That's it, I'm going home.

It's been another bitty day. Coming at the end of a bitty week.

When I came in this morning I was feeling bright and pleased with myself.

You see, I had a couple of stories on the go and I was confident they'd come off before the end of play.

One did come together but wasn't as enthusiastically received by the bosses as I'd hoped.

I liked it though and so did the police officers who were involved in it.

A thief called Russell Archer stole a sat nav from a car and presumably thought he'd got away with it.

A few minutes later he got nicked in the street because he looked suspicious. Man lurking for no apparent reason in the street in the early hours etc.

The officers, from Spinney Hill Park and Keyham Lane stations, checked the most recent destination in the sat nav and went to visit the owner.

Archer got 30 weeks for that and other crimes.

Ho ho.

The stories didn't get done because 'such and such' or 'so and so' weren't around to speak to me.

Oh well, they'll keep until Monday.

I'm looking forward to one of them because it's not the kind of story I normally write.

If I'm correct - and I'm pretty sure I am - a big chain is selling something it shouldn't.

The other is about an estate where crime has fallen madly because police have succeeded in getting their top 10 criminals locked up.

They're all in jail at the same time and will be there for months to come.

Also, I think there's a gang going round cracking safes. How Sweeney-like.

So, it takes time to bring certain stories together.

We're quick, but if you want super-quick switch the telly on.

Sky announced this afternoon that John Terry had been stripped of the England captaincy a good 20 minutes before I saw anything on the BBC website or on the Press Association wires.

Ah, the lifestyles of junkies and winos. And people who hang around on stairwells.

This is a picture taken by one of the beat officers down on Leicester's St Matthews estate.

It's a littered communal stairwell in one of the blocks of flats down there.

Look closely and you'll see a drinks can fashioned into a crack pipe.

Some of it is just litter, pure and simple. Ciggy butts and the like.

Now generally when I write stories I apply the 'what would my mum make of this?' test.

How would she feel walking through the city centre come Friday night? Would she be upset by groups of kids hanging around the Clock Tower on a Saturday afternoon?

In those cases I don't think she'd be much bothered. Although, some people tell us and the police they feel otherwise.

I don't need to ask how she'd feel if she had this crap on her doorstep.

One of the residents told us: "I am fed up with all the people coming onto the stairs where I live, they seem to be taking drugs and leaving the litter everywhere.

"Once I have been out shopping in the morning I feel too scared to come out again for the rest of the day."

Read that again.

This lady is staying in because she doesn't know what she's going to find outside her front door.

Wrong, wrong, very wrong.

The only positive here is the police team on St Matthews - good friends of the paper they are too - are going after the people who are putting this lady and others like her through this.

Walk on. I hope Rafa doesn't.

I don't post things on Twitter too often.

Today, I was moved to write the following.

"Oh Rafa. My dreams be very tossed and very blown."

Nope, nothing to do with the police or anything else this blog is concerned with.

I just wanted to say it again.

Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard are both injured and the club is in turmoil.

Where are we going?

UPDATE:
Reading that back, it makes me sound wet. And a bit of a nut.

Bear with me, I'm just getting the hang of this blog thing.

Well, I've had to remove a couple of readers' comments from the previous post.

Every day as a reporter I speak to people at length and then select two or three paragraphs of their comments to go in the story.

The skill - and believe me, it is a skill - is to accurately reflect their views.

Now, with the blog I've just censored someone by removing his or her comments because I saw a potential libel.

I'm not an editor, I'm a jobbing reporter.

Now, comments - and let's face it, there haven't been many so far - will
pop up in my inbox first before I decide whether to release them to the blog.

If the person or people whose comments were removed would like to contact me direct I'll happily discuss it with them.

While we're at it, who in Barnsley is reading this blog? I'd love to know.

UPDATE:
I've not gone censorship crazy. This latest deleted comment was just a test.
Or was it?
Well, yes it was.
Lord, this is complicated.
UPDATED UPDATE
I think Cutie speaks for all of us there.

I'm just not getting the hang of the Freedom of Information thing.

With Christmas and the new year coming and the prospect of a few difficult news-free days ahead, I thought I'd get ahead of the game.

So I asked our public bodies for some bits and bobs under the Freedom of Information Act.

Several weeks on and the answers are coming back and I'm not getting much information.

Harumph.

I asked the police to supply info they've published before - at least twice to my knowledge.

Namely, how many people in Leicestershire are currently involved in drug dealing and how many of these have what they call 'firearms markers' against their names on the police intelligence system?

They've told me in the past that this stuff is updated on the force intelligence system every four weeks.

I know "intelligence" is just that. It's not cast iron fact.

But it is indicative of where the city is going and, I think it might be of interest to the readers.

Very few people in Leicestershire can or want to lay their hands on a gun. Let's get that straight.

But let's also be very clear that we do have a number of armed criminals in this city and beyond.

Having said that, I was happy - yes really, I was happy - the other day to report that there was only one occasion last year where a shot was fired. But, I have also written about guns - the real thing, not replicas - being seized from crims - again, the real things, not replicas.

