I watched the BBC documentary which followed Camilla Batman’sdoodah through the collapse of the charity that she founded and “ran” for nearly twenty years.

That prompted me to watch her appearance alongside Botney of the Beeb before The House Of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee – a singularly ill-natured event from which she emerged looking like a teenager who has been caught running up a massive bill on Netflix.

The Committee, quite correctly, turned most of its firepower on Botney. The collapse, although sparked by allegations of sexual abuse, really happened because the charity ran out of money as it had nothing approaching proper reserves – a responsibility that the charity rules places on the trustees.  This was a £23 million a year organisation employing 650 staff, and they were existing from day to day even before the final allegations that brought it all tumbling down.

I started watching the documentary feeling quite well disposed to Camilla. I’ve always thought she was a bit odd, but there’s nothing wrong with that. But, in common with the film maker, I started to lose sympathy as some of the more, shall we say, eccentric things that Kids Company were doing began to come to light. You can watch the film yourself, but there’s something distinctly odd about a charity for Kids footing all the living expenses for a 34 Jamaican failed asylum seeker. Saying that she was “special” doesn’t really mean much, and I suspect that there is more to this than we have been told.

Obviously, there were mistakes in the running of Kids Company, but to listen to Camilla it’s clear that she is unable to even contemplate the possibility of some of those errors being hers. Every time she was challenged about something she became aggressively defensive, displaying a rather unpleasant mixture alternating between petulance and pomposity.  She had been at the helm for such a long time that she now believes in her own infallibility. Too late were Botney and the Board taking steps to get her to stand down.

Nobody could dispute that Kids Company did some admirable things, but there were problems and until such time as Camilla admits her own part in its downfall the poor woman will be unable to move on.

I don’t want much out of life these days, but a bit of good old fashioned customer service would not go amiss now and then.

We have just bought a car, nothing fancy, but it suits us. Unfortunately, the built in stereo doesn’t do what we want, so we wanted to change it. Last Saturday morning we visited Halfords in Crawley, West Sussex.  (Yes, I know! We should really have known better.)

We found a unit that we quite liked the look of, despite there being no one there to assist. After about ten minutes of waiting we went looking for someone to help. We were told that someone would be with us shortly. After another ten minutes we went looking again. Alex mentioned that we were looking to buy a car stereo and have it fitted, to be met by the first response of “It won’t be today”. Well, that wasn’t actually the question. The “assistant” who finally came over gave the distinct impression that we were a nuisance.

Anyway, we showed him the unit we were interested in and he went to the desk to log on to the computer. We just seemed to be getting somewhere when another member of the public came in and, rather rudely, demanded information about MoT tests. Even more rudely the “assistant” then proceeded to deal with his question. When I worked briefly in retail the response would have been “I will be with you in a moment, sir, when I have dealt with this customer”.

At this point I had rather had enough of Halfords, so we went and got a coffee instead. If Halfords doesn’t want my money that’s fine by me, we’ll go somewhere else.

We did! Alex phoned a local company that specialises in car audio. They were helpful from the start and installed the new unit on Thursday.

The payoff is that when I mentioned that I had tried and failed to buy one from Halfords the installer said I was their third customer this week to say that! I’ve now written to their CEO politely advising her that I’m unlikely to use her shops in future for anything more complicated than an air freshener. Doing a bit of simple extrapolation I’d say that customers just walking away could be costing them a quarter of a million a week in lost sales.

Oh dear, how sad, never mind!

That seems to be the level to which we have now sunk as a society.

David Bellis has just won a £2,000 holiday from Thomson Holidays in their “Made Me Smile” photo competition. His winning entry was him and his three year old son out for a walk in the country. His selfie was photobombed by a horse called Betty, “smiling” from behind a barbed wire fence.

Rather than be happy for David and his family, Betty’s owner, Nicola Mitchell from Prestatyn, contacted Thomson Holidays to complain. She reckons that David should have asked her consent and that she should be entitled to part of the prize.

How shitty and mean-spirited can anyone get?

This afternoon I sat down at my computer and scrolled through the news feed on Facebook. I was met with a stream of blue, white and red. So many of my friends showing horror at what has happened in Paris and solidarity for a city once again in mourning.

It is just a little over 40 years since I first saw at close quarters the effects of terrorism. I was privileged to meet several of the survivors of the IRA’s cowardly attack on the Caterham Arms.  On this side of the channel we had decades to get used to indiscriminate and cowardly attacks by extremists. We refused to allow it to change our lives. We still went to work, we still went out to the cinema or down the pub. In the end the “armed struggle” achieved nothing beyond robbing thousands of families of their loved ones and entrenching hatred.

Sadly, yet another bunch of the crazed and the self-obsessed fails to learn and understand an important lesson of history – terrorism doesn’t work – it cannot work if the target refuses to be terrorised.

To those who support or harbour these evil people – you will fail. No matter how many times you attack us we will not scurry away and hide. We will not give in to you.

To the people of Paris, once again nursing their wounded and burying their dead – we feel your pain. We weep with you. We stand by you.

Vive La France.

My poor old website has been off air for a while.

Turns out that some scrote had down what’s called a code injection, which puts a load of shit into the files to redirect people to sites selling porn, or viagra, or mail order pigs for the discerning prime minister.

Well, well done, arsehole. You failed. Now stop wasting everyone’s time and get a proper job.