parents or carers and problems arise, they are called slipshod or worse for not intervening.

It’s all, of course, a matter of judgment, and that’s what they’re paid for. But much also depends on the agendas of the critics. Baiting the fall-guys is a luxury indulged in by the envious or mischievous and egged on by the roaring battalions of a partial and sensationalist media. Opposition parties or individuals who will never themselves exercise responsibility wade in with offers to appear on the Today Programme, with reams of unchallenged accusations on blogs and supporting letters planted in local newspapers.

The most perilous high-wire performers are the ‘lads in blue’. They are never there when needed but will pounce on any mild, law-abiding citizen who strays. Well that’s the popular charge, anyway. It’s not helped by the term ‘police’ being stolen from under their very noses to be tagged to Health and Safety and other petty restrictions dreamed up by the other PC brigade.

With high profile comes high scrutiny. Policing is a spectator sport. Everyone has a view on how it should be done, but nobody actually wants to do it. We all want to be protected. We squirm when we see deliberate acts of evil and wrong-doing against people and property often in broad daylight, but we impose the thinnest of blue lines when it comes to tackling them.

We don’t like seeing our windows smashed, but equally we don’t like to see people ‘kettled’ and herded with riot shields. By wanting it both ways, we contrive to unbalance their trapeze wires.

There is no denying that a lucrative industry has blossomed out of opportunities to exploit those who are either prevented from defending themselves or shielded by anonymity. It is professionally fanned by ‘publicists’ who smell opportunity quicker than a seagull spots an ice-cream cone.

The fall-out from the recent policing of the G20 demonstrations in London was a classic. Caught in the flash of every predatory snapper bulb, no example of heavy-handed suppression would escape its date in the court of tabloid recrimination, found ‘guilty as charged’. Add the photo-spread of a casualty transformed from street protester to demure victim and reputations hit the dust with the speed of a discarded baseball bat.

Buried deep within the sea of controversy, I noticed one crusty riposte to the generally critical comment: ‘Stop knocking the police; you might need them some day.’ Now that, I’m afraid, is at best selfish and at worst a cynical approach to a very proper argument about responsibility and judgment. Honest, informed criticism is wholly legitimate. But there’s the problem – when do we ever get the full picture?

YOU could be forgiven for believing that occasionally a kami-kaze instinct lurks behind the levers of authority. Police ‘over the top’ was one of the more considered local headlines following the early- morning arrest of a senior politician sans portfolio with a penchant for electronic tuck-shop wall scrawling and establishment boat-rocking. The deployment of a platoon of officers and a fleet of vehicles seemed, to say the least, a touch theatrical.

Cynics might argue that it was all a bit of a circus anyway and that a performer deserves a supporting troupe. But in the absence of a ringmaster, and any official comment from the matinal band of law enforcers or their puppet masters, it was left to the aggrieved party to claim the media spotlight, backed up by an absentee landlady’s allegations of violation by proxy and memory-stretching Blitzkrieg.

A shot through the foot of the trusty guardians of the state? While the jury may be out on that, it’s certainly all good material for the international comic-book writers, honing their drafts on contemporary local political soap-opera.

We are all to a greater or lesser degree judge and jury. Most of us never have been, nor will ever be, called upon to shoulder the sort of high-profile responsibilities which require instant actions and which, unlike Hollywood movies, can never be rerun with an alternative happy ending. We remain a willing audience to a gladiatorial spectacle.

The problem is that somebody has got to put their head into the frame, and perversely, despite the risks, there seems to be no scarcity of applicants. So if you can see past the above-inflation remuneration, the final-salary pension and the golden crumple zone, here’s the job spec: Essential: acceptance that winning is never an option. Negotiable: opportunity to select own method of execution.
You’re hired!