A broken police force is great for the super-rich. But not for the rest of us | Nick Hopkins

Huge underfunding means that the illicitly wealthy escape the clutches of the law - and everyday crimes go unpunished

On Thursday morning, two crime stories dominated the news.

One was a government crackdown on the 100bn of "dirty money" that has been laundered through the UK. The security minister, Ben Wallace, has in his sights the lawyers and accountants, public schools and car washes that facilitate or benefit from this wrongdoing - and are, he claimed in a Guardian interview, as bad as the criminals themselves.