The UK is not, however, compelled to use this extraordinary level of resources on a single person. As we can clearly see since it has been drastically scaled back. The only reason for this kind of resource usage was because of Assange's profile.

Only rules Assange has violated are UK rules, for which he may face repercussions in the UK. Not Sweden.

Assange has unquestionably been playing by the Swedish rules, as has been confirmed by the Swedish supreme court.

Assange has no duty to return to Sweden, but the prosecutor does have a duty to give him a chance to respond to the allegations against him.

Assange is playing by the rules and that's why he's in the Embassy. He's following the rules to the book and so are the authorities.

Why should they, well if they wish to bring justice and save money they should do it. Because if they do not, then the time expires which for the rape warrant is in 4 years. And justice will not be done.

Skipping bail when the Supreme Court rules against you is not "playing by the rules" by any definition.

Of course it is. 'The rules' include things like "committing rape can cause rape allegations", "proving a rape allegation false causes criminal proceedings against the accuser", "skipping bail causes the authorities to pursue", "breaking/revoking diplomatic status damages foreign relations", etc.

The whole point of 'the rules' is that they apply to criminals; the only way to force something on criminals (or anyone) is to make them unavoidable, i.e. make it impossible to not play by the rules.

It's not like a game of chess, where the rules don't account for the use of tanks; or DRM, where "the rules" only apply to those with legal copies. It's more like Nomic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic), where the rules allow the rules to change. The difference is that Nomic's initial set of rules require unanimous agreement to rule changes (so any unfortunate consequences are ultimately a player's 'own fault' for agreeing to something long ago); the real world's initial rules were natural selection, which is a horrific way to live.

You've a pretty unusual idea of the meaning of rules. We're talking about a legal process. The rules are the laws of England and Sweden.