HERE’S a headline to inspire journalists young and old – “Arizona reporter, 12, receives apology after threat of jail” (The Guardian, Saturday, March 2).

Hilde Lysiak is a pre-teen reporter who set up her own publication in Pennsylvania, the Orange Street News. She was riding her bike to investigate a tip-off in Patagonia, Arizona, when the town marshal Joseph Patterson stopped her and threatened to put her in juvenile jail.

According to the report Hilde later wrote for her newspaper, Patterson said: “I don’t want to hear about any of that freedom of the press stuff. I’m going to have you arrested and thrown in ‘juvey’.”

The town’s mayor later apologised. Hilde said she was satisfied and added: “Now I just want to move forward with covering the news.”

There is more to Hilde Lysiak than even this story suggests, but we shall come to that in a moment. Let’s just hope that she doesn’t fall foul of her media-hating president. Never mind ‘juvey’, you can’t help but worry that Donald Trump would like to see all those pesky reporters sent to prison so that they’d stop with their infernal questions.

Young Hilde should also watch out for the attentions of Media Lens, a long-running anti-media two-man-band pressure group. They’ll be on to her in a flash if they suspect that she’s been operating as part of a propaganda system for the elite interests that dominate modern society. That’s their brief and their beef, you see.

The inhabitant of this ledge has been pointed towards Media Lens more than once. It’s a profitable place to visit for an alternative view on the media. But you are only going to get one perspective, as Media Lens is based on a pathological hatred of the media.

Believing every word from Media Lens is as sensible as swallowing every spittle-flecked adjective in a leader in the Sun or the Daily Telegraph. You know what you are getting when you buy the Sun; and you know what you are buying into when you read up how evil the media is on Media Lens.

Anyway, let’s go back to the future of journalism. I think we can assume there will be one, even if it will be different than the inky sheets that wrapped us in the past. And whatever shape journalism takes, it will need the likes of Hilde Lysiak. If 12 sounds young to be reporting, Hilde is already a bit of a veteran.

According to a report Washington Post on February 22, she “made a name for herself in 2016 by being the first to report on a grisly murder in her hometown, then firing back at the haters who suggested that a 9-year-old girl shouldn’t be hanging around crime scenes.

“Since then, she has continued to break news about bank robberies, alleged rapes and other lurid crimes in the Orange Street News, the paper that she publishes out of her parents’ home in Selinsgrove, Pa.”

What that short report in the foreign pages of Guardian didn’t mention is that Hilde Lysiak’s exploits have inspired a series of Scholastic books, written with her journalist father, Matthew, and an Apple TV show.

She is making her mark already and good luck to her. Journalism needs the likes of Hilde Lysiak, especially as it sounds like she already knows how to make a useful nuisance of herself.

TRYING to prove a connection between one thing and another in the eye of a crisis is not easy. Theresa May is reluctant to admit the rise in stabbings is linked to cuts in police numbers, while Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said in a video posted yesterday that young “people shouldn’t pay the price for austerity with their lives”.

The two views are as expected: May refusing to believe what seems clear to many, and Corbyn laying it on a bit thick, even if in this case his logic is stronger.

The present moral panic has been stirred by a rise in knife crimes (up 31% in the 12 months to September 2018, according to Home Office figures) and the tragic deaths of two 17-year-olds, Jodie Chesney in east London and Ghaleb Makki in the village of Hale Barns, near Altrincham.

While all such deaths are appalling, what seems to have compounded the shock is that the victims were not typical: Jodie was a Scout and Ghaleb wanted to be a heart surgeon.

None of that should matter, as a senseless young death is a senseless young death whoever has died, but those characteristics are what pushed Jodie and Ghaleb into the headlines.

Mrs Maybe insists there is “no direct correlation” between cuts in police numbers and the rise in stabbings – a view that raises a heckle from Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, who says the link is “obvious”.

Theresa May often refuses to spot things that hang before her nose, as obvious as an apple on a tree. Yet one difficulty with her stubborn creed here is that it suggests having or not having police makes no difference.

