HUMAN nature is very peculiar. A boy drowns tragically off Seaham. Police appeal for information, but are disappointed with the public's response.

A dog is killed horribly in Coundon. Police appeal for information, and are inundated with calls offering assistance. It is the best response ever to a police appeal and, this being Coundon, once the haunt of Homing Pigeon Boy, there have been a few police appeals in the past.

What are we to make of this? Have we got our priorities wrong?

It may well be, of course, that no one saw what happened to the boy at Seaham and so there is no information to offer, but the general point still stands. The suffering of animals does arouse greater passion than the suffering of humans. Holidaymakers, for example, are usually far more concerned about the fate of a dog they see living in poverty than they are for the humans who live alongside it.

Perhaps this is positive. The mark of a civilised society is how well it looks after its most vulnerable members - and you don't get much more vulnerable than animals.

But while we look out for the well-being of animals, we must never forget the well-being of our fellow human beings, be they five-year-olds in Seaham or 77-year-olds in Spennymoor.

Breaking moulds

THE film Billy Elliot is already being hailed as the best British film of all time. And it doesn't even open in cinemas until today.

Some say it will do for Easington what The Full Monty did for Sheffield. Tourists will come flocking. Let's hope so. But more importantly, the film might do something for the North-East and its image.

Against the backdrop of the miners' strike, Billy Elliot tells of a pitman's son training for ballet school in secret to escape the opprobrium of his family.

The message that he triumphs might do a little to break the machismo that still dominates some areas of the North-East and it might also persuade the rest of the country that we are not all Andy Capps who still believe that a woman's place is in the kitchen.

It might also make the point that the region is not the cultural desert that some in the South feel it to be. The North-East has a thriving artistic scene - be it ballet, theatre or music - and there is plenty more talent, like 14-year-old Stockton dancer Jamie Bell, just waiting to be discovered.