IT’S hot and we are walking to York Cemetery – the best place in York. Oh, others will champion the Minster or wherever, but those places can look after themselves. The cemetery needs its supporters.

Two warm miles take us to Micklegate Bar, where we climb the steps to the Bar walls. From there we follow a lofty clockwise loop, pausing to admire houses too expensive for our pocket. “No gardens,” says my wife, who needs somewhere to stretch her green fingers.

Dropping down, we walk behind the Barbican and reach York Cemetery. We are here for a choir concert in the restored chapel, a star building loved by those in the know, but arrive early enough to walk around some of the 24 acres. It’s huge and beautiful, this place, a garden just the right side of rampant. In high summer, everything is bursting and many of the graves are lost in greenery.

York Cemetery was opened in 1837 to compete with parish churchyards full to bursting and with no space for further burials. That’s why some churchyards in the city are higher than the street, as soil had to be imported to raise the level and create further accommodation.

The York Health of Towns Association met on June 10, 1847, and heard of woeful overcrowding in the city. Freshly dug graves were said to fill with “loathsome mire” while fragments of human remains rose to the surface. In a moment of memorable horror, the meeting heard how a hungry dog had discovered a human leg bone “and bore it away in triumph to his lair, where he doubtless would feast on the putrefying remnants of mortality”.

You cannot visit a graveyard without being reminded of rotting flesh, but mostly you are reminded of lives lived and lost; long lives, short lives and those in between, but all gone.

The gruesome episode of the dog is recalled in the late Hugh Murray’s book This Garden of Death, which offers the fullest possible history of what is now a Grade II listed landscape and one of only two privately owned Victorian cemeteries in the UK.

The council ordered other graveyards to shut in 1854. York Cemetery expanded to its present size in the 1940s, but business fell away in the 1960s and the cemetery went into liquidation in 1979. The graveyard became overgrown and the beautiful chapel suffered at the hands of vandals and was so derelict the roof fell in.

In the 1980s, the York Cemetery Trust was formed and became the new owners, working with the help of the Friends of York Cemetery, a charity registered in 1988. The chapel has since been splendidly restored, and that’s where we’re heading to see Soon Amore sing after our stroll.

We sit on a bench facing the high wall at the perimeter of the original Victorian cemetery, at a point where many of the graves commemorate young people, and drain the water bottle. I love this place for its beauty, its sense of being barely contained – and for its stories, for a cemetery is a repository of stories.

The middle of my three Rounder Brothers novels – known only to the dedicated few – was inspired by the cemetery, and a character borrows a name from a gravestone. I spot again that name: Moses Moody chiselled in stone, but re-chipped for my purposes to Moses Mundy.

The book is called Felicity’s Gate, named after an entrance now shut, and at the launch held in the chapel, Felicity introduced herself to me – which was a pleasant surprise: I had no idea the woman who christened a gate, and then my crime novel, still lived here at that time.

Anyway, off we wander, going to the top of the cemetery, where you could be in the middle of nowhere, and where the sunshine dapples between the trees. We pass the young orchard where fruit trees can be planted in remembrance – and what better way to be remembered than by an apple? – and then we slowly walk to the chapel for a concert that is lovely and eclectic, with music from Sting’s Fields Of Gold and Elbow’s One Day Like This, to Old Man River, alongside Polish river music by Henryk Gorecki and poetry readings.

After the concert, and after a chat, we retrace our route around the Bar walls to Micklegate, where we drop down and wait for our bus beside the Bar Convent.

All human life seems to congregate at that bus stop. Last week after seeing Baby Driver at City Screen, a woman speaking to her husband revealed much about their lives. We left knowing an awful lot about them, whereas they left knowing nothing about us.

This time the company includes a very lively little girl who is nosily indignant about the lies told by the electronic timetable. She can’t understand how five minutes can last so long, drop to four, and then return to five. It can take years to master bus time, a time conundrum worthy of Jodi Whittaker in her new role as Doctor Who.

Propped against the convent wall, a man sways and talks to himself. All human life and all that.

ROADS – we all need them, but do we need more of them all the time? I ask this question as a man who spends more time on the road than he would like, and as someone who lives close to the York outer ring road.

My old newspaper is running a campaign called Dual Them, which is calling for the A1237 stretch of ring road to be turned into a dual carriageway, along with the A64 east of York – which is a notorious Yorkshire bottleneck.