The rise in knife crime tarnishes what’s left of her reputation as Home Secretary – a post she held for long dull years in her trial run for PM.

May stood up to the Police Federation over cuts to policing and reformed stop and search – the very power her critics, including the rarely silent Boris Johnson, are saying needs beefing up again.

The other key part of May’s legacy is the hostile environment on immigration that led to Windrush – a scandal that should follow her around for ever. Another part of that shameful policy concerning asking landlords to check on their tenants’ rights to be here has now be overturned by the High Court.

One difficulty for Corbyn here is that he is unlikely to join the tabloid cry for a return to more stop and search. He has always been against this aspect of policing, saying a year ago: “When you get to routine stop and search on large numbers of people that can actually be counter-productive.”

Besides, shouting for more stop and search falls more naturally on the opportunistic shoulders of Boris Johnson, who is splashed over the Daily Mail this morning saying just that.

Would stop and search or having more officers on the beat have saved the lives of Jodie and Ghaleb? That’s an impossible question to answer. But it does seem fair to point out that falling police numbers and the fraying of the social realm – youth clubs cut through austerity, say – are the backdrop to rising knife crime.

Perhaps we should be look to Scotland, where ten years ago the traditional law and order response was replaced by a public health approach. This saw violence as preventable rather than inevitable, and treated knife crime as a disease that could be analysed and controlled – and this has worked in cutting appalling knife crimes, especially in Glasgow.

Such an approach in England would be more sensible than predictable cries for more stop and search. Still, we could always call in the army, as suggested on the front page of the Sun by Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson.

When a stupid thing needs saying, Gavin’s your man.

Run your thumb along the sliding scale of media things. By this measure something can be real – or it can become a thing only after being mentioned so often by the media. This handy ruler in part explains the long-suppurating row about antisemitism in Labour.

Chase down angry wormholes on Twitter and you will discover that there is no problem at all and it’s all the invention of a hostile ‘establishment’ media opposed to Jeremy Corbyn ever becoming prime minister. Emerge blinking from those caves and you might wonder at the difference in what’s said down there and ‘up here’.

In the latest twist to this sorry tale, Derby North MP Chris Williamson, a close ally of Corbyn’s, was filmed at a meeting saying that Labour had been “too apologetic” about antisemitism. He has been suspended pending an internal inquiry – or possibly a bit of mildly condemnatory mumbling.

Returning to that sliding scale, if antisemitism never was a thing, it has become one now. An odd turnabout when Jeremy Corbyn is clearly an anti-racist politician, but he is an anti-racist politician with certain set views (Palestine good, Israel evil). While it is perfectly reasonable to condemn Israel’s actions and aggression, 6.5 million Jews live in Israel, so sometimes being anti-Israel can be interpreted as being anti-Jewish.

The vile treatment meted out to the Jewish MP Luciana Berger, who was among those who quit the party last week, certainly suggests a strain of antisemitism in Labour. Such prejudice clearly exists, but it also clearly exists in society, and are the percentages higher among Labour members? No idea, by the way – it’s only a question.

What’s undeniable is that the problem has grown under Corbyn’s tenure and he doesn’t seem able to put out that fire. In this unhappy situation, blaming the ‘mainstream media’ is a favourite tactic.

While valid criticism can be flung at the media – too London-centric, too dominated by upper middle-class people, too nepotistic – blaming the media for everything allows Corbyn to hide behind a banner saying: “Nothing to do with me – it’s all their fault.”

It also puts him in odd company. Donald Trump is forever laying into the mainstream media for their ‘lies’. He attacks fake news all the time, and what he means by that is any news that doesn’t flatter him, or any questions that are awkward.

At a recent “let’s pretend there’s an election” rally, Jeremy Corbyn used part of his speech to criticise Sky News for wanting to ask questions about topics he’d rather not address; yet that’s their job when dealing with him and all politicians.

More worryingly, on the same day that Corbyn rallied followers in the Broxtowe constituency of ex-Tory MP Anny Soubry, the vile Tommy Robinson was holding his own rally outside of the BBC’s offices in Salford. This was in protest at Panorama daring to investigate him. In an extreme example of anti-media behaviour, the former leader of the English Defence League drew a crowd estimated at 4,000 (what percentage of those were bullying big-bellied thugs is anyone’s guess).

