HAUNTING images of Reeva Steenkamp have been released showing her looking radiant, happy and with the expectation of life before her.

For snuffing out that life – the court’s ruling is that it was culpable homicide, in other words, a kind of mistake – her killer, Oscar Pistorius, is sent to prison for five years. In all reality he will probably be out in time to enjoy Christmas 2015.

Women’s groups in South Africa have exploded with fury, and rightly so.

What Pistorius will undergo does not in any way atone for what he did, recklessly firing four bullets into the room where Reeva was cowering. He says he thought she was an intruder and the court accepted that, despite millions thinking otherwise.

For all the talk about her being tough and clever, I wasn’t impressed with trial Judge Thokozile Masipa. I was appalled by the South African practice of not having a jury.

But who are we to criticise when all the time this was going on we had celebrities like Judy Finnigan appearing to downplay certain types of rape (even though she later apologised), we had internet trolls then saying she and her daughter, Chloe, should be raped, and supporters of the rapist Ched Evans setting up a website which, in my opinion after reading it, is far more spine-chilling than anything you’ll encounter on Halloween. And then we had his girlfriend, Natasha Massey, being threatened with physical harm for sticking by him.

Over in West Africa the Nigerian government has only just got around to trying to free the 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram. In Syria a woman is stoned to death by an ISIS hate mob that includes her own father. Another female ISIS captive pleads with the US to bomb the brothel she has been forced to work in because she has been raped ‘thirty times and it’s not even lunchtime.’ Yes, it’s been a grim week for women's issues.

Please don’t think any of this is a pop at blokes, though. I live with three of them and know that the vast majority of chaps are as despairing as I am of the way some women are violated, ground-down, bullied and mistreated.

But all men, everywhere, if they are not part of the problem have to be part of the solution. It means not laughing when vile, sexist jokes are made at women’s expense. It means letting their mates and male relations know that bullying and intimidatory behaviour towards women won’t be tolerated because no real man ever wanted to make a woman scared of him.

Women must play their part, too. Natasha Massey has every right to stand by her convicted rapist fiancé. But even if he was innocent as he insists, what does Natasha really think about what happened at the hotel that night? Even though she and Evans were an item, he still had sex with another woman. According to the prosecution two friends of Evans and the other man at the scene watched the sordid incident through the window and tried to film it.

In the not-so-distant past it was not illegal for a man to rape his wife. On occasion in the courts you still hear the excuse given by men who have beaten or murdered their partners as a variation of ‘she nagged me’ or ‘she made me do it by the way she behaved’.

Like some men, some women will do stupid, aggravating things and some totally let themselves and the side down by crying rape when it hasn’t happened. But that is still never any excuse for men to hurt or denigrate them.

Oscar Pistorius is officially not a murderer. But he took the life of Reeva Steenkamp and the conclusions of the court that tried him have, I believe as a woman, insulted and lowered respect for us all.

Lynda Bellingham was courageous to the end

She stopped having chemotherapy because she didn’t want her family to see her die as ‘a little, sad old lady’.

And Lynda Bellingham – brave, beautiful, courageous to the last – got her wish.

She died after a week in which she said her public goodbyes on Loose Women, looking bright and brilliant, and laughing her head off. She told her weeping co-presenters: “Don’t worry, it will be fine.”

Acting, writing, surviving, saying goodbye with grace and aplomb, Lynda Bellingham OBE was said to believe that people would only remember her for those Oxo ads.

They will, but only because she managed to make such a tiny acting part such a huge and adored part of British life.

I do hope she knew how much we enjoyed watching her, and how much she’ll be missed.

New laws on vile 'revenge porn'

THE government is going to bring in a new law to punish those who indulge in the vile practice of ‘revenge porn’.

What they are going to do about the stupid folk who insist on taking pictures of themselves that they wouldn’t want their mum to see, heaven only knows.

King Tut and Ed Miliband

I’VE stared very carefully at those computer images of King Tutankhamen which have been recreated to show the gold-masked Boy King as he really was.

Yes, he does look like Ed Miliband’s geekier cousin.