Round at the FCO yesterday I had a chat with some people who know what they are talking about on the increasingly strange case of Julian Assange and the Ecuador Embassy.

It turns out that the costs of keeping a close eye on him continue to rise, although of course the £3.8 million pounds figure hooted by the Metropolitan Police is just a feeble attempt to bewilder people. To reach that improbable total when in fact they have only a small number of police officers watching the Ecuador Embassy they will have thrown in all sorts of arcane Whitehall accounting overheads that they would have had to pay anyway, whether they were guarding him or not.

Otherwise they are telling us that each police officer involved in guarding him is on £1000 per day? How do I apply?

So while it is not cheap to have round-the-clock shifts guarding the Embassy, it is not THAT expensive.

Meanwhile there is the curious incident of the amateur-hour bug found planted in the Embassy. Where did THAT come from, and who might have wanted to find out more about Ecuador’s intentions in this matter? Speculation is rife. Note that the Ecuadoreans have asked HMG to help find out who put it there. Not the act of a government furious with the country hosting its spied-upon embassy

More generally the problem has reached a curiously stagnant stalemate. Sweden is unminded to drop the sex offence charges. Ecuador is unminded either to back down or throw him out, and has not wanted to take on the Snowden burden too: one annoying self-satisfied whistleblowing bore is more than enough, thanks.

And London is content to let Assange twist unhappily in his own wind. Quiet talks with the Ecuadoreans have made no progress.

Therefore what? Nothing much. On it all unhappily drags. The Ecuadoreans plus/minus Assange assert that all this is a UK/Swedish problem. The Swedes and Brits are quite clear that with Assange holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy it really is Ecuador’s problem.

Maybe they are all right. But sooner or later it may suit all concerned to try to resolve it. Call in the grown-ups, perhaps with some Latin American and EU partners.