Free at last, from bureaucratic madness

After a round-the-clock operation costing more than £10m, the Metropolitan Police have decided that years camping outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in the hope that Julian Assange might venture out in a moment of rashness, is now disproportionate in terms of resources expended.  Finally, the scales have fallen from their eyes.  They once were blind but now can see.  Julian Assange is a wanted man, who would be picked up when he had gone not more than ten minutes outside the embassy.  He certainly could not flee to Quito as his picture would be at all airports and other points of departure.
Instead, as a political show of 'doing something' to mollify the implacable Swedish prosecutor (and possibly Washington D.C. to boot), the Met confined Assange to the most expensive house arrest in history, the embassy a prison in all but name.  It's like letting Rudolf Hess rot all by himself in Spandau Prison (though Assange would object vigorously to such a comparison, it is an analogy between the situation rather than the two men).  The Met, ominously, say they will now use 'covert means' to apprehend the quarry of Sweden - this is even more worrying than blowing £10m on an utterly pointless operation - the police budget is unprotected from government cuts after all.