Author

One in four British parents admit to spending £115 more on one child at Christmas than their other children, with more than half not seeing it as an issue, as the children themselves won’t be aware.

Travellers across Lancashire are being urged to plan ahead as strikes hit the rail network again this weekend.

More than 1,000 girls in Lancashire were not fully vaccinated against the potentially cancer-causing HPV virus last year, new figures show.

Police have launched a major new crackdown on serious crime in the run-up to Christmas.

Lancashire Constabulary has launched its annual campaign targeting drink and drug drivers this Christmas.

It’s been quite the autumn for dramas based around families and secrets. We’ve had ITV’s police drama Dark Heart, BBC’s undercover cop drama Informer and Channel 5’s Irish-set family drama Blood.

It was Philip Larkin who was rather rude about the effect your parents can have on you. His words came back to me watching Blood (Channel 5, weeknights, 9pm).

A popular TV show is looking for Lancashire people to appear in a special edition of the programme.

A new service has been launched to help people in the grip of gambling addiction.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but foreign affairs seems to be in the news a lot. Apparently, our relations with Europe are under a little strain, and various Government ministers keep resigning and then saying everyone else is doing foreign affairs wrong.

It’s weird how something as literally world-changing as the First World War seems to have become so familiar.

Informer, the iconic 1992 hit single by Canadian reggae-rapper Snow, never made much sense to me. “Informer, a-squiddly-diddly-diddly-diddly-dee, a-leaky bum bum now”, he seemed to sing from inside a prison cell in the video.

Banter has a bad press. The word has become shorthand for sexist, unsubtle, humourless chat, usually between men with fixed views on ‘the football’, or politics or women.

Like a passenger trapped on a long-haul flight with a crying baby, I heard about The Cry (BBC1, Sundays, 9pm) before I saw it.

For a decade supposedly so full of peace and love, of a flowering of art and culture, the 1960s looks like a remarkably unpleasant 10 years – political assassinations, wars, riots, strikes. And Charles Manson.

I came to the unwelcome conclusion this week that I am very, very old. I realised the modern world is not for me, that I am confused by the new, and befuddled by the ‘now’ and the ‘on-trend’.