I used to like the Guardian, now I despise it.

My colleague, education correspondent Ian Wishart, sent me a link to this Guardian thought piece. What a demoralising start to the day.I have only the vaguest of ideas who George Monbiot is because I stopped reading the Guardian years ago.
I stopped when I realised I'd started to hate its snobby elitism. It's just so back-breakingly right-on about everything.
Now, I'm a progressive sort myself, but it said absolutely nothing to me.
From its news to its fashion spreads, its music coverage and even its football writing, everything annoyed me.
Plus - and this is the big one - so many its readers I've met are nothing short of know-it-all bigots.
The disrespect Monbiot shows to local newspapers and journalists in this piece - not to mention his shallow research - is breathtaking.
Why doesn't he tackle the question of standards at the paper he's associated with and the other nationals?
Collectively, they cosy up to the most powerful political and commercial interests in the land and never let on that they're doing it.
I've written this in work time.
So, I'd better get on.
Bosses from a large supermarket chain, the chief constable and the council leader are popping over to deliver the plan for next week's Mercury.

I love writing fluffy stories. There, I've said it!

So, I've been moaning about how I've spent the past couple of weeks looking for conventional hard news stories. And failing miserably.
The week ended with me marking the retirement of a police sniffer dog called Bill.
I enjoyed meeting Bill and his handler and companion for the past seven years,Pc Terry Durham.
Bill bowed out on Friday having helped police trace all kinds of drugs and guns. He's going to live with a real friend of the paper, Leicestershire's beat bobby of the year, Pc Harvey Watson.
The happy pic on the left of Harvey and Bill was taken by one of our snappers.
The story was fun to write and it went down well with the bosses, it's today's page five fluffy story.
Knowing how stats-obsessed the modern public sector has become, I asked the police semi-seriously if they could provide Bill's detection rates.
They couldn't, but I wouldn't have been too surprised if they'd said: "No, but we can say he has consistently scored 90-plus per cent in public satisfaction surveys."
I love the mad directions this job sends me in.
The stories we cover are often distressing and it's easy to go home feeling a little blue about the world.
Hopefully next week will bring something a little harder my way, but I hope the fluffy stuff keeps coming.

Join the Q.

The police officers I've been speaking to this week have all agreed: things are quiet pretty much everywhere across the city.

Only they don't use what they call the Q-word.

I guess they think they'll jinx themselves if they do. I tend to ask them if it's been 'eventful' or not on their patches.

Well, it's been a quiet time for me too.

As someone who lives in the city - and will have done for 10 years come the end of the month - I'm more than happy. In fact it's great.

However, as a reporter I have to say it's not a good situation.

I'm wondering what my newsdesk colleagues are thinking. Are they running out of patience with me?

If they are, they're hiding it well.

So, as a citizen I should be glad that the stories I've been looking at have been about relatively minor - but never trivial - matters.

This past couple of days it's been bike thefts, purse 'dipping' gangs, a small cannabis 'factory' and, today, a lady who has cooked curry for 200 police officers to raise a couple of hundred pounds for the Poppy Appeal and Help for Heroes.

Reporters like big crash, bang, wallop stories.

There's no escaping that, but I will never lose sight of the fact that losing out to a petty thief is a nasty experience.

The elderly ladies I've talked to down the years after their purses have been lifted from their shopping bags have been among the most troubling interviews I've ever done.

One, she was in her late-70s, once told me: "I didn’t come into the city centre for some time afterwards because I didn’t like the idea of being in a crowd.

"I was convinced it would happen again. It wasn’t about the money they took from me – that was only a couple of pounds.

"What they did was make me feel unsafe in the city I was born in."

Most newsrooms have long since banned phrases such as 'callous burglars' or 'cold-hearted thieves'.

I agree, they are rotten cliches and I've not been caught trying to smuggle them into my stories for a long time, but sometimes they just fit.

Maybe things will start to speed up next week.

And maybe Liverpool FC will start to speed up too.

And maybe, just maybe something will come out of the blue to save the Pump and Tap and the Bowstring Bridge.