On the face of it, Gordon Brown’s determination to boycott the Europe-Africa summit if Robert Mugabe is invited, seems thoroughly decent and principled. The meeting, due to be held in the sort of halfway house of Portugal, would not be a very agreeable affair even without Zimbabwe’s Big Bob; a few days of European leaders being blackmailed for money by a bunch of unscrupulous thugs and culminating in some ghastly, cringing statement of apology from whitey for slavery, or colonialism, or not letting Egypt into the Eurovision Song Contest.

But given our official disgust at Mugabe’s regime, Brown surely cannot go; he will have to send a suitably down-market underling. I suggest Margaret Beckett.

There’s a bit of truth, too, in the allegation that the prime minister has attempted to “multilateralise” our problems with Zimbabwe and has unfairly singled Mugabe out for special opprobrium.

This point has been made by the president of neighbouring Zambia, Levy Mwanawasa, and he knows well of what he speaks. His own “election” to high office in 2002 was, of course, rigged, according to independent observers.

His party – called, hilariously, the Movement for Multiparty Democracy – apparently used vast sums of state cash in its electioneering and happily tampered with the ballot boxes.

Since the election, Amnesty International report that there is “widespread harassment and intimidation of people perceived to be critical of the government” as well as continual and flagrant abuses of human rights, opposition leaders peremptorily locked up and plenty of beatings from the police for anyone who steps out of line.

Meanwhile, some 75% of Levy’s benighted subjects live in what the United Nations describes as “absolute poverty”, on less than a dollar per day. Cheated in elections, beaten by the police and starved. You can understand Mwanawasa’s genuine puzzlement: just what is it, exactly, that Mugabe is doing that’s so wrong?

Indeed, according to Amnesty International, Zimbabwe does not figure in the top 10 of African countries for what it calls “horrendous” human rights abuses; it comes instead towards the top of the second division for unlawful detentions, beatings, torture and executions. According to Amnesty, there are at least 24 other African countries in which, like Zimbabwe, freedom of expression simply does not exist and there are none at all where it is entirely free and untrammelled.

And all is not exactly rosy in Nelson Mandela’s South Africa, where the white liberals who fought for the overthrow of apartheid are now getting the hell out as quickly as they can.

It is true that with an inflation rate of a commendable 7,500%, Zimbabwe punches slightly above its weight in the great African league of staggering economic incompetence. But that alone should not be enough to cast the country as a terrible anomaly. It is anything but: it is, if we’re honest, entirely typical.

If Robert Mugabe has his invitation withdrawn, the European leaders will still be sitting down for talks with megalomaniac and corrupt bullies, tyrants, despots, criminals and purblind Marxist ideologues, a substantial proportion of whom will depart office having fleeced their country of every last penny they can lay their hands on.

Never mind worrying about Big Bob – just stay at home, Gordon.

The Conservative party has dropped its traditional party conference gimmick of producing sticks of blue seaside rock with the words “Conservative party” running through the middle. Perhaps it was deemed to be out of step with the party’s new image.

Quite right too. Nobody in their right minds would associate the current party with anything that had the words “Conservative party” at its heart; still less something that was cheerful, resilient, tough and unbending. Time for a rethink.

Maybe they should use that soft, crumbly, sugary fudge that you can buy in Edinburgh and have running through the middle the words: “We haven’t got a clue.

Not the foggiest.” Or there may be other, more appropriate, items of confectionery that successfully conjure up the image of the party. Pale pink marshmallows would be too obvious, I suppose, toasted over an Aga or otherwise.

Rice paper flying saucers filled with a dubious acrid white powder? Those ersatz chocolate mice you used to be able to buy, three for a penny, which left the roof of your mouth coated with a dense chemical slime? Traffic-light lollipops that change colour when you so much as look at them? Something, anyway, bought from the tuck shop at Eton, which, moments later, has you crouched down over the nearest lavatory bowl.

News fit for the oglebox

Viewers would prefer it if the BBC’s new “bite size” one-minute news slots were presented by nubile young women, rather than boss-eyed old gits, or journalists, apparently. This information has come from audience research, it seems.

Well, if you’re determined to make news programmes for morons, this is the sort of thing you ought to expect. It wouldn’t surprise me if the audience also expressed a preference for white newsreaders, no disabled, mentals or lesbians, and for the babe to conclude each dispatch by removing her top and languorously soaping herself.

Of course, by audience research the BBC may mean a focus group, that convocation of bemused individuals imprisoned in a meeting room and bombarded with fatuous questions by a smirking marketing monkey.

They did one of these for the Today programme when I was editor, and I was forced to watch the results. “What sort of meal would the Today programme be?” these bewildered people were asked. I had a lot of sympathy for the man who offered up “a large plate of turds” as an answer. We learnt nothing from the exercise except that people thought John Humphrys was quite a good thing. Oh, good, we’ll keep him on then.

Blue Peter cat is out of the bag

The bosses of Blue Peter rigged an audience vote to choose a name for the programme’s pet cat. The kids who voted were told that the winning name was Socks – whereas, in fact, Cookie topped the poll.

Well, what’s wrong with the name Cookie? If the children had opted to call the cat Hitler you’d understand.

It has been pointed out to me that “cookie” is sometimes used as slang for the class A drug methamphetamine, or, colloquially, “meth”. I’ve never heard such a thing. Is it common parlance within the Blue Peter production office? If not, how did they know that the name should be banned? Are they all mashed out of their brainboxes on hard drugs?

They’ve lied to the kiddies before, remember – first, when one of their dogs died and they pretended it hadn’t, just chucked it in the bin and got a new one that looked the same. That was back in the 1960s. Maybe they were all on acid then. Which would explain John Noakes, I suppose.

Blue Peter? You entrust your kids to it but backstage it’s like the last days of Sodom.

The government does not seem very enthusiastic about the US investigation into corruption within BAE Systems.

The company allegedly bunged zillions into the pockets of Prince Bandar and the honest, lovable and democratic Saudi royal family; a British investigation into it ceased upon the orders of Lord Goldsmith.

Now Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, has failed to pass on a request from the US for assistance to the Serious Fraud Office.

But let us give Jacqui the benefit of the doubt. She has probably lost the relevant paperwork; someone nail a duplicate to her forehead, quickly.

Two police officers stood and watched as 10-year-old Jordon Lyon drowned trying to save his little sister who had waded out of her depth in a large pond. The community bobbies hadn’t been properly trained in pond stuff.

“What sort of person would just watch a child drown?” Jordon’s mum asked in utter despair.

The assistant chief constable of Greater Manchester police has pronounced himself pleased with his constables’ response: they followed the correct procedure, the idiot said. So, Mrs Lyon, there’s your answer: that sort of person.

There are a lot of them around these days.

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