So Lee Jasper, Ken Livingstone’s “race adviser”, has resigned from his £117,000 a year job handing out public money to his friends and associates. A shame, because I was seriously beginning to enjoy him.

The thing that did for him was a lascivious e-mail to a woman called Karen Chouhan, part of which reads as follows: “I want to wisk you away to a deserted Island beach, honey glase you, let you cook slowly before a torrid and passionate embrace.” I have stuck to Lee’s grammar, for authenticity. Sadly, we do not know how Chouhan responded. Something along the lines of how much she yearned for Lee’s large throbbing grant, I would guess. Because a little later the organisation for which she was responsible received £65,000 of ratepayers’ money, on Lee’s approval. She described the e-mail as banter. But to paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies, she would, wouldn’t she?

Ken has said he would like to reemploy Jasper, presumably in his old role, once the mayoral election is out of the way. But even a man of Ken’s arrogance may find that difficult, even if he wins. By Livingstone’s own lights, Lee’s goose is surely cooked either way. If he was engaged in an intimate relationship with Chouhan (which they both deny) then there is serious conflict of interest involving public money. If, however, the salaciousness was one-sided, then it is surely a case of either sexist bullying or sexual harassment.

Jasper can’t get away from that “passionate and torrid embrace”. Here’s a woman dependent upon Jasper for economic survival being bombarded with suggestive and sexually explicit e-mails: human resources departments would tell you that Chouhan’s refusal to complain in no way negates the accusation of sexual bullying. The woman wouldn’t complain because she was in a position of weakness and effective subordination. The fact is, you simply can’t tell women you want to cook them these days and take lack of reproach for consent.

Jasper has responded much as you might expect him to. He says he’s been singled out because of the racist stereotype that “no black person can be trusted with money”. Nope, Lee. It’s not about black people, it’s about you. And about Ken – who is not black, so far as I am aware. Livingstone, and no doubt Jasper, perhaps with votes in mind, love doling out millions to organisations with the word “black” in the title: the Black Londoners Forum, for example, and quite possibly the National Association of Black Women I’d Like To Cook On A Beach.

Increasingly, it is black Londoners who are sick to the back teeth of this costly, patronising, agitprop drivel. The latest opinion poll shows Livingstone trailing Boris Johnson, the Conservative candidate, by five points. Honey glaze that, newt-boy.

* * * * *

That annual canine porno show, Crufts, has run into controversy because this year – in an attempt to be relevant and up to date – they are having disco-dancing dogs. Some people are complaining that this compromises the essential, ahem, dignity of the event.

But really somebody should tell the organisers – largely middle-aged blue-rinse Tory ladies whose fingers smell strongly of Pedigree Chum – that “disco-dancing” would have been up to date and relevant in about 1974.

What we want this year is binge-drinking dogs, vomiting, fighting and copulating in the arena, smashed out of their tiny skulls on Bacardi Breezers. And radical Muslim dogs cheerfully blowing themselves up in front of a panel of lenient appeal court judges. Flyblown single parent slut-dogs puffing on crack pipes; personal injury lawyer dogs with writs clamped between their jaws; eco-friendly David Cameron-style dogs with pointless wind turbines nail-gunned to their foreheads; chav dogs in Burberry caps barking abuse at passers-by; suicidal teenage “emo” dogs accessed via Facebook; and a special category for breeds involved in the gratuitous maiming of toddlers.

If you’re going to make it relevant, ladies, then make it properly relevant. Disco-dancing! Woof-woof.

High times with the UN’s star turns

In a very stern report, the United Nations lambasts Britain’s “celebrity cocaine culture”, suggesting that lenient sentences for famous drug users send the wrong message to young people. Poor, lovely Kate Moss should have been stripped of her lucrative contracts, a UN spokesman averred.

But Kate isn’t the only celeb to have dabbled. Angelina Jolie, for example, has been partial to the odd bit of smack and LSD: however, she has also warned that “those drugs can be dangerous if you don’t go into it positively”. Cheers, Ange, I’ll pass that advice on to the kiddies. Whoopi Goldberg was once a bit of a skaghead too, and partial to the occasional tab of acid. Robbie Williams, meanwhile, vacuumed up the GDP of Bolivia after Take That and was back in rehab last year trying to beat a prescription drugs habit.

What do all these people have in common, aside from being grade A celebrity monkeys? Yep, you’ve got it – they’re all UN goodwill ambassadors.

We snigger at the desperate antics of our drug-addled celebrities – which is better, I reckon, than indulging in them the notion that they might be able to rid the world of Aids, famine and poverty, in between the occasional snort.

The only assault here is on justice itself

The conviction rate for sexual assaults has just got worse: Jack Gillett, a Cambridge University graduate student, was cleared of the charge in court on Friday. He had engaged in consensual how’s-yer-father with a fellow student: five months later she lodged a complaint with the police and Gillett endured nine months of misery and suspicion and a three-day trial before the jury found him not guilty.

The judge wondered why the case had been brought before him, so patently innocent was Gillett. The answer, of course, is that the government has got it into its head that too few men are being convicted. There is political pressure to prosecute and convict.

In fact the number of prosecutions for rape and sexual assault has remained pretty much the same over the past decade – it is only the proportion of convictions that has dropped. This might be because more fictitious cases are brought before the courts. As usual, Gillett’s “victim” remains anonymous and unprosecuted.

* * * * *

You realise how neglected and disdained Britain’s white working class has become when you watch trailers for the BBC’s much-hyped “white” season. With great brouhaha and self-congratulation, the corporation is at last devoting a few hours’ air time to the constituency which pays half its licence fee.

These explorations of white working-class culture have about them the whiff of exoticism and journalistic bravery – as if it were David Attenborough attempting to commune with silverback gorillas somewhere in the jungles of the Congo. At least they’re doing it, I suppose, even if the first tranche of guests – the shockjock Jon Gaunt and BNP leader Nick Griffin – had a stereotypical flavour.

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