*ANYONE who owns a computer will occasionally receive an amusing story or collection of jokes in their inbox.

Such whimsies tend to do the rounds, passed around like those ‘old money’ chain letters. I usually spike them, purely on the grounds that I just can’t be bothered to plough through them.

The other day, I made an exception and read the attachment from start to finish.

It consisted of a series of jokes against men and had been sent to me by a woman, of course.

Isn’t it about time in this postfeminist world that we moved on from all this tosh? Isn’t everyone now heartily sick of the Jo Brand clichéd ‘all men are useless’ line of humour?

Apparently not. Meanwhile, I look forward to the same person sending me a string of sexist gags about women… purely in the interests of balance, of course.

*OLD-STYLE gamekeepers used to persecute buzzards pitilessly and that’s why they were virtually unknown east of Tenbury Wells until only a few years ago.

Thankfully, that generation of country gents has more or less died out now and the sight of the gamekeeper’s gibbet – once a familiar and slightly disturbing spectacle – is almost a thing of the past. Crows and weasels were often encountered dangling from posts when I was a child, their maggot-ridden carcases turning in the wind like some awful Tyburn of the natural world.

The other day, I saw three buzzards following a tractor, eager to scoop up whatever bounty the farmer unearthed.

I’m glad we seem to be coming to our senses and are starting to value wildlife for its own sake, rather than viewing wild creatures to be either exploited or exterminated.

*THERE’S growing suspicion in Roman Catholic circles that their church is now under attack from militant secularism.

It must have come to a pretty bad state of affairs for an unrepentant heretic such as me to side with popery, but it’s probably only an indication of just how bad things have become.

Catholics are under attack from all sides, lampooned by comedians on the one hand and by silly graduates writing for national newspapers on the other.

Of course, other religions – Islam springs to mind for some reason – are off limits and spared from the barbs of our so-funny ‘liberal’ elites.