It would take a heart of stone not to laugh. Lease-holders in a group of chalets on the Dorset coast are up in arms because they say they have been unfairly evicted from their beach huts: a group of women who run the properties in Weymouth are “disgraceful” elderly ladies, they say.

Claim and counter-claim involve not turning off electricity, but the women, who run the Greenhill Community Trust, have plenty of defenders. Other chalet leaseholders say they are doing a good job and the people who have been turfed out deserve it for breaking rules; some errant leaseholders live abroad and their chalets are now being freed up for locals. It’s all a very British row.

It also goes to prove you underestimate ladies of a certain age at your peril. The “disgraceful” ladies are nothing of the sort: they are the kind of women who were once the backbone of an empire.

Age has nothing to do with it, though it does mean that they are going to care an awful lot less what people think of them than would a younger woman, and it also means they have the life experience to make good decisions.

And contrary to those women who whinge about being invisible, their age gives them power. You want to stop a group of rowdy youths from misbehaving? Wheel out an older woman to give them what for. Remember a few years back when some troll said nasty things about Mary Beard? Some-one threatened to report him to his mum, which promptly reduced him to a whimpering wreck.

It’s no coincidence that one of literature’s great detectives, Miss Marple, is a woman of a certain age. Whether you’re a Miss or a Mrs, age confers authority. And while the younger generation might pretend to be unconcerned about their elders, that is simply not the case.

Disapproval and an insistence on sticking to certain standards are a great incentive for good behaviour, because we all want to be accepted by our peers.

Disapproval is what ultimately curtailed smoking and if people would only stop whining about “body shaming” then it might well put an end to the epidemic of obesity too.

So, good for the doughty women of Weymouth: as the female of the species has done since time immemorial, they are looking after their community and making sure everything is done correctly. Quite right too.

Disgruntled leaseholders say they’re “scared stiff”: well, clean up your act, then. Others say they are doing a great job. Ladies, keep up the good work.