Jeremy Corbyn clearly has nothing in common with Tommy Robinson – other than a willingness to lay into the ‘mainstream media’. He is also far from the first Labour leader to suffer at the hands of a hostile press, as Neil Kinnock will remember (“If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights”).

Back then hostile headlines in the Sun had more punch than they do now. And all Labour supporters could do was air their grievances down the pub after another dull meeting.

The ‘mainstream media’ is still powerful, of course, but that power has been diluted by social media. And the very Labour supporters who disparage the ‘mainstream media’ can now have their opinions widely shared in what you could, on an optimistic day, call a democracy of opinion created by social media.

Not that optimistic days come along that often.

Oh, I do like the story about the self-lacing shoes operated by an app that doesn’t work properly.

This is for at least two reasons. One, the laces on my Dr Martens are always coming undone (more about those Docs in a moment). Two, it seems a fitting metaphor for a country that can no longer do up its own shoes.

Laces must be tied this way… no laces go that way… I am committed to tying laces this way, as I have always said… once we are free to tie British laces in the British way, the world will be ours… and so on in an endless undone loop of loose flapping shoes.

The malfunctioning app goes with the Nike Adapt BB shoe that came out last month – costing a bead of sweat under £300. According to a small report in the Guardian, these shoes “contain what the sportswear firm calls power laces, tightening or loosening the shoes at the press of a button either on the shoes or through a connected app”.

I worry about shoes that depend on an app. Do we really need technology that much? There are so many apps nowadays and I fear for the ‘putting on my Levi jeans’ app breaking down. Where would I be then? Trouser-less.

The misfiring Nikes are, as the name suggests, baseball shoes – but so are Converse shoes, as worn and operated without an accompanying app since around 1920.

With the Nikes, the idea is that the wearer can change the fit with the app for different situations, “such as moving from playing a game to resting on the sidelines”. Or you could just sit down and loosen the laces a bit.

Oh, the app also allows the wearer to customise light settings. And the app on my Dr Martens allows me to customise the polish settings by occasionally remembering to clean them.

But the laces do come undone on one of my two pairs. They seem tight as Theresa May’s nerves one minute, yet the next they are flapping free. It’s a troublesome life, and perhaps self-doing laces would help.

As a long-time wearer of Docs, I was heartened by a recent headline in the Observer – “Fashion reboot: why Dr Martens keep coming back in style.”

Ah, I always knew I had my toe on the pulse.

The story beneath that headline was mostly about catwalk fashion, rather than ageing man’s walk fashion, but never mind. Dr Martens are my favourite shoes, apart from the Loake ones I saw in a shop window in Manchester the other day that cost around the price of those self-lacing Nikes.

Getting dressed is not exactly a lottery for me: Levis’s, white T-shirt, cashmere jumper from John Lewis (choice of four) and Dr Martens. The other day in one of my jobs, a journalism lecturer pointed at my feet and then at his. We were wearing the same sort of Dr Martens, the heavy-souled ones (four-wheel drive shoes).

A solid choice but you do need to let your calf muscles know in advance, as those shoes take some lifting.

The ones picture here need that self-lacing app, if any technological types are passing by.

Glancing at the headlines is my old-fashioned start to the day. As Labour apparently weigh in behind a people’s vote, two contrasting verdicts catch the Brexit-bloodshot eye this morning.

The Labour-strutting Daily Mirror sets an upbeat tone with: “Corbyn backs second Brexit vote”, while the Leave-loon Daily Express goes with: “Our final say on Brexit was June 23 2016!”

These papers may shout at each other from different ends of the room, but they both belong to Reach, the publishing company formerly known as Trinity Mirror. In this arrangement, they reflect family members who disagree over the disagreeable thing.

Yesterday, Reach warned about the impact of Brexit on advertising while reducing the estimated value of its newspaper business by £200m. On one level, this is just another gloomy story about the decline in print sales. On another, it suggests that one of its newspapers blindly backs something its owner believes could be bad for business.