The financial politics of this are a little complicated, in that the outer ring-road is the responsibility of City of York Council, while the government looks after the A64; or doesn’t look after it, if you’re one of the grumbling petrol-heads.

The Press campaign is being masterminded by the estimable Mike Laycock, a man for whom the label veteran can be safely used, even though he is still known for dashing around like Billy Whizz from the Beano.

I confess to having mixed feelings about this campaign – although not about Mike, who was a good colleague for years.

At present, the suggestion is that the roundabouts on the outer ring road could be improved to speed up traffic. This sounds sensible unless you are one of the people who like to groan and grumble in the comments section below stories on The Press website. In which case, it will likely as not be a cause uncontained apoplexy. But then those people run on apoplexy in much the way that my car runs on unleaded.

This story has also been picked up by the newspaper I now write for occasionally, the Yorkshire Post. A statistic jumped out at me from the Post’s news report, in which it said that senior councillors had approved a £32.4m plan to “reduce rush-hour journeys by up to 20 per cent on York’s outer ring road, which often grinds to a half during busy periods”.

Such figures should always be treated with caution, as they are often floated by those who are convinced that whatever they propose will provide the necessary solution. Saying that traffic will be reduced by 20 per cent sounds like a stab in the dark to me. Do we know that or is it a guess?

An educated guess, perhaps – but one swayed by petrol fumes.

Our attitudes to building new roads or expanding existing ones will depend on various personal factors. I now drive quite a lot, so traffic is a problem – especially around the Leeds ring road, or yesterday as race-day traffic brought the A64 to a halt as I was setting off to work.

Then there is the location, location question. As we live close to the A1237, the prospect of noise and chaos for months on end, followed by even more cars, is not enticing.

I confess to double-standards here. I drive a fair bit, but still feel drawn to greener solutions. And the green lobby will tell you that building more roads only leads to more traffic, and hence more jams.

That sounds about right to me, but then I am not a van driver fuming in a daily jam on the ring road.

Still, I worry that the ‘build more roads’ lobby tends to be heard more than any suggested greener solution. As a country, we tend to believe that laying down more Tarmac will keep up us moving forward.

Councillor Ian Gillies, who has the transport brief in York, said in the Post story: “This is a really significant investment which will make journeys easier and quicker on the ring road, as well as preparing us for the ultimate goal of dualling.”

Will it really, Ian – or will it just lead to a different sort of traffic jam in the future? When Ian, a very cheerful Tory councillor, was the Lord Mayor I met him at a do, and he said to me: “I always read your column – then throw it across the room.”

Political differences, you see. Well, you can’t throw a blog across the room.

More roads, good or bad? It seems to be the endlessly unresolved question of the age. And I am still suspicious of all that Tarmac laying, even if one of my squash partners does that for a living.

PETER Capaldi has been a great Doctor Who, and I say that as a man who shouldn’t care less but finds that he still does.

To those who unkindly point out that Doctor Who is essentially a children’s programme, I say: go and bury your head in a wormhole. That’s a hypothetical connection between widely separately regions of space-time, by the way, rather than a hole made by a worm. But if I take one more step towards theoretical physics, I will trip over something. A worm, possibly.

Anyway, Doctor Who. I have watched every episode since the autumn of 1963 – and I didn’t even have to Google that date, although I then did, just to make sure, Google being the safety net we can no longer do without.

Capaldi has been my favourite Doctor of the lot, supplanting Tom Baker and the all-too-fleeting Christopher Eccleston. Not forgetting David Tennant, who is many people’s favourite, and the lanky, larksome Matt Smith.

Capaldi’s Doctor is about to regenerate, although we will have to wait until Christmas Day to see the transformation. We will, however, know the identity of the new Doctor in a day. Trailers aired during the tennis yesterday announced that the 13^th Time Lord will be revealed tomorrow afternoon. Shot in 13 different locations, the trailer ended with the words: “Meet the 13^th Doctor after the Wimbledon men’s final, Sunday16th July.”

Before rolling the speculation die into that time-warp, let’s stop to praise Capaldi. Known mostly for playing the splendidly sweary Malcolm Tucker in The Thick Of It, Capaldi was a surprising choice to some, and yet he has pushed every last weary atom of his being into the role, or so it seems to my sometimes last weary atoms.

