‘RULES are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools,” said Douglas Bader, the legendary Second World War fighter pilot beloved by everyone in Britain who never had the misfortune to meet him. He might have lost both of his legs at the age of 21 by flouting RAF rules against low-flying aerobatics, but he bloody well didn’t let that stop him, and neither should you ever be deterred by the risk of death or serious injury.

Rules are for fools, they certainly are not for loaded Tories like yourself. Douglas Bader didn’t shoot down Germans over Dunkirk in 1940 so that 80 years later you could sit cowering in one of your many properties, too afraid to drive a few hundred miles to Scotland in your Mercedes E-class.

Do not worry about being stopped by the police, as most of these PC Plods are obedient fools who will be easily bamboozled by anything you say, just as long as

you punctuate your excuses with phrases such as “terribly inconvenient”, “tremendously difficult circumstances”, “important business arrangements” and “essential job interviews”.

Should you be pressed to be more specific by some impertinent swine in a hi-vis jacket, or if they dare to dispute your definition of important and essential (don’t they know who you are?!), you have a range of other excuses at your disposal.

Firstly, even that frightfully irritating Scottish woman – the mayor of Scotland, is it? God knows, the regional accents are barely comprehensible – has said you can exercise more than once per day. She neglected to be more specific about what she means, at least in the brief snippet to which you were subjected before you wrestled the remote control from your butler, so you may interpret this as you wish.

Perhaps you own some birds of prey that you could exercise by driving to your estate. Don a gauntlet and fly them around for a while. Why not? Shoot a few wild animals while you’re there. That’s good exercise for you and also a valuable public service. They aren’t going to kill themselves, are they? You’re basically a key worker. Fire a few shots in the air on Thursday at 8pm in celebration of yourself.

You might also wish to exercise your right to freedom from torture and inhumane treatment. While in theory everyone has this right, in practice the proletariat are not actually being tortured by being shut in their homes. They can still watch television and order takeaways, and an even greater proportion than usual are being to lounge around doing nothing, so little has changed for them and they certainly have nothing to complain about. Quite the contrary, in fact! They can even go to the local park, should their appetites for exposure to the ghastly shrieking and snotty noses of deprived children remain undiminished.

Their package holidays to Spain may have been cancelled, but some would argue that’s a small mercy, and that by booking economy-class tickets they were quite willingly submitting themselves to inhumane treatment. You, by contrast, are most certainly being tortured, because you actually have somewhere to go other than a drive-thru KFC or the kind of public bar that sells packets of crisps. You have your second and third homes, your yacht, the pied a terre of your mistress – the world should be your oyster, and with international flights suspended, Scotland must be your playground.

If, like former Tory MP Patrick Mercer, your wife lives 500 miles away, you will have no choice but to travel 500 miles to fall down at her door. Better stand up again quickly though, in case any understandably furious locals are two metres away, armed with blowpipes.

Mercer maintains he has done nothing wrong. To be fair, given his history of racist and antisemitic remarks one can see why his wife might want to primarily reside in a different country, but her neighbours say they clocked her husband arriving days after lockdown was announced.

It’s perhaps worth noting that Mercer’s parliamentary career came to an end after the House of Commons standards committee found him guilty of a “sustained and pervasive breach of the house’s rules.” Little point doing things by halves, is there?

To hell with rules if you are filthy rich like Tory donor Dr Christopher Moran, who travelled from virus hotspot London to his estate in Aberdeenshire. Have no regard for local peasants if you are Serco chief executive Rupert Soames, brother of “woofing” ex-Tory MP Nicholas, who took in both Inverness and his Camusrory estate north of Mallaig during a recent jaunt.

Mr Soames is clearly channeling the bulldog spirit of his grandfather, Winston Churchill, by keeping calm and carrying on gadding about, regardless of the risks that he might spread the coronavirus to small rural communities with limited access to hospital facilities. Quite bloody right, too. What’s the point of privilege if you can’t flaunt it? It’s clear Churchill was having an off day when he said “the greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.”