The love affair between the British public and the John Lewis Partnership is a phenomenon strange to behold. David Cameron voiced his support for the outfit last week by saying he only shopped in Chipping Norton’s Sainsbury’s because there wasn’t a Waitrose (prop. JLP). I suppose he knows (1) that the Sainsbury family are long-term bankrollers of the Labour Party and (2) that there is a Waitrose — a pretty big one — in his constituency town of Witney. Oh, and that Waitrose can arrange deliveries.

My neighbours are all very excited at the prospect of a new Waitrose store coming to Botley Road. Can’t they see it is insane to plant this traffic-generating monster in what is already the city’s busiest thoroughfare? I realise that Waitrose claims there will be little problem. How many folk do you know who walk or bike for the weekly shop? People seem to admire the ethos of the John Lewis Partnership, the fact that it dishes out the profits to its workers and all that. In my view, the organisation reeks of smug sanctimoniousness.

The issue of the Daily Telegraph that reported Cameron’s admiration for Waitrose also carried on the letters page a lament over the disappearance of the ‘Captain Mainwaring style’ bank manager. Shirley Browning recalled how her father, one such man, had written out an address to the Rotary Club on 18 sheets of pink writing paper obtained from his wife — “not for him the crime of using bank notepaper for private correspondence”.

This reminded me how a friend of mine, the manager of a large John Lewis store, had been obliged to sack his deputy for putting one private letter through the store’s franking machine.

Slightly different, that, from the morality Cameron showed over the Maria Miller expenses affair.