July 2007 Archives

It doesn’t often happen that the American press do a better job than the British press. Especially when it comes to interrogating people in the public eye and putting difficult questions to them.

You only have to see the way they pussyfoot around their Presidents to figure that one out.

But congratulations to my transatlantic colleagues for persistently asking absent father Gerry McCann, who has been visiting the US this week in the search for his daughter, the question the British Press corps should have asked him from day one.

“Just why did you leave your three children alone in an insecure hotel room while you and your wife had an evening out at the other end of the hotel complex?��?

I cycled to work last week - a 12-ish mile journey, mostly off road, which took me just under an hour. Somehow I don't think the Tour de France beckons just yet.

I'm trying to get fit, you see, for a lads' outing later this year when we plan to tackle the coast-to-coast cycle ride - all 120 or so miles - over three days.

That's a breeze for a fit young lad, but when you're staring 50 down the barrel of a gun it's a somewhat more daunting prospect.

It seems as though standards are slipping in all areas of life. Once upon a time cabinet ministers who were even slightly implicated in the whiff of a drugs scandal would have the decency to resign their post, issue a public apology and content themselves with a backbench role.

Now the buggers are queuing up to admit they once smoked dope at university. And it’s not just the ruling classes which are letting standards slip. The criminals are letting the side down too……

As Deputy Editor and columnist for the Sunday Sun - and the paper's official, jumped-up, opinioned little so and so in residence - I'm always noising off about current events.

It can be a stressful job but, in truth, news is my sanctuary. Being a fortysomething, married man with a hefty mortgage and two truculent teenagers is much, much tougher than being a journalist.

So welcome to my blog - essentially an extension of my newspaper column - but which also deals with issues beyond work as I lurch from one domestic crisis to the next... with the dreaded Five-O fast approaching.