Where do they find such people?

"THIRD party?" (10 letters beginning in G). In an idle moment I picked up a crossword yesterday and instantly wished I hadn't. Crosswords are for devious people. If you are no good at them, be proud. It means you are a decent, straightforward sort of person. Just like me.

A READER writes: "If you were a female working in an office during the 1960s and 1970s you expected to have your bottom or waist pinched occasionally by the office 'letch'. Clearly, this was inappropriate and should not have happened but that's the way it was. No one saw anything amiss in it and women just accepted it as part of life unless it became too sexual to be tolerated."

ACTUALLY, a lot of women and girls saw plenty amiss in it. They were deeply distressed by such encounters but entirely powerless. Now, 40-odd years on, they have the law on their side. I foresee a lot of aged gropers being dragged before the courts for something they knew was wrong at the time but thought they had got away with. And serve 'em right.

TO THEIR credit, a great many British politicians and would-be politicians have never fiddled their expenses, attended Nazi-themed parties, persuaded their wives to take penalty points, "cottaged" for gay sex in public lavatories, posed in their Y-fronts on the internet or downloaded illegal porn. However, a hell of a lot of politicians do seem to come with an awful lot of baggage. This week's scandal is the former Ukip Commonwealth spokesman who allegedly led a kidnapping gang in Pakistan where he is still wanted. Where do political parties find such people?

THESE political scandals seem to come along at the rate of about one per week. It makes you wonder if there is a certain sort of risk-taking, reckless, hyper-confident personality which is attracted to politics – and which ought to be rooted out. Deceiving a party selection committee by lying about your past is a form of fraud. Has anyone ever been jailed for it?

INCIDENTALLY, I was going to add a potted list of UK politicians with criminal convictions but I don't have the space. The sex-convictions document alone runs to more than 2,000 words.

A DILEMMA for the politically correct. A row has broken out over moves to let a white lesbian couple in London adopt a three-year-old Somali girl. No-one wants to deny lesbians the right to a family life but what about the child's cultural birthright? The extended Somali family in London say they are prepared to have the child yet the adoption agency said no suitable adopters could be found, so it "cast the net more widely." But the process is now on hold following a demonstration by Somalis in Harrow. And I wonder if at the root of the agency's decision was the fear that the "religious and cultural values" of the Somali family included the custom of female genital mutilation. This revolting, agonising and dangerous tribal practice is illegal and yet has been inflicted on thousands of girls living in Britain, without a single prosecution. Here is a chance to ensure one little girl is spared that ordeal and leads a normal, healthy life. She'll be safer with the lesbian couple than with her own people.

NO REST for the wicked. Having failed to respond to one of those ludicrous online requests for a "review" of the white ceiling paint I bought some week ago, I got a reminder. They are clearly not going to go away so here, in full, is my review of the white ceiling paint: "It's paint. It's white. It goes on ceilings." And someone, somewhere, can tick a box.

"THIRD party?" (10 letters beginning in G) turns out to be Gooseberry. See? Deeply devious.