There have been nice silly touches, such as the electric guitar, and at times Capaldi has suggested a sprite of mischief, but often he has seemed to carry a great weight, as if to say: “This living for ever lark is not as much fun as you might imagine.”

As the last series moved to its end, Capaldi’s performance grew deeper and darker, as the story pushed him towards regeneration – a step he struggled against, as the transformation grew closer. This was no easy face-swap, but a painful rebirth, almost as if he was having to give birth to his next self.

Steven Moffat wrote up a storming last series for Capaldi, and he will hand over to new series writer Chris ‘Broadchurch’ Chibnall at the end of the Christmas special.

Moffat played with dark themes, while introducing fun ideas and making passing contemporary references (I seem to recall a Trump reference in there somewhere).

Various rumours have swirled around the plughole of time about who will take over from Capaldi. My favourite whisper is that there could be a gender jump, with Phoebe Waller-Bridge (of the fine and very human comedy Fleabag) taking over. My least favourite rumour is that it’s that bloke off Death in Paradise. Kris Marshall, that’s the one. Capaldi announced his departure from the Tardis at the same time Marshall said he was leaving that Caribbean island. Perhaps he was tired of stumbling over bodies and then gathering all the suspects together for the Agatha Christie-style whodunit denouement. Anyway, people added two and two together and made Who.

But if it is Kris Marshall, I will still watch, because I always do.

Let’s not leave the shores of time without addressing Bill Potts, the Doctor’s latest companion. Pearl Mackie was fantastic in the role – funny, bolshie and able to stick up for herself, and act on her own. Bill died and it was the Doctor’s fault. Then she was resurrected – or was that all a trick, a wishful illusion? I do hope Bill makes it. Or maybe she could be the new Doctor.

We will know after the last ball has been struck tomorrow on centre court. Or maybe Roger Federer will get the role, as he wins everything else – although, thinking about it, Roger is more of a James Bond man.

ANDY Murray limped out of Wimbledon on my laptop. I was meant to be writing at the time, but kept flipping onto the BBC website to check up on Andy.

His departure leaves all British hopes resting on Jo Konta, and the papers have got themselves into a Jo-Jo-ing frenzy this morning, as exemplified by the Sun’s: “Give us hope Johanna.” The same newspaper, you may recall, claimed credit for Andy’s earlier success after asking readers to rub his hip on a front-page photograph.

Now it’s all about Jo. Konta is certainly thrilling to watch – and here’s hoping that she can beat Venus Williams this afternoon.

All the patriotic frenzy stirred up by this fantastic 26-year-old woman is understandable, if a little silly – as such flurries so often are. Konta grew up in Australia and arrived in Britain at the age of 14. Now the Australians want her back, with the Australian High Commissioner trying to reclaim the British number one as an Aussie. This leads the Telegraph to declare: “Hands off Konta!”

Konta declares herself to be British, and that should settle the argument. But really, she is a child of the world, growing up in Australia with Hungarian parents. Are the Hungarians wanting a piece of her, too?

She’s ours for now, but belongs to everyone in a sense. Mostly she is a woman of great skill and unshakeable determination and dedication. And if she wins, of if she loses, she will be doing so as herself – as well as cheering up her adopted country, with its shabby habit of sports-mad patriotism. Remember that Murray is either Scottish or British depending on how well he has been playing?

Interestingly, today’s Express joins the flag-waving fray, declaring at the top of its front page: “Murray out, now come on Konta!” Below this there is a massive headline reading: “Britain’s wide open to illegal migrants.” Ah, the usual double standards, then. The ‘right sort’ of migrants are proclaimed as proud Brits, as British as our (partly German royal family) – while the ‘wrong sort’ are proclaimed a threat and a menace.

There is strength in coming from everywhere, and a country has strength in attracting people from everywhere, or such is my idealistic belief.

As for Konta, here’s wishing her the best of luck, but I won’t be laying my hand on parts of her body as that isn’t seemly.

SOMETIMES I stick with a TV drama and wonder why. It is possible to measure a life by laying out the things you shouldn’t have bothered watching.

This thought arose while wondering why I was still bothering to watch The Loch (ITV, Sunday). This crime drama wants to be too many things, but mostly it wants to be Broadchurch; they all want to be Broadchurch.

Whereas Broadchurch dwelt on a single crime and examined the emotional repercussions in the community, The Loch throws just about everything at the screen, from a fake Loch Ness monster to a heartless man anchored in the cold depths.