Reach bought the Express group and, as part of the deal, inherited crusty readers whose crusted views were opposite to those of Mirror readers. Maintaining a duality of opinion for two opposing sets of readers is encouraging in a sense, even if the devotion of the Express to Theresa May’s endless outing of no hope does seem barmy.

Is a second vote a good idea? I’ve been conflicted about this for a while. Considering the poor level of debate for the first one, and the shocking lack of any plan for what would happen if we voted to leave the EU, a second referendum would at least be better informed – that’s if everyone hasn’t stopped listening long ago.

But here’s the problem: if you don’t like referendums, how does it make sense to settle matters by having another referendum? That’s where I stumble over this one. I’d willingly vote to stay in the EU again. But that doesn’t remove the awkward fact that we’ve voted once already and, by a squeak, said we wanted to leave.

The Guardian’s take on this morning’s story is: “Corbyn: We’ll back a public vote to stop Tory Brexit.”

That label is a good one, in a sense, for Brexit is mostly a Tory obsession with its roots in ancient blood feuds and Tory psychodramas. But this leaves open the question of what a Labour Brexit would look like. There’s a horrid portmanteau word for that, too – Lexit, the left-wing case for Brexit. Followers will tell you that the EU is a neoliberal plot or something. I’m with the writer and comedian David Baddiel who tweeted a while back – and I’m not putting in those prissy stars favoured by some newspapers – “I’ll be honest with you. I have no fucking idea what neo-liberalism is.”

Baddiel could have Googled the following meaning: “A modified form of liberalism tending to favour free-market capitalism.” But his point, I guess, was that certain people splutter the word like an anti-spell or something.

Jeremy Corbyn is almost certainly a Lexit lover at heart, as he’s never favoured Europe; but that love cannot speak its name right now, hence the ducking and diving. He also hates neoliberalism, whatever it is, as embraced by his predecessors, Blair and Brown.

The weird thing about seeing Europe as a neoliberal confidence trick is that if we leave Europe, we will be more fully exposed to neoliberalism as brandished by the US and loved by Trump.

So, in terms of neoliberalism, whatever it is, we’d suffer even more of it than if we stayed in Europe. Brexit all round, really: a surprise pudding where the surprise is never nice.

Shamima Begum is all over today’s front pages after being stripped her of her British citizenship by Home Secretary Sajid Javid.

Before dipping further into the moral murk of this decision, let’s summon up a different scenario. Imagine that a group of white Christian British girls smuggle themselves out of the country and manage to reach, say, the US. Once there, they seek out the far-right religious cult that has brainwashed them from afar. They join the group and possibly engage in terrorist activities, or at least associate with those who do.

Of course, this parallel doesn’t fully stand up. But if that had happened, would the Home Office have stripped the white Christian girl of her citizenship; or would every effort have been made to bring her back for counselling and, yes, punishment? Almost certainly.

The headlines today are for the most part crowing and condemnatory – “Stripped of her passport” in the Daily Mail and “Isis bride told: You’re no longer British” in the Daily Express.

It is reasonable to feel uneasy about this decision for many reasons. A moral maze indeed – and one that will be ranted about/discussed on BBC Radio Four’s Moral Maze later today, for those with stronger stomachs than mine (dear me, that programme).

Why has Sajid Javid taken this decision to officially disown a British girl who, aged 15, fled to join the so-called Islamic State group? Almost certainly for reasons of political posturing. Politicians such as Javid love nothing better than throwing a bone to the ageing Tory jackals. Oh, strike that – ageing Tory poodles with a nasty habit of snapping.

The legal argument will now begin. A country cannot disown a citizen unless that citizen is eligible for citizenship of another country.

Shamima Begum is thought to be of Bangladeshi heritage, but does not have a Bangladeshi passport – and, also, has no links to that country at all.

In other words, what Javid has done is pass the buck and try to shrug off the problem, under the guise of supposedly protecting Britain. Shamima Begum was a child when she left this country and even now, after losing two children of her own and giving birth to another, she is only 19. That’s the age of a first-year student at university, and some of them are still so young.

