Meet Teresa. She was mugged - but she's not going to let it beat her.

This is Teresa Blick. I spoke to her today and was struck how lovely she was.

She was mugged last month and, bravely in my opinion, decided to speak to us about it.

She was walking home from the shops in Queens Road, Clarendon Park when she was literally jumped by a young thug.

He, for his troubles, walked away with a fiver.

I'm sure that's long gone. Into his arm presumably.

Teresa, who's 65 and a widow, struggled in the first few weeks after the attack.

She just didn't feel safe going out because of what this man had done to her.

Well, on a positive note, Teresa's attitude today seemed to be one of defiance.

"I'm not going to let this turn me into a recluse", she told me.

Good on her.

After all, people like Age Concern and Victim Support have told me down the years that crimes like this kill people.

Not instantly, but slowly as the victim withdraws from life and loses the confidence to be out in public.

There's only one thing outstanding.

When he took Teresa's purse our big man also took three photos of her grandchildren - who live miles away in the North East - and a mass card for a dear friend who died two years ago.

How can we get them back for her?

Seriously, if you live in the Montague Road area of Clarendon Park, check your gardens, alleyways and the like for a discarded purse, photos or a mass card.

It's a slim hope, but it's worth making the point.

My 50th post. This had better be good.

It's been a busy week, but I haven't got much to show for it.

On the plus side, Chief Supt Rob Nixon - the city's senior officer - sent a letter to the bosses to thank us for our coverage of the David Robinson story.

I've covered David's story at length on this site.

I'd suggest you go back a page or two and read the posts if you haven't done so before. Make a donation too, maybe?

On the news front, I learned a new word - clonking.

It came up in conversation with a woman I was talking to about an assault in Western Road. The allegation is that a couple of fellas attacked a man with baseball bats.

She said she saw it happening and described the sound of the bats' impact as 'clonking'.

I thought she'd made it up, but I checked the dictionary and there it was: "A thudding noise."

Another tale this week pointed out that one of our psychiatric units has been losing patients - mostly only for a few hours, admittedly - at an alarming rate.

Bosses at the Brandon Unit, at Leicester General Hospital tell us things are going to improve and when they take people out for a ciggie they'll count them out and count them back in again.

On the small beer, but still thuggish side of life, we ran a few lines about a man - and what a man - who threw a traffic cone at a passing car in Ratby.

Surely there are better things to do in the villages.

Not really sure what I'll be up to next week.

However, I'd be made up to hear from anyone who can tell me more about Romanian prostitutes sleeping under canvas in Abbey Park.

Congratulations to David and Almina - and say hello to Amelia.

I've said before that some stories are a lot harder to write than others.

Over the past couple of months I've struggled with the stories I've filed about David Robinson.

He's a young police officer in the city who has cancer.

The tumours are incurable, according to doctors.

David needs to raise £100,000 to undergo experimental treatment in the US which he hopes will give him as much time as possible with his wife, Almina and their very new daughter, Amelia.

His colleagues at Mansfield House station have taken up the challenge of getting him on that plane to the US and they have been an inspiration.

It goes without saying, the couple's friends and family are doing exactly the same.

A couple of months in and the total collected has just gone beyond £30,000. Amazing.

People's health is such a difficult subject, very emotional.

I'm also conscious a lot of people are reading these stories.

These are people who care deeply about David and his family as well as, in a lot of cases, those who deal with me on a daily basis.

I hate to get things wrong in print and I worry about getting something back to front in these stories.

Anyway, this is a picture of David and Almina with Amelia. She arrived on Monday, weighing in at a delicate 5lbs and 9ozs.

For the full story and all kinds of things you might need to know, search Facebook for 'help us help a friend' or go to:

http://www.davidleerobinson.co.uk

It's come to this - a strongly worded missive to the Telegraph.

Journalists are funny, picky creatures at times.

Most of us can be back-breakingly precious about the English language and how it's used.

We're like this because we should be.

I'm not above criticism for the errors I make, but I still make the bench for the fussy team.

I was reading an article on the Daily Telegraph's website today for a bit of background for something I was doing for the Merc.

I was astonished at the lack of care that had gone into its preparation for publication.

The words were all in the right order. In fact it was a good read.

But the punctuation was all over the place.

Anyway, I sent a quick e-mail to editorial at the Telegraph.

They may come back and say the punctuation went missing because of a technical glitch.

Or maybe, someone didn't know where to put their commas and apostrophes.

Despite my best efforts, my message ended up sounding like a fussy schoolma'am's end of term report on a must-try-harder pupil.

At least it was properly punctuated.

Beggars you say? Wearing gorilla suits?

Sadly there is no authentic 'as-it-happened' news picture to go with this one.

The man in the suit is a fun-runner picked from our picture archive.

Anyway, this is about the latest twist on the travelling eastern European criminal thing we've been covering for some time now.

They're implicated in things like purse-dipping, baby-in-your-face begging, shoplifting and hawking particularly nasty fake gold jewellery around the city centre.

The headline to this post pretty much sums up what they were up to in this case - they were dressed as gorillas and they were planning to hassle shoppers for money.

I was walking through town heading for the office when I bumped into some police officers having their pic taken for an advert that's coming the Merc's way.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. All ad revenue is gratefully received.

As the group broke up I chased a police officer I wanted to speak to.

But no, he was off because he'd spotted a couple of people dressed in gorilla suits.

They were just sitting there in High Street and Humberstone Gate and he wanted to know who they were.

Because of the General Election I thought they were merry pranksters.