The cast is strong, but the acting is all over the place, and it’s hard to focus on what is going on, as all you see in the bad acting. This leaves you wondering: “Well, he/she is normally OK and was quite good in that other thing. What’s going on here?”

I’ll stick with this week’s final episode, as I’d like to know how it winds up, and the optimist in me hopes that they might have taken up extra acting classes before Sunday.

But I suspect that I will end up saying, as Donald Trump Jnr has about that meeting with a Russian lawyer to dig the dirt on Hillary Clinton: “It was a nothing.”

The strange thing is, Sunday is a rich pasture for television. The Loch may be poor, but over on BBC1 there is the camp tempest that is Poldark and on Channel 4 the outstanding The Handmaid’s Tale. My wife dislikes the Cornish romper and won’t watch the Margaret Atwood adaptation due to being uncomfortable with the subject matter and the nastiness done to women.

“It’s a feminist parable,” I said, to no little effect. I catch up with that later instead.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a something for sure. This is the best drama of 2017: superbly acted by everyone but especially Elizabeth Moss as June/Offred. I haven’t read the novel, but this is a first-rate adaptation which takes its time and plays its hand with sharp intelligence and multi-layered storytelling.

For the unconverted one who shares the Samsung TV, it’s a dystopian lecture on the role of women, here reduced to enslaved baby-carriers, and on the illusions of freedom. Whereas Poldark is a handsome scowl dressed in a flapping shirt; or sometimes no shirt at all. It is silly and capricious, but I can’t help liking it.

The other treat of the season is Fargo (Channel 4), the third series to have been inspired by the Coen Brothers’ film of the same name. What I love about this are the hopeless characters caught in a web of their own inadequacy and the unstoppable slide of events. Fargo also looks and sounds like nothing else, having its own palette, with every scene framed like a painting.

Two Brits deserve acting honours amid the Minnesota ice and show: Ewan McGregor for playing a tragically mismatched pair of brothers, although – spoiler alert – two has now become one. And David Thewlis for turning stomachs as the revolting VM Barga, a doleful businessman with rotten teeth, an eating disorder – and a general humanity disorder.

Last night, we watched the tennis and then Into The Dark (BBC1), a new crime series (another one; but I can’t resist them). Mark Billingham told me about this adaptation when I interviewed him for the Yorkshire Post this time last year. My Anna Buring plays a pregnant detective who returns to her home patch when an old schoolfriend’s husband is charged with murdering a teenage girl. Soon the past and the present are doing an arm-wrestle. It’s promising and done well although the music shouts for attention too often. But I’ll be back, as Arnie said.

LABOUR MP Yvette Cooper says that she is sick to death of the vitriol directed at Laura Kuenssberg from within her party. And as if to prove her point, bucket loads of internet bile are then poured on her own head.

If you flick through the Man On Ledge archives – and that filing cabinet is in danger of toppling over the edge – you will find that I stuck up for the BBC’s political editor as long ago as June 2016.

No surprise, then, that I think Cooper is right. In a speech to the Fabian Society, Cooper said of Kuenssberg: “It is her job to ask difficult questions. It is her job to be sceptical about everything we say. Nothing justifies the personal vitriol, or the misogyny.”

My theory is that this is partly down to timing: the Beeb’s indefatigable political editor got the job around the same time that Jeremy Corbyn got his, and her tough questions were misinterpreted as bias.

Now it is true that if you Google “Kuenssberg bias” you will uncover plenty of alleged evidence of her being unkind to Jeremy – alongside blasts from Tory supporters who complain of her lack of fairness towards Theresa May (“Kuenssberg needs sacking with her lefty bias” – according to one of many anti-Beeb tweets highlighted by the Daily Express on May 3).

Should you wish to read up on the opposite case, just pop over to the left-wing Canary website, where your thirst for evidence of Kuenssberg’s anti-Labour bias will be slaked in an instant.

To recap for the haters on either side of the divide, Kuenssberg’s job is not to make friends in politics, but to report on politics. In doing so, she must find a narrative – a way to tell the story of the day. This will involve some degree of interpretation. And it is this that lands her in trouble.

Grumblers of all political persuasion say that she should “just stick to the facts” – yet the line between fact and opinion is thin and ever-moving in such a non-stop job.