Shamima Begum was born in Britain and, importantly, was radicalised while living here. Britain therefore has a responsibility towards her; legally and morally, she is one of ours and should be allowed to return as a British citizen.

This is not to condone or forgive out of hand. We should not be allowed to cast Shamima Begum away. But she should not be cast simply as a victim. Young she may have been, but she is responsible for her decisions and actions.

We should see her as neither victim or villain, but as a confused and abused young British woman who needs help and, yes, some form of punishment in the country where she was born.

Casting aside Shamima Begum and others like her will create stateless citizens of nowhere – and, if anything, will spawn more terrorists or terrorist sympathisers.

Sajid Javid has come over all Clint Eastwood and played the tough guy to bolster his image. But the law should unmake his day and allow this young woman to return to face the consequences of her actions. And with the hope that she may find redemption, for that’s what a decent society should do; isn’t it?

WHAT’S more unattractive in politics: ugly certainty or pretty vacillation? I had this thought while watching a BBC News report on the seven Labour MPs who have quit the party.

The BBC spoke to two party members in Luton, where Gavin Shuker is the MP. One was a middle-aged woman filled with understandable regret at such an outcome; the other was a young bearded man who bristled with righteous anger.

This hirsute young loon spat out his script: Shuker was a political minnow who deserved to be dropped in the dustbin of history where he belonged; a proper Labour MP would wipe the floor with him and win a magnificent victory.

I sighed at that. It was the sort of ranting comment you see on social media, where quarrelsome disciples of one faction within a party (the Labour Party in this case, but all parties play this unappealing game) spit venom at members of the ‘wrong’ party faction.

To be even handed with the disdain, it should be recorded that the Tory Party is equally riven, thanks to deep fissures over Brexit. The eternally unappetising Jacob Rees-Mogg, who picks over his words like a man looking for bones in an expensive piece of fish, pretty much runs a party within a party, a madly pro-Brexit grouping that is leading the main party by the broken nose. A nose he helped to break.

Ugly certainty or pretty vacillation? There has been a lot of the first in the treatment of one of the departing seven. Luciana Berger has been the subject of much internecine abuse. And if the sight of a heavily pregnant Jewish MP saying that she is quitting because of antisemitism in her party doesn’t make fans of Jeremy Corbyn feel uncomfortable, then you wonder what will.

Whether she was parachuted into her Liverpool Wavertree constituency, as some of her critics maintain, should be less relevant than the fact that, as a Jewish woman, she no longer feels comfortable in Labour.

You can argue until your eyes roll out of your head about antisemitism in Labour. The Corbyn faithful will say that it’s a put-up job by the media, much as they also do if you complain about Corbyn’s endless inactivity over Brexit.

The weary, and now eyeless, will admit that may be true up to a point. But unhappiness over antisemitism and Brexit has grown under Corbyn’s leadership. And he doesn’t do anything to stop the rot spreading. Or so it appears to someone given to pretty vacillation rather than ugly certainty.

For the much scribbled-on record, this departure seems a case of bad timing, especially with the Brexit car-crash scheduled for the end of next month.

Over on Twitter, Young Labour called the seven MPs “cowards and traitors”. That’s the sort of talk you hear too often these days.

Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson, a man with an impossible job, expressed his deep sadness at the departure. In a filmed statement, he said this was not a time for crowing over those who’d gone – words that are likely to go unheeded. Watson also warned that Corbyn risked splitting his party further, unless he changed direction.

And it’s hard not to worry that those cracks will get worse.

Ugly certainty or pretty vacillation? Oh, I’ve had too much of the first from myself and everyone else – but will admit that the latter doesn’t get your far either.

Of course, it’s not just Labour that’s cracked and in danger of falling apart. Our politics is a broken jug, too.

IF we don’t believe in our young people, where else can we deposit our faith? That thought bobs up on the morning after school pupils went on ‘strike’ over climate change.

