It can take a lifetime to build a worthwhile charity and, it seems, just a couple of weeks to shred its reputation.

Like thousands of others, I send a monthly donation to Oxfam.

Since there are very many calls on individual giving, most of us are drawn towards those charities which reflect our own concerns, and organisations which, we decide, are making best use of our money.

Oxfam, which, ironically, celebrates its 75th birthday this year, ticks a lot of these boxes for me.

Not just as an organisation which responds to disasters natural and otherwise, which it does, but as one which stays around for the long haul helping re-build schools, homes and lives.

It insists that 82 per cent of donations go directly to its work and another 8p is invested to build future revenue.

There are bits that I don’t much like. I don’t think charity bosses should be paid, as Oxfam’s is, north of £120,000 a year, though as it happens that puts him only 126th in the list of top charity bosses’ earnings.

I still have an old-fashioned view that third sector CEOs should be primarily motivated by humanitarian concern, however onerous and broad their responsibilities.

But that aside, the work they are doing in current crises like Yemen and the Rohingya refugee tragedy in Bangladesh is a crucial response, however inadequate, to helping the most desperate and vulnerable of our fellow global citizens.

In my book, its value totally dwarfs the wholly unacceptable behaviour of a small minority of its staffers in the field.

There will always be some people whose response to suffering is wholly indefensible. It has happened with some UN peacekeeping troops, and with many other charitable bodies. It’s wrong, it needs dealt with, but it shouldn’t be used to negate all the vitally important work being done by the good eggs rather than the rotten apples.

Above all it shouldn’t be used as an excuse to cut foreign aid. One of the more disgusting sights of late was the ludicrous Jacob Rees-Mogg standing outside Number 10 with a petition demanding foreign aid be repatriated. The selfsame JRM whose stately pile was restored with shedloads of taxpayers’ money.

That “charitable giving” to Mogg Towers would have gone a long way invested in more worthwhile concerns. And, oddly you may think, his photo op appeared the very same day as the Oxfam story broke in The Times.

So my monthly donation to them, and other bodies I admire, will stay intact. And I hope that’s also the response of all people who continue to look with alarm at the extent of man’s inhumanity to man, and with admiration at the ingenuity and commitment of those who try to heal so many unnecessary wounds.