It became apparent though they were in town - from Manchester funnily enough, apparently the home town of the city's newest street girls - to ask shoppers if they wanted to pay for pics of their kids alongside men dressed in shabby suits.

It didn't sound like the smartest ruse for parting people with their money.

I have no idea if it would have been a winner because this pair had just arrived and hadn't got down to business when the police intervened.

Funnily enough, they didn't have a camera.

Anyway, the police told them the score and advised them to head out of town.

I've held off from writing the story because I'm desperate to get a pic of them in action.

But it looks like they've listened to the police and have gone back to Manchester.

I like odd stories - how often does a reporter get to write about beggars in fancy dress?

Not often.

How often does a reporter get to write an intro along the lines of "A shoplifter squeezed breast milk at a store detective..."?

Again, not often.

I had the pleasure of writing the above once. And I still remember it fondly.

I'm only human.

This is what happens when newspapers fail their readers.

Someone in the office found this story on an Essex paper's website and e-mailed it around the newsroom today.

Reprinted below, it's bewildering stuff and I think it says a lot about standards in some sections of my industry.

Now, this is by no means a political blog and I apologise in advance because this post has nothing to do with Leicester or the police.

People have their views about the BNP, me included.

That's not important here. I would be making the same point if this was about any political party.

What matters is that this paper has given a political meeting the treatment I'd expect for a Blue Peter bring and buy sale.

At first I thought it was a spoof or an election stunt by the BNP. But no, it's there on the paper's website.

That is just not good enough and I don't want to see any party given a free ride like this. We're only a few weeks away from a General Election.

But I think I know why it's happened. It reads awfully like a press release doesn't it?

Newspapers are struggling and I know many are cutting back on staff.

There are so many supremely talented journalists out of work or just plain worried for the future just now it's scary.

I don't know these reporters in Essex, but I'm guessing some of them at least will be under daft pressure to fill their pages and a little 'cut and paste' isn't uncommon.

It's known as 'churnalism'.

PR companies, political parties etc send out their stuff and the lesser among us maybe tinker with it a little bit or drop it straight into the paper or on to the website.

If anyone from the Essex paper wants to defend their reporting I will include their response in full.

Anyway here's the full article:


BRENTWOOD: Nationalists show their support at BNP meeting
Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 08:0018 readers have commented on this story.
Click here to read their views.

PROUD nationalists were asked to dig deep to support an election candidate when the Brentwood branch of the BNP met for the first time.

Buoyant supporters packed into a back room of a patriotic pub for the inaugural meeting of the Brentwood and Chelmsford branch – which has been founded in response to the party's growing membership.

Paul Morris, Parliamentary candidate for Brentwood and Ongar, said: "It was a good turnout considering it was very last minute.

"We officially launched six months ago but this was the first meeting."

The party operates under a veil of secrecy to protect members from those who oppose their beliefs and did not reveal the location of the meeting until just minutes before it was due to start.

With the pub set to become a regular meeting place for the new group, they have asked us not to reveal where it is.

Christine Mitchell, a 68-year-old grandmother from Chelmsford, will be running the branch from here on in.

Mrs Mitchell, who is contesting the newly created Saffron Walden seat in the general election on May 6, said: "We are fighting for British jobs for British workers, that is the start but we are standing for other reasons – crime rates, the state of the education system and the fact MPs have stolen from the public."

The former Conservative leader of Westminster Council, Peter Strudwick, spoke for more than an hour during the meeting, rallying support for what he called "ideologies" for the future.

Unlike other parties which are funded by unions and wealthy donors, the BNP relies purely on members' donations and as the first half of the meeting drew to a close, Mr Morris stood up and asked for donations.

"Michael Bateman is standing in Chelmsford and we need a £500 election deposit," he said. "Can anyone afford to put £500 in the pot?"

Searching faces scoured the room until a man who had until then sat quietly in the corner, put his hand up to pledge £100.

Others then thrust crisp £50 notes in the pot before the less well-off handed over their screwed up £10 and £20 notes.

There was much applause and hand shaking as the money came flooding in, uniting the room in the campaign to bring about radical change.

Drug dealers? You can't trust them.

I searched the internet for Leicester's mephedrone dealers the other day.

I came up with a couple of names, addresses and mobile numbers within a few minutes. Easy.

The thing is, I'm not entirely sure everything is above board.

I'm sure these advertisers want your money, but I'm guessing some of them have no intention of supplying that M-cat.

When you think about it, the online market for an illicit drug favoured by young people was always going to be a rich feeding ground for criminals.

So, they're not drug dealers. Fraudsters would seem more appropriate.

There's a lot of very made-up sounding names and some ridiculous claims that these 'companies' turn over more than a million dollars a year.

So, a couple of the numbers I tried were answered by people who clearly had nothing to sell and were more than a little surprised by my call.

Then I called on a house in a quiet part of Groby.

I was greeted by a very chatty retired gent. He wasn't selling either.

The question newspapers are asking right now is 'how many kids are using this stuff?'.

I think it would be interesting to find out how many are falling foul of these tricky online criminals.

In the meantime I'll press on with my attempts to chat to a dealer.

I want to know what he/she thinks of the ban, which will come into effect on Friday.

I'd like to ask if they still think mephedrone is a harmless, party drug which they would still like to sell to young people.

From what I've seen in the past couple of days there's a big sale on right now. Maybe they're busy clearing their stocks.

There's one who I think is selling, but he's not answering his phone.

So, 'Brian of Granby Street', if you're reading this, give me a call, please.