Reactions to this protest varied, with some journalists trundling out the usual rants, notably Toby Young in the Spectator. Young by name if not in spirit, he grumble-wondered why the children hadn’t protested at the weekend, wilfully missing the point, as he often does.

Downing Street put out a tin-earned statement about “wasting lesson time” – great from a government that has spent two-and-half years wasting time not coming to a Brexit deal. And on a globally more significant point, spent decades in on-off government not doing enough about climate instability.

The children and young people who took to the streets did win support from some politicians. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said they were “inspirational” and he’s right about that, if not always about everything else.

Some Tory MPs leant their support, including energy minister Claire Perry, who said she was “incredibly proud” of young people’s passion and concern. Green MP Caroline Lucas said the protest was “the most hopeful thing that’s happened in years”, and she’s right about that.

Buggering up the climate is our gift to future generations, a game of pass-the-parcel where we won’t be around to see what’s unwrapped. And hearing those young people calling for radical steps to tackle the ecological catastrophe was both inspiring and worrying: the first because you need to have faith in the rising generation; and the second because we are stepping closer to a tipping point that won’t be reached until some of the negligent oldies have shuffled off the face of the beleaguered planet.

You could always take faith in Donald Trump instead, and wallow in stupid statements about how you could do with a bit of that there global warming to melt the snow.

But faced with such a dinosaur, and all the other dinosaurs, is it any wonder that the emerging generation has little faith in what used to be known as their “elders and betters”?

Anyway, I liked the sight of all those young people taking to the streets, especially as they went armed with four sensible demands, including that the government should declare a “climate emergency”.

Right now, the government is too busy trying to put off another sort of emergency. But there is always some excuse or other for not taking climate change seriously, even from those of us who try while also ‘sinning’ (driving too much through necessity, having a lovely log-burner, and so on).

If young people around the world can keep up that passion, and insist on their demands, perhaps the planet has a better chance. But those changes need to happen now.

TODAY I shall turn my back on the bothersome topic and watch television instead. Shetland versus Vera, the end of Catastrophe – oh, and a remarkable piece of radio drama (yes, I know, in the Archers of all the unlikely places). Spoiler alerts apply for Catastrophe – and perhaps for the Archers, too.

The return to BBC1 of Shetland is always an anticipated treat, and so the first episode proved. As is to be expected, it was a grisly sort of diversion, with the mystery delivered in parts – body parts washed up on the shore, first a severed arm, then a disconnected head.

The unattached remains belonged to a young Nigerian man. His troubled mother is on the island, but she hasn’t seen him in years, since her the boy and his sister were taken away from her. The sister is a key part of the plot, as my partner on the viewing sofa guessed. She’s always doing that, ever since pausing with the iron in mid-air years ago to say in the opening minutes of the Sixth Sense, “Oh, he’s dead, isn’t he?”

Douglas Henshall is back as DI Jimmy Perez, and his performance remains compelling. He’s almost a gentle cop, a sensitive type, wrapped in old jumpers and stubble. But when action is required, he stiffens his nastiness muscle. You wouldn’t want to cross him when that happens.

Shetland is based on the novels of Ann Cleaves, the crime writer who also created Vera. Both are dramas to watch, but Shetland has the edge over Vera on ITV. Brenda Blethyn’s performance is great, but sometimes the whole edifice creaks towards caricature.

With Shetland, everything hangs together in a beautiful dark cloud of unlikely criminality. So long as you’re not too worried about body parts turning up to spoil the holiday, Shetland the drama is a wonderful advert for Shetland the place.

Catastrophe on Channel 4 ended this week, wrapping up one of the best sit-coms of modern times. Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney have been a horrible delight as the monstrous Irish/American couple who come together after a fling ends in an unplanned pregnancy.

This pair are like those sweets that turn sour the more you suck. Only in this case there is a sort of sweetness at the bitter core. This is one of the best and funniest relationships seen in a comedy. They can be truly horrid one second, affectionate the next, vile again. Like a real couple, only with smarter insults and nothing held back.

