Daddy was a bank robber

IT'S a great pub quiz question. Which member of Wee Gordie Broon's Cabinet once stood trial for bank robbery?

The answer, not surprisingly in light of recent events, is the Right Honourable Peter Hain MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Secretary of State for Wales. (And by the time you read this, the question might have to change to "Which former member of ") Mr Hain's previous difficulties came about in 1974, when he was allegedly framed by South African security services because they were getting a bit cheesed off with his highly-effective leadership of the anti-apartheid campaign. He was, of course, totally innocent and was cleared of any involvement.

But now it seems that he may face criminal charges over large sums of money once more, in this instance around £103,000 donated to his campaign to become leader of what used to be the Labour Party that he failed to declare to the Electoral Commission.

The money was paid to a so-called think tank with no staff and no offices which seems to exist only as a means of funnelling funds from assorted trades unions and anonymous donors into Mr Hain's campaign.

Mr Hain, who I've always considered to be a pretty good egg for a politician, says that the failure to declare all this money was "an administrative error". Well yes, of course it was. Just like all those people fiddling their benefits are guilty of "administrative errors".

Even so, isn't this a little careless? It's not as if dodgy donations haven't been on the political agenda of late. And anyway, what on earth did he spend a total of £185,000 on? It can't have cost that much to do the odd mail-shot, so where did the dosh go?

There must be a limit to the number of Gregg's pasties and pints of Tetley you can force down the throats of party members, even if one of them is John Prescott.

I SUPPOSE that will soon pale into insignificance compared with the millions that will surely flow into assorted animal charities in the wake of those 111 maltreated horses that were found, 32 of them dead, in a field near Amersham, Bucks.

The British are like that with their animals, which is why our biggest donkey charity is already richer than many small African nations and has to resort to feeding the poor beasts hand-picked hay laced with Armagnac and truffles and fitting them with head collars studded with diamonds and gold-plated hooves in an attempt to diminish some of its embarrassing wealth.

Further evidence of this twisted sense of priorities comes from the RSPCA hotline, where a combination of misguided fools, mad old ladies and vegan bunny-huggers pester hard-working charity workers with reports of hedgehogs trapped in cellars that turn out to be shoe-scrapers, a radioactive' squirrel that turned out to be an albino, and "the sound of animals in my roof" that was a smoke detector with a low battery.

One man phoned up because he thought his goldfish was depressed, another wanted an officer to come and rescue a fly from a spider's web, someone reported "a bee on my wall and it's too cold for it", while another nutter reported: "I have something in my garden and it's either a dog or a horse". Give you a clue - if it barks, it's a dog; if it comes last in the 3.40 at Haydock, it's a horse.

YOU MAY have recently noticed the case of the Muslim teenager who went to an industrial tribunal claiming discrimination. She failed to win a job as a stylist at a funky' London hair salon because she insisted on wearing a headscarf at all times.

The owner of the salon, now facing financial ruin because of the costs of the case, argued that her stylists were walking advertisements for the urban, punky' salon's work and that the Hilda Ogden look wasn't likely to be very popular among her clientele.

This episode now joins the cases, both reported this week, of the 40-year-old Oxford professor who is heading for a massively costly 14-day tribunal because she was rarely picked as first choice striker for the college women's football team, and Isaac Blake, who is claiming unfair dismissal from his role as a Tombliboo character in a CBBC children's TV programme because his suit, of which the trousers fall down at inappropriate times, was unfit for purpose, in making an utter farce of our ridiculously victim-led judicial system.