So, I am not chasing a 'Leicester's gun crime mayhem' story. I don't do that kind of thing, thank you very much.

This time they told me they weren't obliged to answer my question.

Their answer seemed to boil down to the idea that my story would be a tip-off to our armed criminals.

I wasn't asking for names and mobile numbers, just some stats.

A couple of days later the Foreign Office responded to another of my FOIA questions.

I admit, I ripped this one off from a former colleague.

A couple of years ago a Daily Mail trainee called Matt spent a few months with us.
He asked how many people from so-called rogue states had been barred from travelling to study at Leicestershire's three universities. National security and all that.

That Daily Mail lad got an answer. I got a knock-back.

If anything's going to feed a regional journalist's inferiority complex....

Another day, another refusal.

I asked the Ministry of Justice to list the contraband seized from inmates and visitors at Leicestershire's prisons. Drugs, phones and the like.

Big public interest argument in favour of us getting the goods, you might think.
"It would take too long", they said today.

Ho hum.

Maybe it's me. Do I draft my requests badly?

Or, should I be thinking the Freedom of Information Act isn't all it's cracked up to be?

There's a largely taxpayer-funded quango in the city which, days after its arrival, told us it was exempt from the FOIA. It's not their fault - and they do say they intend to "operate in a spirit of openness". But how many other public bodies are exempt?

The legislation allows me to appeal first to the bodies which turned me down and then to the independent information commissioner if I'm still unhappy.

Anyone with expertise in this area care to offer their thoughts?

UPDATE: just to be clear, what I was moaning about was the fact that the quango was exempt and when I said it declared itself exempt, what I meant was that it made a point of highlighting this fact almost as soon as it came into being.

This particular quango is jointly owned by two local authorities and that’s what makes it exempt – if it was owned by just one, it would be covered by the Act.

It still spends our money. How sensible is that?

David Taylor MP

There was a real sadness in the newsroom today as we worked on the breaking story of David Taylor's sudden death.
Some of us here go back quite a few years with David, MP for North West Leicestershire since 1997.

He had a heart attack on Boxing Day while he was visiting Calke Abbey.

The news - and we had to deliver it over the phone to some of his friends and associates - has hit people very hard.

I was a cub reporter when I first met him, back in 1994 when I joined the Coalville Times.

David was a parish and borough councillor then. I'm pretty sure he was working full time too.

That's a lot of politics to squeeze in.

Well, as Oscar Wilde said: "Socialism would be great if it didn't take up so many evenings." I'm paraphrasing.

And, it might not have been Wilde.

But, it's a good line.

When I arrived in Coalville there was much talk among the senior members of the Labour Party about 'Young David'.

I'm not sure how many attempts it took, but he won the seat from the Tories in the landslide of 1997.

I went down to the count at Whitwick leisure centre with the-then editor of the Times, (of Coalville, not London).

A few of us got a little drunk - we weren't covering, we were there for the fun of it all - and I remember being 'shushed' by someone from the Mercury because we were getting a little over-excited as we watched the political map changing locally and nationally.

For the next few years David was a good friend of the paper and was in it all the while doing his job - fighting for a constituent or opening a community centre here or there. You get the idea, MP stuff.

I don't know much about Parliamentary politics. Come to think of it, I don't know too much about the town hall stuff either.

But I could tell David was one of the good ones. I've met some of the bad ones in my time and it's not always down to duck islands and home flipping.

He will be much missed.

Mercury the Messenger, chapter II

Back to police stuff.
Every time I file a story I am acutely conscious - let me repeat that - I am acutely conscious there is a consequence.

If we report a bad run of muggings in your neighbourhood do you begin to wonder if it’s safe to go out any more? You may do.

There's been a couple of nasty ones where I live and it gave me pause for thought when I wrote the story and reflected that it was about a spot about 200 yards from my house.

But, of course it's safe to go out.

Ask someone how many cars got turned over in New Parks or Stoneygate this week. “Don’t know”, they’ll say. “Sixty?”

The answer might actually - in a good week admittedly - be none.

Have newspapers inflated the fear of crime? I don't know.

Bad reporting by definition distorts the way people see the world.

To me it's a case of 'good or bad, it's all news'.

An officer called me today and said he'd arranged for me to talk to an 89-year-old woman whose shopping bag had been stolen by some sneak.

Christmas presents, pension, personal stuff. All gone.

When I get the story together I will include some background.

Purse 'dipping' is big at this time of year - the shops are crowded and purses are bulging with savings drawn out for the big shopping trip.

While telling this lady's her story I will say that the picture is relatively good so far this year.

In Leicester city centre, the number of thefts has been low this past couple of weeks compared to previous years, some thieves have been locked up and the police (with the help of us as well as the telly and radio people) have done a great job
letting elderly women know that they have to be careful when they pop into town.

I know we’re in a position to influence the way people feel about all kinds of crime and, as a consequence, how at ease they are as they go about their business.

Going back to that earlier stuff about the council, for me it’s not whether I talk the city up, down or sideways.

It’s about telling people’s stories and keeping a sense of perspective. Let me know if you think I get it wrong.