I'LL tell you what's wrong with this country - our perverse attitude towards animals.

And not just our pets.

Do you know which is the richest charity in Britain?

You'd assume that it was something really important, like Cancer Research or the NSPCC. Think again: It's actually a donkey sanctuary in Devon.

There, ageing donkeys with gold-encrusted hooves watch re-runs of Black Beauty on plasma screens while eating caviar and foie gras from diamond-studded bowls. They sleep in mink-lined stables attended to by semi-naked Catherine Zeta Jones look-alikes.

Once a month they sneak off to Alton Towers for secret night-time rides on the big dipper. And they've got an executive box at Chelsea - on the half-way line.

And all because mad old women would rather leave the contents of their wills to Popsy, Rosie and Silver rather than to abused children or doomed teenagers.

It's enough to make a cat laugh (especially if it's a lodger in a luxury cats' home where they breakfast on sugar mice and are allowed to play in the communal koi carp pool).

Then there's the case of Peewit the lapwing. Lapwings are comparatively common birds. According to the RSPB's website, getting on for two million of them winter in this country.

Let's put it like this - they're not exactly golden eagles.

Yet some fool at the nauseatingly-named St Tiggywinkles wildlife hospital in Dorset, where Peewit was taken after being found with a compound fracture of his right knee, has seen fit to reset and plaster the bird's leg before feeding him antibiotics and painkillers.

It's utterly pointless. What's going to happen once Peewit is released into the wild?

However well his leg heals, he's still going to be a cripple.

He won't last five minutes before he's caught and eaten (unless he's very lucky and is chased by a cat full of sugar mice and koi carp who can't catch up with him).

I hate to think how much time and money was wasted on Peewit.

I also hate to think how many full English breakfasts that cash would have bought for starving Ethiopian babies.

Perhaps we should stick them in a stable in Devon and bring coachloads of mad old ladies round to see them?