I have finally worked out how to access my own column online.

I flatter myself that I am a proficient silver surfer but frequently am reminded that I am not.

I wanted to see what feedback (if any) I was getting. Foolish, as of course, feedback is usually of the large Monty Python foot-from-the-sky kind.

Face to face, people tend to be polite. Most comments are along the lines of ‘I enjoy reading your column but don’t always agree with what you say’. And I can’t complain about that. In fact, if I pleased everyone all the time it would be a fairly pointless activity. Those who leave comments on the website can be more forthright.

I must first of all accept that I do get things wrong sometimes and am appalled to learn that I misspelled the word ‘tyre’ recently, failing to notice I had referred to car ‘tires’. Oops, and thank you keen-eyed Phredd.

As a self-proclaimed English language defender I can only apologise. Also, thanks to Mutley who pointed out my errant maths in working out the per litre measurement of the Thames Water fine for polluting our rivers. I said it amounted to £50 a litre. It was in fact 2p a litre. Shame on me.

That ten-shilling bet I had with my maths teacher, who cleverly motivated me to toil a little harder in his lessons by betting I would fail my O-level, clearly hasn’t completely succeeded in making me numerate.

However, Mr Smith – the correspondent who chastised me this week for writing about things that are ‘widely held and popular views by most decent folks’, suggesting that I was therefore wasting valuable column space – misses the point that there are still far too many folks who are not by his reckoning ‘decent’.

He went on to add a list of things he assumed I wasn’t doing to make things better. He was wrong about all but one of his accusations. I have not become a hunt saboteur, any more indeed than most decent folk are.

But Mr Smith believes I am superfluous to requirements because most people – well most ‘decent’ people – agree with me. An unusual position.

I would only add that opinion columns are simply that – opinions – and I strongly defend everyone’s right to agree with me. Decent or otherwise.