It is, It was, It holds, It held

No stranger to making statements to police, Mine Host is able to rattle off a statement verbatim, without any need for said statement to be moulded into format by the officer taking the statement.

The police officer taking the statement has only to type fast enough to keep up. This rarely happens. Despite now being able to type, modern police are no faster than the pre-historic police who typed two-fingered.

Recently when making a statement, Mine Host was forced to make more than the usual amount of corrections to his statement.

Mine Host at first did not grasp the problem:
The Constable did not understand the difference between past and present tense. The statement was about an event that happened a considerable time ago, in a business no longer operating, in a premises since demolished.

Thus the statement must be in past tense.

The officer persistently typed the statement in present tense. Mine Host told the Constable that being as today nothing is the same as it was at the time of the event, the statement must be in "past tense".

.....Blank look.....

Oh no! The Constable doesn't even know what "tense" means.

Mine Host gingerly went through the statement correcting tense.

The Constable's spelling was unreliable unless the word was phonetic, reverting in several instances to asking Mine Host to spell the words he was dictating.

One of the qualifications required to be sworn in as an officer in the Queensland Police is to have obtained a university degree.

Mine Host is tending to believe this to be a "claytons" degree, and not one requiring proficiency in the English language.

Yet Mine Host is expected to believe that this person, with such pitiful grasp of their native language, is able to grasp the law.

(Mine Host does not believe that Constables have much of a grasp of the law, or even much grasp of what their job is supposed to be, experience has taught him this)