Two suggestions for this post (feel free to add others in the comments but only if you’d be happy for your mother to read them).

1. Get elected to the H0use of Commons whilst being called Iain Dale (sorry Iain, I know you sometimes stroll via here and that was a cheap but fun jibe. Forgive me please).

2. Join the Peruvian Police Force.

For we learn that a campaign for “high morality among policemen” has been launched in Peru. The head of the nation’s Interior Ministry Mercedes Cabanillas initiated amendments to the police regulations directed at “cleansing” the police of gays and adulterers. As decisions go it’s certainly way up there in the ‘interesting’ category.

According to the decision made by the chief of the Peruvian police, homosexuals may not serve in the police. She supposes that such policemen evoke an ambiguous reaction in the local society and thus do irreparable harm to the reputation of the department.

Policemen caught in adultery will not be spared either. However, it is not mentioned in the decree if these measures concern men only. It is not clear either whether the term “adultery” applies to people living in an informal marriage. Along with homosexuals and adulterers, the decree concerns strike instigators. It is strictly forbidden in Peru (as well as in most countries of the world) for policemen to go on strikes.

Mercedes Cabanillas has a reputation as a politician who makes strange decisions. Local mass media even dubbed her “the Peruvian Margaret Thatcher” remembering how the former British Prime Minister made no concessions to unions and tried to suppress strikes and enforce the rule of law in the 1980s.

There’s no denying that Cabanillas is original. For instance, she decided to dismiss all men from the traffic police of Lima in March. Now only women are on duty on the streets of the Peruvian capital. In Cabanillas’ opinion, replacing men with women can help reduce bribery, for “a research revealed that they take less bribes than men do”.

There is only one man left in the local traffic police – the head of the department General Arturo Davila. Poor bloke. It’s a medical fact that get a group of female flatmates together and their natural cycles tend to migrate towards the same part of the month. Imagine being the only bloke and also the boss of a city-strong force of only policewomen. There will be a few days each month when he just *won’t* want to get out of bed.

The new decree of the head of the Interior Ministry will be liked in the country. Moral standards are very puritanical there unlike in neighbouring Brazil where people dance half-naked during carnivals. Genuinely religious Indians accepting no homosexuality comprise almost a half of the Peruvian population.

As a matter of fact, Peruvian authorities have much more serious problems. The country with the 28-million-strong population is far from being wealthy even by Latin American standards. The majority of its population lives below the poverty line. The unemployed comprise about ten percent of the population.

So, Iain, stick to the journalism day-job. The Peruvian Police Force isn’t for you.

UPDATE: TheEye has just checked and Ring and Index finger are identical length. Ah.