Tucked away in the small print of the entertaining McCartney-Mills divorce settlement was a £50,000 annual sum payable to the lovely Heather for “charitable donations”. Nobody seemed to think this odd apart from Heather, who, being an extraordinarily generous woman, had asked for £627,000 per annum to “donate to charity”. This sum included £192,000 for private flights, not including helicopters (that was another £120,000), so she could give of herself to the poor, the needy, the dispossessed millions – always travelling first class, natch.

The judge balked and settled for just £50K, or double the average UK wage. In a sense the difference between what Heather wanted and what the judge saw fit to give doesn’t matter: it is the principle of the thing. The point of the court case was to assess how much money Heather deserved to get by on, and the court – and the press – seemed to accept that she should be awarded a sum to devote to the charity of her choice – Land Mines for the Blind, or whatever. Because giving vast sums of money to charity is a human right, even if you don’t have that money in the first place. It is not the self-sacrifice of forking out your hard-earned cash because you wish to help others; it is the right to feel good about yourself. It is not “charity” at all; it is uncharity: self-love and self-aggrandisement.

Earlier in the week it was revealed that Sentebale, the southern African charity set up by Prince Harry to provide for the orphans of Aids victims, had given only £84,000 of its £1.15m annual donations to the people it was intended to help.Some of the money went on salaries, including around £90,000 to the Director based in Lesotho, transport, publicity and a payment to an arts firm run by a chap called Geoffrey Matthews. Geoff happens to be the part-time chief executive of Sentebale, from which he draws a salary adjacent to £20,000 a year.

The suspicion grows that “charity” today is a bit of a racket. It’s all the more ugly when it’s a charity with which famous people, or wannabe famous people, are associated. We swallow the questionable notion that in order to campaign effectively our big charities need chief executives, glossy advertising, shiny Mercedes 4x4s to tear across the veld, a legion of PRs working out of grand central London headquarters, lobbyists and consultants – otherwise the poor little black children will die. Somewhere along the way the point has been lost – nowhere better exemplified than in our apparent acceptance that Heather Mills should be awarded money to “give to charity”.

Glenda fails to deliver on post offices

To the barricades, then, with Glenda Jackson, the Hampstead and Highgate Labour MP, who is fighting like an Equity card-carrying wolverine against plans to close three post offices in her constituency. “These proposals will cause real damage, both social and economic,” she raged to her local newspaper, the Ham and High. And there on her website: “We are strongly apposed [sic] to these closures . . . they will affect the most vulnerable people in our community.”

Her apposition (sic) to the closures gently expired last week, when the House of Commons debated the matter.

Glenda abstained from voting for a Tory amendment, in effect supporting the closures. Many other Labour MPs who had allied themselves to the same cause voted likewise. How can you ever trust them again?

The late Auberon Waugh once saw Glenda strip off in the film Women in Love and noted that she had a “most unusual configuration of pubic hair. It seems to grow in a narrow tuft, like the hairstyle of The Last of the Mohicans”. Bron mused that perhaps this was why there were no more Mohicans. But this has nothing to do with post office closures and I feel slightly ashamed at having mentioned it at all.

Britain’s not worthy of those it turns away

It has become axiomatic that those foreigners who most deserve to be let into the country, and to whom we owe a debt of either gratitude or a profound apology, will have the most difficulty getting in. The Gurkhas are the most recent example; everybody, except the government, is agreed that the old servicemen who risked their lives for Britain for a pittance should be allowed to live here. Most people seemed to think that the Hong Kong people should have been allowed in too, when we handed the colony back to China without worrying about democracy. Zimbabweans who wished to flee from the Marxist dingbat we allowed to take power were denied entry for years.

We ought to close the door to pistol-packin’ Libyans, suicidally fundamentalist Algerians, Somalian rapists, assorted paedophiles and weirdos. But we usually let them in because their human rights might be infringed. So ludicrous has this become that one is tempted to join the Gurkhas clinging to the sides of their chilly mountains and wave goodbye to Britain for good.

The lady behind the checkout till in Waitrose was clutching a bunch of plastic bags tightly to her bosom, as if they were her baby daughter. They’re usually left loose for the public to pick up. When I asked her for one she looked at me as if I had performed what The Daily Telegraph calls a “sex act” in front of her. Disgust mingled with outrage.

Meanwhile, scientists are trying to stop cows from farting, in order to save the planet. One cow produces more greenhouse gases in a year than your average Chelsea tractor, apparently. Soon, the scientists will try to stop us blowing off, too, perhaps by sewing up our bottoms. Every day that passes sees a new and wonderful green initiative.

The television fox-puppet thing, Basil Brush, has just been cleared of a race hate crime. One of the creature’s programmes depicted a member of Britain’s gypsy community selling clothes pegs and telling fortunes. This was an out-of-date and inaccurate stereotype, a traveller complained. Well, maybe – but also a fairly agreeable stereotype. If the gypsy had been depicted instead as an indolent, semi-literate thief surrounded by 26 savage, mangy dogs and an acre of stolen scrap metal – a more modern stereotype – then you can understand why offence might have been taken. Perhaps this is why Northamptonshire Police decided not to press charges against Mr Brush.

To my mind, it’s a bit of a shame. Since the age of five I have wanted to strangle or maim both Basil Brush and the succession of wrong ’uns who’ve obtained a living by putting their hands up his bottom. It’s those blank, death-black eyes set too close together; the vulgar, importuning snout and its jovially startled expression, as if it had just been touched up by a weasel.

We need to think up another charge upon which the bloody thing can be arraigned, convicted and locked up, away from the nation’s innocent young children – those of both the travelling and static communities.

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