And surely it is disgraceful that supporters of the Labour Party, which is rooted in equality, should spill such hatred on a woman doing that job. Kuenssberg is exposed to far more hostility than any man in that role ever has been.

Cooper also spoke against Labour supporters who carried placards of Theresa May’s severed head – “Maybe it was meant as a joke. It isn’t funny.”

Mrs Maybe did not escape unlashed, however. Cooper criticised the prime minister for failing to speak out against Donald Trump at the G20 summit, saying that Trump’s Twitter outbursts were not “harmless rants from a sad man in his bedroom” but represented the “bully pulpit of the most powerful man on the planet, broadcast direct to millions of people, echoed and amplified by the Brietbarts, the cheerleaders, the echo chambers”.

Bang on cue, the ‘bully pulpit’ from her own side put out a picture on Twitter of Cooper in a first-class carriage on a train – as if this was meant to somehow portray her as a class traitor. This sort of nastiness and cynicism threatens to rot the heart out of politics.

When Labour launched its manifesto in Bradford, Kuenssberg and other political editors were booed by party supporters. Corbyn pointed out that they were only doing their job, adding: “Journalists and journalism, and free journalism and a free press, are intrinsic to a democracy and a free society.”

Good words – and Jeremy Corbyn should remind his most ardent supporters that pouring bile on a political editor for doing her job is not how a decent party should behave.

MILITANT cyclists sometimes have pious stickers on their bicycles reading: “One less car on the road.” Perhaps I should have one on my car that says: “One more car on the road – sorry about that.”

You see, I never intended to be someone who drives a longish way to work. The cycle commute was more my thing. Now I drive 20 miles to Howden for my shifts at the Press Association, and a little further than that during term time to Leeds Trinity University, which is close to Leeds Bradford Airport.

Sometimes there are compensations in driving. After a dramatic journey last week, I posted something on Facebook. This is reproduced below as it appeared:

“Weird weather report. Walked to the distant car park in Howden in heavy rain. Sun shone, a rainbow formed a smudgy arc, and the air felt like a hundred other people breathed it first. The car was baking. Set off in a thunderstorm, then everything quietened for a while. The sky looked like a bruise. The fields of wheat glowed. The wind turbines barely turned. All rather scenic. By Elvington the road was a river more or less. Some drivers pulled over but those of made of sterner, stupider stuff carried on. Dry at home, the house hot and dark.”

Looking back, I’d edit out that “more or less”, but never mind.

The drama is of a different order the next evening. It is 9pm when the late shift ends. The weather has its back to the day. A nothing night. Warm, cloudy, dull.

Ten minutes into the journey, there is a straight mile before North Duffield where you can hit 60mph. The 40mph sign for the village comes into view. Beyond that there is second sign that flashes. I try to avoid a flashing after a speeding ticket in Leeds last year.

I slow to 40mph. My head is full of nothing much, other than wondering how I became the sort of man who drives a longish way to work. Fleetwood Mac are on the CD player. I know, hopelessly MOR and all that, but I spotted the ‘best of’ in the CD rack and remembered the days when I was the sort of student who sat around listening to Rumours.

Just before the village, a deer appears at the side of the road. It is quite large and reddish in colour. The animal looks at me, at the car, then does the dash. My hunk of commuting metal is doing 40mph. The deer is made of flesh and blood – and something else, ancient daring perhaps. It springs forward and dashes over the road.

My heart thumps. That would have been a big bang and a bigger mess. A few years ago, a friend bought a book on cooking roadkill and tried a few recipes. He would have been impressed if I’d turned up with that deer for his pot. Not that I would have known what to do.

I drive home nervy but glad the deer escaped. If you must drive to work, the commute between York and Howden is pleasant, taking in country lanes, but I’d still rather cycle, although not 20 miles there and 20 miles back.

Unusually this week there are four shifts, four commutes. A lot of there are back in that car. Not ideal, but necessary. You do what you do. Or to borrow from that TV scriptwriter’s cliché of the moment: “It is what it is.”

More often to be found on that CD player is We All Want The Same Things by Craig Finn. It came out a couple of months ago and is the third solo album from the Hold Steady singer.

Here’s a recommendation from a man who doesn’t usually listen to Fleetwood Mac – buy the Finn album, it’s great. Finn coins a lyric in the “it is what it is” mould. The words run: “The one thing that I’ve heard about love is that it hits when it hits.”

It hits when it hits… five short words that say much.

