Anyone who commutes is used to pathetic excuses for frustrating delays, which range from leaves on the line to "the wrong kind of snow", but they will have been amazed by the announcement that their train journeys were in chaos because a burglary suspect had climbed a tree next to the line.
If the disruption had gone on for an hour or two that would have been bad enough but for 17 hours - through London's morning and evening rush hours - trains were cancelled, delayed or diverted as the police gently tried to coax the man to climb down before he hurt himself.
I would have given him five minutes and then sent in a man with a chainsaw to speed his descent. In my book anyone who does a runner and hides up a tree does so at his own risk. If he gets hurt it serves him right.
This farcical standoff is the latest example of the great lengths the authorities go to so they cover their backsides. They are petrified they will be sued and to hell with the effects on the poor old public.
In this case the Charlton Climber tied up 20 transport police and paramedics for 17 hours while scaffolding was erected next to the tree. Then a hydraulic platform hoisted police negotiators so they could talk him down. One eyewitness said it looked as if the man was being shown how to do stretching exercises so he wouldn't get cramp. Ah, diddums.
Britain has taken leave of its senses
Has Britain taken leave of its senses? Yes, I'm afraid it has. Can you imagine if we'd had elf 'n' safety risk assessments during the war? "Sorry Tommy, you can't run with your bayonet fixed as you might trip and hurt someone."
"Put that light out, you might dazzle a German bomber pilot and make him crash."
"You can't shelter on the Underground because you might turn over in your sleep and roll off the platform."
We have gone from being a nation prepared to take risks to a land of high-vis jackets. There is always a ready-made excuse for not doing something. I don't blame rank-and-file coppers, firefighters or ambulance crews for this obsession with putting petty regulations before common sense.
It's their risk-averse bosses who have dictated that safety is paramount because they don't want a compensation claim to make a blot on their high-flying careers.
It's why motorway crashes become taped-off crime scenes where the wreckage remains for hours while skid marks are analysed and photographed from a helicopter. Never mind if it means thousands of drivers are delayed, work is disrupted, flights are missed, hospital appointments are lost.
You only have to watch a programme such as Motorway Cops to see the time the police take to find out why car A hit car B.
Except in the most serious cases what does it matter compared with the effect shutting the road has on so many motorists? I came close to missing a flight two weeks ago because a minor vehicle fire on the hard shoulder of the M25 meant all four lanes were brought to a standstill creating a 10-mile queue.
The natural reaction of the police always seems to be to overreact. Why shut two lanes when you can shut four?
Two years ago the M6 toll road was closed in both directions when a coach passenger was seen handling a bag that had smoke coming from it. Armed police, the Army, fire crews and paramedics raced to the scene - and it took five hours to discover that the suspected terrorist was actually a man having a crafty drag on an electronic cigarette.
A couple of months back police cordoned off Trafalgar Square because a man was threatening to jump off an 8ft-high wall. What harm would he have come to? A bruised knee or a broken ankle? But his elf 'n' safety was paramount.
No wonder he was eventually led away saying: "I do love England."
In Ipswich a man climbed on the station roof and stayed there for seven hours while trains between London, Norwich, Cambridge, Felixstowe and Peterborough were halted. It took a team of specialist "policing at heights" officers to be nice to him before journeys could resume.
We have had a school ban yo-yos, a public hall's kitchen in which all the knives were removed and office bosses who banned staff from using kettles and microwave ovens. With hindsight we can laugh at the silliness of it all but the elf 'n' safety culture has a tragic side.
When a man had a fit and collapsed into a 3ft-deep boating lake in Gosport, Hampshire, the first fire crew on the scene refused to rescue him because they only had "level one" training for ankle-deep water. So they had to wait for a "water support unit" trained to "level two" (which is chest-deep water) to be found.
The man floated face down for 37 minutes before he was pulled out. In that time a copper volunteered to wade in but the firemen refused to lend him a life vest. You see it didn't matter that a man was dying. The jobsworths had to make sure no one was in breach of the "personal protective equipment at work regulations 1992".
We should throw all these elf 'n' safety rules on to a bonfire. Better have a risk assessment first though to make sure the smoke's not going to cause an accident.