How embarrassing that some members of the government appear to have behaved in the manner of uncouth thugs – and towards someone representing the UN, which dared to question the bedroom tax.

Brazilian UN investigator Raquel Rolnik says she has never faced such an aggressive, hostile reaction from a country. Conservative chairman Grant Shapps, seemingly incandescent, has written a complaint to the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, insisting that Rolnik withdraw her report as it is politically biased and she had not met relevant ministers or officials to discuss the policy. Iain Duncan Smith, work and pensions secretary, agreed, saying that Rolnik had undermined the impartial reputation of the UN.

Another Tory MP, Stewart Jackson, called Rolnik a "loopy Brazilian leftie with no evidence masquerading as a serious UN official". Sections of the media dubbed Rolnik a "Brazil nut", who once dabbled in voodoo, offering animal sacrifices to Karl Marx. There were other suggestions that Rolnik might want to sort out Brazil before she came meddling in British housing – ahem, kind of missing the point of the UN there, folks!

What provoked such a reaction? Is Rolnik really a "Brazil nut" or a UN special rapporteur, with five years' experience of carrying out housing investigations in countries such as the US, Croatia, Argentina, Israel, Rwanda, Palestine, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Israel and Algeria? During her visit to Britain to investigate social housing (organised, she claims, by the UK government in order to demonstrate that it was fulfilling its obligations to the UN Convention on Human Rights), Rolnik visited various British cities (Manchester, Belfast, Glasgow and Edinburgh). She met council officials and media outlets, and set up meetings with Eric Pickles, secretary of state for communities and local government, under secretary Don Foster and other officials, all, she says, listed in her report.

The trouble started when Rolnik observed that the bedroom tax (where people must pay for "spare" rooms through a deduction in their housing benefit) is causing great hardship and distress to the most vulnerable. Some people she spoke to were in tears; some said they even contemplated suicide, because they had nowhere to downsize to – owing to a shortage of smaller housing. Rolnik said that the bedroom tax could represent a violation of human rights and that Britain, which formerly held a good record on social housing, could face "going backwards in the protection and promotion of the human right to housing".

After she'd been attacked, Rolnik commented: "It was the first time a government has been so aggressive. When I was in the US, I had a constructive conversation with them, accepting some things and arguing with others. They did not react like this".

Oh dear. Welcome to 21st-century Britain, Ms Rolnik. This is where the embarrassment sets in. Rolnik makes it quite clear that she is fine with debate and also dissent. It is the hostility and aggression that she is astounded by. During her visit to the US, they had a discussion and came to considered conclusions, like… what are they called again?… grown-ups! In Britain, Rolnik was denounced, smeared, name-called, basically bullied and all but dunked into a pond to check if she was a witch.

Don't politicians have a duty to exercise a modicum of self-control? However upset they were by criticisms of the bedroom tax, it's the way they reacted to criticism that is key here. It would be nice if our representatives could be trusted to be statesmanlike, at least professional and dignified. Even nicer, if someone from the UN didn't go back with the news that members of the British government were the most aggressive and hostile she'd ever encountered. As I said, embarrassing.

This was the behaviour of small-minded bullies who prefer to go about their grubby business under the cover of national darkness and who don't appreciate someone coming in from the outside world and turning all the lights on.

Hey handsome, who says older women shouldn't flirt?

Since it was revealed that David Beckham had a crush on Cherie Blair, the air has been riven with the sound of dry retching. But why is there always such a fuss when a younger man looks remotely taken by an older woman?

Has someone imposed a cross-generational flirt ban?

Elsewhere, there was more fuss because presenter Susannah Reid had a twinkle in her eye during her interview with Arctic Monkeys' frontman, Alex Turner. Reid (rather ludicrously) tried to lure Turner into signing up for Strictly Come Dancing, on which she is about to appear.

Alluding to the Monkeys' hit, she said that Turner would "look good on the dancefloor" and Turner replied that, on the contrary, she would and then Reid went all flustered and talked too much for a bit.

All very U-certificate (both are in relationships): no one was yelling: "Take me now!"; there wasn't even any twerking.

But wait. Turner is 27 and Reid is 42, so that makes things very different, especially for Reid, an attractive woman, suddenly recast as a deluded old boiler.

This would never have happened if Victoria Beckham had confessed a crush on Tony Blair or an older male interviewer had flirted with a younger female pop star. There might still have been dry retching, and it might have mainly come from me, but any rumpus would have been nothing to do with their ages.

That's because it's still fine for older men and younger women to flirt, but the reverse is considered unthinkable. Back on Planet Sane, most of us realise that flirting is rarely uber-sexual – it's rather a social thing and all sorts of improbable pairings get up to it.

Anyone calling for a flirt ban must have a mind that is as muddled as it is sad and smutty.

The death penalty dilemma that even liberals may feel

The case of the young woman in Delhi, who was raped so brutally she later died of her injuries, has resulted in death sentences being given to four of her assailants – which may have left some people feeling conflicted.

People usually know where they stand on capital punishment, but even those of us who are firmly anti might find ourselves staggeringly disoriented when it comes to crimes as hideous as this. This is India, where sexual assault is not only commonplace, but also routinely goes unpunished; thus this case resonates deeply for all the women of India, and women elsewhere. The compulsion is to succumb to a wave of compassion fatigue for the guilty parties, to end up thinking: "Just this once, sod liberal sensibilities, I don't care what happens to them."

Which is illogical. If the death penalty existed in Britain, it would only be for the worst crimes, such as the Delhi murder, so by refusing to care, we would instantly reposition ourselves in the "pro" camp.

This is the nature of capital punishment – there is no middle ground.

In Britain, it could be that such crimes allow us the luxury of being faux-conflicted (safely, once removed), knowing that these private wobbles are purely academic.

We don't have to face the harsh realities of capital punishment, we don't have to follow through. It's easy to indulge in a fleeting spasm of "hang 'em and flog 'em" when you know it's never going to happen.

Underlying it all, there's not only rightful compassion for victims, but also perhaps relief that we don't have to face such quandaries.

We have our own appalling crimes, but at least we don't have the added burden of the death penalty.