There will always, of course, be freak accidents; such as the one that happened when a truck alarm went off and the four-year-old’s aunt tried to deactivate it with a keychain remote… and activated the vehicle’s remote starter instead, causing the truck to lurch forward and crush the boy against a metal fence.There are many more ways in which a child can injure himself in the three minutes it takes to go to the toilet, to see who’s at the door, or answer the phone in a different room, just…

This is why I resent it when anyone teases a girl by telling her she looks “like a boy” (specifically not a “tomboy”) or a boy that he “looks like a girl”. Most of us have yet to learn that sexual identity is not necessarily the same as gender identity; of course it makes good gossip fodder to call someone else’s offspring a ‘tranny’ or ‘butch’ or any other demeaning name… This (as well as using the wrong pronouns on purpose), is not an “I was only teasing” issue; it is transphobic…

The invasion of privacy of the Royals has been called grotesque, as well as “a service to readers”. It inevitably harkened back to the hounding of Princess Diana.  Royals are considered ‘interesting’ in the ordinary course of things, and even more so  if they wear sticking plasters with cartoon characters, or if they  go to a gym or purchase sweets from a shop ‘like commoners’. So it stands to reason that scenes that are considered racy would garner a far wider…

A quick on-line search for headlines pertinent to the above picks out the following: Toddler drowns in Esporta health club swimming pool; Beaumont baby dies days after falling into pool;Baby dies after left by father in hot vehicle; Two Babies Left Home Alone Die In Fire; and many more.

Only yesterday, indeed, the British press reported that a five-month-old baby taken to hospital after his pram plunged into the River Thames.

All of us make mistakes…