IN the nail-biting square-off on the letters page between red corner Derek Hawkes and in the blue corner George Arthur, whose colours have you pinned to your mast?

Personally, not a lover of the call to arms to shame people when you might believe in your own argument, but it’s by no means a definitive one because there is a strong counter offensive as we have seen over the past weeks.

Facts are often cherry-picked to fit the frame of the narrative and the facts that get in the way are dispensed with. There are many examples of this around us, the one that comes first to mind is the very skewed research around the subject of HRT which in living history was the casualty of much scaremongering and many women who could have benefitted greatly from it, were taken off it and it caused much harm.

Of course these days no-one can have a decent argument any more, debate is dead. ‘If you don’t believe what I say, then expect violence or cancellation because it’s my way or the highway’ seems to be the order of the day.

Some of the nastiest people around hide behind a virtue-signalling ‘Be Kind’ liberal hashtag and fail to see the irony of their own intransigence. Today’s society loves a pile on, witch-hunt. We are back to the era of the Roman mob the ‘common cry of curs’ as Shakespeare called it: those who listen only to themselves. What a very unhealthy legacy to pass on and I definitely won’t be joining in any ‘shaming’.

I cannot think why it has taken governments so long to change the law which has supported giving ‘rights’ to parents to see their children when it is clearly putting them at risk to allow it.

Spearheading the campaign is our own Claire Throssell and no one needs me to outline why she is fighting for the small yet important voices of children. Since Claire started to battle, countless children have died at the hands of their own parents, something which is anathema to those of us who are more likely to die protecting our own than to harm them. Sara Sharif, Baby P, Logan Mwangi, Star Hobson, Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, the list is heartbreakingly endless and yet still governments have been dragging their heels in a way that defies belief.

Did it really need a massive collection of signatures on a petition to force the powers that be to acknowledge a problem they already know about? Claire says that she is filled with renewed hope that this government will do the right thing. But one does have to ask, how many more children’s deaths will have to occur first, because they will happen. Sadly – nothing surer.

Mother’s Day is coming up and I was astounded by the conversation that I had with friends this week about what their offspring do for them.

I know for a fact that one of them had a tough old time with her son who eventually got himself straightened out, and has been a mama-bear for her daughter when the son-in-law was faffing about behind her back. She didn’t even expect a card from either; ‘they’re busy with their own lives’ she said. WTF. If you are too busy to send your mother a card on Mothering Sunday, you need a word with yourself. I never missed. There was always a card, a present and a lunch, either out or around my table.

And this will be the second one I won’t have without her, so it’s become more about me as the matriarch which is odd. The day my two are too busy to acknowledge me on that Sunday, even in a small way, is the day I make the Incredible Hulk look like he’s playing at rage.

I’ll be at The Book Vault on Market Street next week just in time for Mother’s Day – Saturday 29th, 10am-12noon if you wanted to get a book signed. There will be giveaways accompanying the buying of my new one, so do pop down and see us. Or ring up and reserve if you can’t get down and they’ll post it out. What service.