The following relates to a relatively minor issue. You may think that’s fiddling while Rome burns and maybe it is. But then I’ve long felt that fiddling while Rome burns gets too much of a bad press.

I mean, precisely what was the emperor Nero supposed to do while Rome burned? The implication is help put the fire out, but that would be pretty hands-on for a head of state. I’m not sure he’d have been much use, even if he wasn’t exactly like Peter Ustinov playing Nero in Quo Vadis. And I’m convinced, on a deep instinctive level that reason can’t touch, that he was exactly like Peter Ustinov playing Nero in Quo Vadis. Say “the emperor Nero” and my brain will forever conjure up an image of Peter Ustinov in Quo Vadis. It’ll lose bladder control before it lets go of that, so I think it’s best we all go along with it.

Let him fiddle, I say! (Wouldn’t want that taken out of context.) Obviously there’s no evidence he fiddled and considerable evidence that the fiddle hadn’t been invented. In Quo Vadis, it’s a sort of lyre, but I sense you’re in a pissy mood about accepting the film’s accuracy, so perhaps you want to imagine Peter Ustinov with a violin or a squeezebox or a Casiotone keyboard. Go ahead! You’re only making yourselves seem foolish.

Some people say Nero deliberately started the fire, which puts a very different spin on the whole fiddling-while-it-happened allegation. It’s not usually used as an expression for what someone does while an event they’ve organised goes smoothly. Seen in that light – the flickering red one of state-sponsored arson – the fiddling is easier to understand.

We’ll never know for sure. Peter Ustinov is dead and didn’t necessarily know exactly what the emperor Nero thought, did and experienced anyway. I suppose. I mean, it really feels like he did but… let’s just leave it.

So the minor issue, the fiddling here, is a matter of £10m. About £10m, nationally. And yes that is minor, before all you Ustinov-deniers get back on my case. I know £10m is a lot of money for a person, even a contemptible overpaid media scumbag like me. I wouldn’t kick that out of my bank account for having been generated unethically! That’s the kind of hypocrite you’re dealing with.

But as part of the British economy, or even the expenditure of the British state, it is minor. Very minor. It is small change. Just ask any politician. And they’ll tell you that it’s a hugely significant sum, so now you know I’m right.

“It all adds up though!” you might say. And it does. Small amounts of money, when put together, can add up to large amounts of money. Oceans can be divided into droplets. But that doesn’t mean you treat a droplet like an ocean or, for that matter, a swimming pool like an ocean. It’s comparative, isn’t it? I hope so because, if it isn’t, we have to treat a penny with the same reverence as a trillion quid and thus throw away the whole concept of scale.

If the NHS only wasted £10m a year, its managers would be delighted. It would be a miracle for an organisation that size. An amazing human achievement. And yet, the public line would remain: “It’s £10m too much.” This wonder of efficiency would have to wear the shameful mantle of extravagance.

This £10m is nothing to do with the NHS. It’s the amount that David Jamieson, the West Midlands police and crime commissioner, says the taxpayer is paying to subsidise gun licences.

Basically, more people are applying for gun licences these days (how lovely), and that’s pushing up the cost of all the medical and background checking that has to be done on those aspirant shooters, and that cost is not being covered by what they’re charged for their licences.

Jamieson says that his force will be out of pocket by £112,000 this year and, extrapolating across England and Wales, he reckons the taxpayer’s down £10m.

I slightly groaned when he said: “It is shocking that charges set by the government mean that West Midlands police and other forces are subsidising gun ownership.” I don’t think it’s shocking. I think it’s a small administrative miscalculation. I imagine they happen all the time. He set off my Manufactured Outrage alarm. It really gets through batteries these days.

Then I heard the response of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, which is not all you’d hope from possessors of lethal force. It said Jamieson’s argument “has no basis in fact”. But then its director of firearms, Bill Harriman, added: “As firearms licensing is done for the public good, namely for the prevention of crime and the preservation of public safety, it is proper that the public purse should bear a proportion of the costs incurred.”

So he’s effectively conceded that the licences are subsidised, the very thing his organisation claims “has no basis in fact”. As disputation goes, this is on the level of “I didn’t steal your car and it’s mine anyway”. I’d hoped for crisper reasoning from someone who’s packing heat.

Plus, obviously, how dare he! Most of us don’t want to have guns or, ideally, for anyone else to either. So the suggestion that we should all help pay for the system whereby we attempt to weed out the actual maniacs from the mere twats is frankly rude.

I suppose there might be a small number of jobs where, for fair and legal reasons, you need a gun (stuff to do with farm management?), but most people who want gun licences want them so they can make an annoying racket in the countryside while giving specially bred poultry a terrifying demise. That lot can definitely afford to pick up the £10m between them – a few hundred of them could probably each afford to pay it on their own.

A sense of scale may be vital to understanding money, but that’s not what this is about. Bill Harriman’s argument, endorsed by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, is laced with contempt. That’s not something we should accept. If those who play with guns have any manners, they will want to pay their way. In any case, I don’t feel we owe them another drink.