In this farewell, Rob and Sharon visit Massachusetts for a holiday. Rob’s sister picks them up at the airport and bursts into tears, saying  their mother has died. She’d been played by Carrie Fisher, so this was a death foretold, but the moment was typical Catastrophe: laugh-out-loud funny and gruesome in the same breath.

The funeral  sees fallings-out falling over each other, and Rob turns nasty, causes a scene, then tells Sharon that he has never even liked her. He’s going to move to the US with the children and she can do what she likes.

The mood is one of quiet regret as they drive away under a blue sky. They stop next to the twinkling sea. The kids are asleep in the car, a third is waiting inside Sharon, but she hasn’t told Rob yet. She pulls off her dress and goes swimming, leaving Rob sitting on the shore. He spots a sign warning about rip tides and goes in after her. Rob catches up with Sharon; they kiss and cuddle, dangerously afloat, but then they always have been.

And that’s where we leave them. A happy ending if they get back to the shore, a tragic one if they don’t. Perfect.

Last night’s episode of the Archers on BBC Radio 4 was listened to in the car on the way to a gig. I’ve followed the soap-that’s-not-a-soap almost for ever. Sometimes I wander away, wearied by it all. But this was a marvel of acting and plotting, as Elizabeth unravels during a therapy session.

She is resistant at first, denying that her depression has anything to do with the death some years ago of husband Nigel. It’s all connected to son Freddie being in prison, she says.

Then the grief dam blows, and Elizabeth is a sobbing wreck. It was intensely moving, and it’s not every day you can say that about the Archers. Alison Dowling has played Elizabeth for 30 years, and that gave her performance the sort of depth you don’t often see. Or indeed hear.

WHAT if you ran your life like the government runs Brexit?

We’re going on holiday at the end of next month. No idea where we’re going but we’re not blinking before the travel agent blinks.

We’re buying a new car at the end of next month as the old one is about to fart its last puff of exhaust. But we’re not blinking before the car salesman blinks.

We’re moving house at the end of next month. But we’re not blinking before the estate agent blinks. And we’re not telling anyone where we are moving to either as it’s important in a negotiation to keep a card or two up your sleeve.

But it’s all OK. We can deliver all those things on time and to the family budget.

Meanwhile in what we are supposed to think of as the real world, Chris Grayling is still drawing his salary as Transport Secretary. How is that possible? A quick google fails to pinpoint the amount he earns, although in October 2017 Boris Johnson said that a Cabinet minister’s salary of £141,000 “was not enough to live on”.

The Transport Secretary goes everywhere with that note stuck to his back, the one that says “Failing”. And yet he keeps rolling on with an admirable belief in his own uselessness.

In the latest example of Grayling’s admirable idiocy, he has been faced with the calamitous – but not entirely unforeseeable – collapse of the no-deal Brexit ferry contract handed to a company with no ships.

It was all a bit like Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen saying: “I see no ships.” Although in Grayling’s case it was everyone else saying: “We see no ferries.”

And that’s because there weren’t any.

Grayling organised the £13.8m contract with Seaborne Freight to run ferries between Ramsgate and Ostend, despite what my copy of the Observer describes as “widespread derision and accusations that it had been awarded illegally”.

It was obviously a sound idea to leave organising the no-deal Brexit ferry run to the man who can’t keep the trains moving. As that witty old Tory Ken Clarke said in a tweet the other day: “I’ve just turned up to a brewery tour organised by Chris Grayling. Unfortunately there isn’t any beer so he’s had to cancel it.”

Here is the latest verse of this farcical sea shanty. Grayling previously said: “We haven’t spent any money on this contract.”

You know, the one with the ferry-free ferry company. Now auditors have found that his department spent £800,000 of public money on consultants hired to assess the bid of the ferryless ferry company.

What if we all ran our lives like Captain Grayling runs his sinking ship? At least there will be lifeboats, won’t there? Oh, I’ve just heard that Chris Grayling gave the lifeboat contract to a firm that doesn’t own any lifeboats.

Late news flash: Chris Grayling is reported to have come to a deal with a man called Noah who has an old boat for hire.

And where was Mrs Maybe while all this shameless chicanery has been going on? Oh, on the ferry to Brussels, as usual.