THERE are times when the legal system and its administrators make you wonder if they’ve had too much sun (The Press, July 15).

Why was it necessary to prosecute someone for taking two bicycle frames out of a skip? Presumably to make use of them. What offence was being committed? Recycling without due care and attention?

Entering a mobile waste disposal receptacle without a safe net, or perhaps walking with a bicycle frame with no brakes or bell?

It would be laughable were it not for the fact that it entailed many hours of police and court time and no doubt quite a few thousand pounds of public money.

To then issue a statement to the effect that the said property has now been returned to its rightful owner – namely the National Railway Museum – is almost like a punch line in a third-rate joke.

My late father-in-law, Frank Hensman, of Stamford Bridge, used to recount how in 1938 when he first entered the Naval College at Chatham, he was confronted by a large sign that said “common sense is not so common”.

Not much changed there, then.

Geoffrey Searstone, Moor Lane, York.