I pull the car into the drive. It hits when it hits could be a car and deer scenario, too. But here I am, home in one piece.

HADN’T intended to blog today, but you can blame the Tory MP Philip Davies for sending me to the laptop. Oh, and the Sun newspaper, too.

It’s fashionable to disparage the Sun nowadays in certain quarters – often the quarter when I tend to wander. This tendency worries me sometimes. Supposedly tolerant people turning intolerant about something they don’t isn’t healthy for a society, is it? Not that I would ever buy the Sun.

As for disparaging Philip Davies, that is the sacred duty of every clear-thinking citizen. Davies, you may recall, is the Yorkshire Tory much devoted to the cause of misogyny, forever barracking and blocking debates in the Commons with cries of: “What about the men?” and so on. He is the most infuriating man in an infuriating place – and he would do doubt take that as a compliment.

Anyway, this morning the Daily Express has fallen for one of his silly stunts under the front-page headline: “Foreign aid outrage.” This is the suggestion that British taxpayers will pay poorer nations’ insurance premiums for new insurance cover against natural disaster for the next four years, as reported more sensibly by the Times. The cost of what sounds like a smart idea – to prime a new market which encourages fragile states to insure themselves against floods and hurricane and so on – is £30m.

That’s peanuts in government terms, but it’s enough to turn the key that sticks out of Davies’ back. Off he goes, labelling this move as “completely unjustifiable” and saying the money should instead be spent on his constituents who can’t get insurance cover against floods. The Sun dips into to rubbish pun drawer, which is becoming a bad habit lately, to describe the scheme as “floody obscene”.

No, what’s obscene is the endless belittling of foreign aid, usually by ranters on the right (yes, that’s you we’re talking about, Philip). We have promised to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on foreign aid. It’s a tiny amount in relative terms – but it does a lot of good. It also changes the world for the better, helping to turn around poorer countries that, in turn, becoming emerging markets. Just the sort of markets that the Brexit-obsessed think we should be seeking out.

Foreign aid spent well can also reduce migration, as few people want to leave where they are from, but do so out of grim necessity. Try and reduce that grim necessity and perhaps they will not wish to travel – something which should please the very people who drone on about foreign aid.

It’s a small amount of money, relatively speaking, and it shows that we are a responsible, thoughtful country that wishes to help the wider world. This is something that should always be encouraged, but especially when we are increasingly looking like a basket-case country intent on putting up the shutters so that we can argue ourselves to death.

Reaching out from this small but important island is important, and we should be proud of that, rather stupidly grumbling: “It’s not fair. Why don’t they spend it here?”

DR Liam Fox is laying into the BBC for allegedly not being fully onside when it comes to reporting how marvellous Brexit is.

Ah, the Less Than Fantastic Mr Fox. Before going further, let’s remember what Fox wishes we would commit to convenient amnesia.

A good place to start refreshing our memory is a column John Elledge wrote for the New Statesman in February last year, which had the splendid sub-heading: “Or to give him his full title, the disgraced former defence secretary, Dr Liam Fox.”

Fox is the international trade secretary, which means it is his job to fly around the world glad-handing and grovelling in a bid to drum up post-Brexit trade. The Guardian’s John Crace – coiner of the now universal Maybot description for Theresa May – nicknames him the Flying Fox.

But why is he the former defence secretary, I hear you mumble over the cornflakes? Ah, let me explain in gleeful detail. He was forced to resign in disgrace, you see, after he allowed his close friend and best man, Adam Wettity, to take up an unofficial and undeclared role at his side. Mr Werrity attended Ministry of Defence meetings without first obtaining security clearance, had access to Fox’s diary and announced himself as his adviser.

After an investigation by then cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell declared that Fox had shown a lack of judgement and blurred the lines between his official role and his personal friendships, he was shown the door.

Sadly, in politics closed doors all too often swing open again. And now Fox makes up one third of the tripartite Let’s Sort Out This Brexit Shit department, alongside Boris Johnson and David Davis– the three Must-Get-Out-Of-Heres.

In this role, Fox isn’t happy with the BBC, having apparently mistaken the world’s most famous acronym for the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation. Speaking in the Commons, Fox said: “It does appear that some elements of our media would rather see Britain fail than Brexit succeed. I cannot recall a single time in recent times when I have seen good economic news that the BBC didn’t describe as ‘despite Brexit’.”

