While driving home from the gym I was going down a one way street when someone turned up the street and wanted me to pull over and let him drive up the road. After much gesticulating I got out and told him it was a one way street and that he had just turned in against no entry signs, to which he responded that he had an injured knee and couldn't walk up the street, so I responded that he should go around and go down the road from the correct way which was when he came out with the gem 'so your a copper are you'? Now it seems to me that if you are a responsible member of society you should follow the reasonable rule of society without having the police looking over your shoulder? Am I just living in a utopian ideal??

The social anthropologist explained the origins of such behaviour many years ago in his book 'The Territorial Imperative'. It is expressed in human (and indeed other animal behaviour) in many ways.

Basically, it is about the instinct to defend territory, whetehr it is a car parking space, a driveway a space in a queue or whatever. Even seemingly rational people can suddenly behave like lunatics when they feel their space is being invaded in some way - hence the phenomenon of road rage, or even trolley rage.

Sorry, I was referring to the social anthropologist Robert Ardrey