IT pains me to even type out her name, but Heather Mills s latest round of TV appearances in both the UK and US have enraged me to such an extent that I find myself once again writing about this appalling monopedal harpy...

IT pains me to even type out her name, but Heather Mills's latest round of TV appearances in both the UK and US have enraged me to such an extent that I find myself once again writing about this appalling monopedal harpy.

No matter how much she eventually hops away with she will be a very wealthy woman. But that's not enough for her, is it? Oh no. She has to sit on any breakfast TV sofa that will have her to go into a complete wobbly about her treatment at the hands of a cruel press.

Treatment that has apparently been worse than that dished out to paedophiles.

Well here's the thing Heather. With paedophiles we can get them put away so we never have to deal with them ever again.

Unfortunately, we can't say the same about you because like someone else I know with a victim complex you have to be seen by the whole world as the one who was wronged.

Death threats? Do me a favour luv, you're not worth the effort.

Now for pity's sake woman, just take your obscene amount of money and go.

SOMEONE HAS TO CARRY THE CAN

IN July, 2005, the country was on high alert. The carnage of the July 7 suicide bombings and the inherent threat of more to come had spread fear across the whole country. Everyone was primed for the next wave and that almost came just two weeks later on July 21. Luckily, those bombs failed to detonate and no one was killed.

But it was in that atmosphere that on the following day armed Metropolitan Police officers followed Jean Charles de Menezes from a block of flats that intelligence had linked to one of the previous day's failed bombers, Hussain Osman.

Soon after, the Brazilian lay dead on the floor of a train at Stockwell Tube station after officers shot him seven times at close range in a few seconds described by one eye witness as chaotic and hysterical.

Last week the Met was found guilty of breaking health and safety laws and endangering the public and fined £175,000 with £385,000 costs.

This is money that will affect the police force's service to us, the public, rather than the authority itself.

But there has been massive damage done to the Met's credibility over this most tragic of mistakes.

Of course, being an armed officer on the frontline of what we all have to accept is urban warfare is a difficult and highly dangerous job.

But terrible mistakes were made on July 22, 2005, and the buck has to stop somewhere for an innocent man's death and the danger it placed members of the public in. And in a case as big as this the responsibility ultimately has to be at the very top with the commissioner, Sir Ian Blair.

In the two years since the shooting, the Met's prime concern, it seems to me, has been to salvage what it can and save certain careers while some, I'm sure, will be sacrificed as scapegoats over the coming weeks and months in a bid to appease public outrage.

Sir Ian's position is surely untenable. The government's "support" of him has all the hallmoarks of a football club chairman the day before he sacks the team's manager.

Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has said the verdict will make it more difficult for police to protect the capital against terrorism.

But who is going to protect us from the police?

OH MAN!

One of Zimbabwe's leading junior woman athletes is, it seems, a man. Samukeliso Sithole (I kid you not) claims to have been born with both male and female genitals. He or she says a healer made his or her penis disappear, but this had now grown back because the healer had not been fully paid. I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned there somewhere.