Ah, I can’t recall a single time in recent times when the sight of Fox didn’t bring me out in a rash, but we all have our crosses to bear.

Fox claims that negative reporting from the BBC – which is to say reporting that fails to spell out the full marvellousness of Brexit – is undermining his role.

Oh, come off it. That sounds like blame-shifting to me. Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat chief whip, made just that point in the Commons – adding that Fox was coming over like “Donald Trump without the perma-tan”.

An untanned Trump would be a curious sight indeed, and for some reason a giant slug springs to mind, but that is to be distracted by unnecessary horrors.

Only the other day, the never knowingly less than appalling Andrea Leadsom went on Newsnight and called for broadcasters to be “a bit patriotic” about Brexit. The funny thing is, I think it would be “a bit patriotic” of the BBC to stop inviting Mrs Leadsom onto Newsnight so that she can spout virulent nonsense, but it’s a free world and all that.

Bashing the BBC is a favourite sport of the right – and, as it happens, the left. You won’t have to look far to unearth a Jeremy Corbyn fanatic who believes that the BBC has yet to acknowledge the Labour leader’s full sainthood.

And on the other side, there is the Daily Express which this morning splutters over its soft-boiled eggs that the BBC is an institution “run by a clique of liberals… who are overwhelmingly pro-Remain”.

Whereas many of our newspapers are run by a clique of anti-liberals who are insanely hot for Brexit, and constantly report only one side of the argument.

As doubts and worries still swirl about what Brexit will mean and how it will happen – even if it will happen – it is right that the BBC should try to report all sides, not least in acknowledgement of the 48 per cent who voted to remain.

If it did anything less than that, it would be failing it its public duty.

As for Dr Liam Fox – frankly we shouldn’t listen to a word that man says. If politics had more of a moral core, he wouldn’t have found another job in government so easily. Sadly, cocking up in politics just seems to open more doors down the long and shabby corridor.

HEADLINES appearing on the same day can sometimes say much, even though the stories are quite separate.

Today’s accidental comparison is between news of rising student debt and a report that luxury flats in the Shard in London haven’t sold in five years.

At the launch of this priapic pile of glass-encased foreign money, developers suggested that apartments near the top of the tower costing up to £50m each would shift easily. According to a report this morning, they all appear to still be for sale.

The development was opened by the Duke of York and a former prime minister of Qatar. Ah, the Duke of York – always doing his bit to make boredom look exciting. Only last month, his Royal Dullness was burbling on about the opportunities offered by Brexit, saying: “In my experience recently, businesses that look over the garden fence have gone: ‘Hmm, [the] grass is not quite as dark and unforgiving as you might expect.”

I am guessing you can see over a lot of garden fences from those unsold pieces of lofty real estate – or perhaps ‘unreal estate’ would be more apt in this case.

Incidentally, you will almost certainly be able to see the giant burned-out tomb of Grenfell Tower: unsold apartments of grotesque expensiveness rising above a tower where people died, in effect, because they were poorly paid. What does that say about us as a country? Nothing good.

John Gummer, not a name you hear much nowadays – or possibly wish to hear – used to be David Cameron’s cities spokesman. In that role, he spoke of London’s thrusting new towers as “the vulgarity of bigness” – a phrase which has the ring of good sense. Yet that vulgar new London has raced ahead, much encouraged by former Mayor Boris Johnson.

Also rising above us – or, rather, our young people – are towers of student debt. According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies, students from the poorest 40 per cent of families beginning university this September will end up with an average debt of around £57,000.

The economic thinktank calculates that the abolition of the last maintenance grants in 2015 had hit the poorest students more than the richest, who will end up owing £43,000 (still more than the size of our first mortgage). And that’s not the sort of life lesson we should be teaching young people.

According to the institute, some 77 per cent of students will never pay off their loans. If so, how on earth is such a system sustainable?

Are student loans fair – and is it reasonable to tell students that it’s a good investment as they will earn more, when many of them don’t earn more at all? It doesn’t seem very fair to me.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn proposed abolishing student loans in his party’s election manifesto. Now it is true that parties flourish all manner of dubious pledges in their manifestos – then quickly forget what they promised.

But on student loans, there appears to be a gathering momentum. And whenever the next election is held, you can bet that ending student loans will be an even hotter topic.

And you can also put money on those obscenely expensive apartments on the 53^rd to the 65^th floor of the Shard still being empty.