Behold a new legal threshold: let's call it the 007 standard. Apparently the law now allows secret agents to get up to all manner of mayhem, just so long as it's something James Bond might have done. Threatening to strangle a woman with her own bikini top? Powering a speedboat, both on and besides the Thames, destroying everything in your wake? Forcing a shark-gun pellet into a man's mouth, so he blows up like a balloon. All fully lawful, m'lud: can I refer the court to Diamonds Are Forever, The World Is Not Enough and Live and Let Die?

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