UP the 199 well-trodden steps above Whitby harbour, on the very edge of the East Cliff overlooking the North Sea, bunches of flowers are tied to fence posts or left lying on the grass.

Some of the bouquets are vivid and fresh, others browned and fragile, remembering loved ones who have died.

During a Bank Holiday family day out last week, I found myself reading one of the faded memorial cards, the ink smudged by the rain: In memory of Neil McDonald, died August 16 2009. He’s missed greatly by his family. Please support our “Price of a Punch” campaign on Facebook. Neil was the innocent victim of “one-punch manslaughter” aged 34.

I found Neil’s story on the internet. He’d been enjoying a quiet drink with his girlfriend when he was attacked outside a pub in Macclesfield and died – the victim of a single punch by a thug called John Cunningham.

On January 22 this year, Cunningham was jailed for nine years, but sentences seldom mean what they say. Lawyers have told Neil’s family that the reality is that the killer will actually serve only two years.

The “Justice For Neil McDonald” campaign calls for tougher sentences for “onepunch manslaughter” cases and it resonated with me because of a tragic case which made the front page of The Northern Echo two days before my trip to Whitby.

Soldier Andrew Gibson, 19, who was due to go to Afghanistan, was in the Escapade nightclub in Darlington when he was punched in the head by John Flannigan, 17.

That single punch resulted in Andrew’s death. The sentence? Two-and-a-half years behind bars. It will, of course, be much less.

So far, I haven’t been able to contact Neil McDonald’s family so I don’t know why that card was left on the Whitby clifftop. Perhaps it was just a place he loved; a favourite view.

As my children fought to get their kite airborne on the green behind me, I found myself moved by the words written in Neil’s memory.

And with Andrew Gibson’s story fresh in my mind, the “Price of a Punch” campaign is one I instinctively want to support.

A stronger message must go out that a single punch can kill – and that those reckless enough to take such a risk can expect to spend a long time behind bars.

■ www.priceofapunch.co.uk REGULAR readers will know I have strong views about football clubs banning newspapers from covering games.

A couple of years ago, we got round a Hartlepool United ban by sending an artist into the crowd to produce a Roy of the Rovers-style comic strip of key moments.

It proved a big hit, but the Swindon Advertiser has gone one better. The paper is banned from covering a match at Southampton because the club wants newspapers to pay the club’s own photographers for pictures, despite all the free publicity the Saints’ sponsors get through press coverage.

The Advertiser’s answer was to recreate key moments from the game with Subbuteo players. Finger-flicking brilliant.

LAST week’s item about 26-year-old reporter Jim Entwistle being barred from a pub for being underage prompted a lovely letter from Laura Dixon, of Darlington.

“It reminded me of being in Peter Barratt’s last week to buy a pair of secateurs,” said Laura. “When I got to the till, the assistant asked me if I was 18. I was a bit taken aback as I’ll be 83 next month.”