The Vatican announced a special offer last week. The Pope has decreed that any of the faithful who take part in any private or public devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes will receive a plenary indulgence.

The special offer, which is valid at any participating shrine until December 8 next year, is to mark the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes.

You will notice that it is not just any ordinary indulgence which would only knock a bit off of your term of punishment in Purgatory for sins committed during your life. Pope Benedict XVI is offering the gold-card plenary indulgence which remits all purgatorial punishment. Do not hang about in Heaven's detention centre; proceed directly to the Pearly Gates.

I am a touch surprised that the Catholic Church is still in the indulgences business after all the bad press they got in the Middle Ages. Pope Leo X (1513-1521) set up a lucrative business flogging forgiveness to raise the cash to rebuild St Peter's in Rome.

Sundry lower grade clerics got into the indulgence-selling act. It was a good Catholic boy called Martin Luther who turned whistle-blower on the corrupt practice. Such a shame that Luther did not simply call his reform movement New Catholic. Then we might not have had all this Kafflick and Proddie business. But enough potted history.

The Lourdes indulgence promotion does seem to be about holiness rather than lucre. You do not have to travel by Mistralair, the Vatican's own charter airline, to qualify.

Ryanair is fine. Although Mistralair does offer the possibility of having a cardinal as a tour guide, not to mention in-flight entertainment of a religious nature, and the slogan "I am searching for your face, Lord" on each seat.

In fact, you don't even have to go to Lourdes at all. The plenary time-off for bad behaviour will also be available to anyone who pops into any "public sanctuary, shrine or other worthy place dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes" any time between February 2 and February 11. Which means that the Marian grotto in Carfin, Lanarkshire, should be pretty busy during that period.

Devout readers may detect a hint of negativity in this report. Call me a cynic (and Canon Gilmartin of Our Lady of Lourdes parish church in Cardonald often did), but I just don't buy indulgences. I suspect that trying to get through the turnstiles at Heaven with an indulgence will be as much use as attempting to enter the gates of Ibrox with a Celtic season ticket.

From what I can see, the spirit of Pope Leo X, the money man, is still very much in evidence. In the internet age, you can light an e-Candle for a minimum credit card donation of $5 via the Society of the Divine Word.

For $30 you can buy an attractive personalised, gold-stamped Mass card which entitles the purchaser to perpetual enrolment to "seven Holy Masses each day and a share in all the Masses, communions, prayers, sacrifices and good works of 6000 Divine Word missionary priests and brothers".

I notice that you can make an online donation to the Carfin grotto via Paypal, which sounds like papal if you say it quick. The money-changers are still very much in the temple.

IF Wendy Alexander and her team had sold indulgences instead of soliciting illegal political donations, they might not be in their present pickle. But they are, so let's continue to enjoy this particularly piquant pickle.

The Alexander explanation of she came to pocket Paul Green's £950 contribution has been more than entertaining. It wisnae her that done it. It was a big boy (Charlie Gordon MSP) who did it but has not yet run away.

Or, if she did it, she didn't mean to do it. It remains to be seen whether Wendy's plea of incompetence will wash with the investigators from the Electoral Commission or with the polis.

Should Wendy and her shadowy Cabinet escape prison or banishment from Scottish political life and have the brass neck to put themselves once more before the electorate, I suspect the verdict will be unequivocal.

I ADMIRE the ethos if not the execution of canoeist John Darwin's attempt to do a Reggie Perrin. Many of us would love to shuffle off this temporary coil.

You fabricate a scenario which qualifies you for the status of missing presumed dead. The wife collects the life insurance, although you're still alive. She sells the house and cashes in all relevant chips.

She pops off to Panama to buy a wee flat to live in while she shops around for a remote farm as a permanent residence. You then slip into Panama to rejoin the wife. You tell the weans feck all. You live cheaply and happily ever after.

John Darwin and his wife Anne nearly got away with it. But you can't help but feel they didn't think their plan all the way through.

There were a couple of slight flaws that should be a lesson to anyone thinking of stealing the insurance company's money and heading off into the Panamian hinterland.

A handy hint if you are going into hiding: do not pose with your estate agent for a photograph which is likely to end up on a website and thereafter on the front pages of the tabloid press.

If you want to fake death and live off the proceeds, it is a good idea to change your name. A wee bit of plastic surgery might be in order.

If you want to catch up with your widow (as you will, since she has all the loot), best wait until she is installed in that remote farm in Darien.

Last, but not least, do try not arouse the suspicions of the police. It is not a sensible course of action to walk into a cop shop and say: "Hello, I think I may be a missing person." It is an even bigger mistake to do so while sporting a nice suntan recently acquired in a hot country.

The Darwins have provided the populace with much amusement. They might well win one of those Darwin awards for totally irrational behaviour.

Mr Darwin is likely to be a Reggie Perrin who gets his deserts not in the sunshine but in one of Her Majesty's prisons.

I HAD contemplated giving up all air travel to save the planet from global warming, but now I won't have to. Skippy the bush kangaroo has come to rescue.

A large percentage of greenhouse gases emanates not from airyplanes going to Barcelona but from farting cows and sheep.

Researchers in Australia estimate that 14% of that country's emissions is down to animal methane.

They have also discovered that when it comes to planet-endangering colonic gases, Skippy and his pals are at the bottom (so to speak) of the league. The digestive system of kangaroos is rich in microbes which allow them to eat grass and plants but without producing the flatulence.

Rather than produce methane, kangaroos produce acetate, which aids digestion. The scientists are working on various kangaroo-microbe-based potions which will be administered to the offendingly windy cattle and sheep.

The ozone layer will be saved. If similar medicine can be prescribed for flatulent humans, the planet will be a better place.