11:40am Monday 9th February 2009
RIGHTING wrongs has been part of the The Northern Echo’s ethos since it was founded. And, in that respect, last week was quite satisfying.
My favourite quote of the week came from Rose Woodward, of the Kidney Cancer Support Network “I want to say a huge thank you to your paper,” she said. “You are the ones that gave the snowball the biggest push.”
The “snowball” we pushed was the postcode lottery over cancer drugs.
Our “End NHS Injustice” campaign has highlighted the tragedies and anomalies of the system, and Mrs Woodward was speaking after a drug called Sutent – routinely prescribed across Europe and in America – was finally approved across the NHS.
We’ll do our best to keep the snowball rolling.
TALKING of snowballs, last week’s winter weather reminded me of being snowed under on the newsdesk 17 years ago.
A heavy snowfall led to The Northern Echo Snow Sculpture Competition. The prize was a bottle of champagne and a sledge (we could splash out in those days) and the entries flooded in: a zoo-full of animals; a village of igloos; an army of snow people; even an ocean liner.
The winners were three PhD students from Durham – David Hoare, John French and Tricia Matthews – who created a magnificent snow elephant. But my fondest memory is the phone call I received from a little girl called Kirsty, telling me she’d made a snow giraffe.
“Brilliant! Where is it?” I asked, pen poised to take down the address.
“It’s in my back garden,” she replied, and promptly hung up.
DAVID Taylor-Gooby, Peterlee Labour councillor, emailed in response to last week’s column in which I lamented the state of the carpets at 10 Downing Street.
David attended a reception at Number 10 last summer and also noticed that the carpets were “dirty, at times threadbare, and even dangerous”.
“I mentioned it to the chief flunkey on the way out, commenting that my wife would not have tolerated them,” recalled David.
The explanation was that the carpets were very valuable, too fragile to be cleaned, and really ought to be in the Victoria and Albert.
A case of heritage ahead of health and safety by the sounds of it.
ALL of which brings me to last week’s kerfuffle over Tornado – the first steam loco to be built in this country for 50 years.
I admit to getting a bit steamed up when I heard National Express was to ban spectators from the platform of Darlington station when Tornado left on its maiden passenger service to London on Saturday.
Officials said it was a health and safety issue – the platform might be slippery.
“Silly buffers” we called them on our front page last Tuesday.
To be fair, they realised their mistake quickly and performed a U-turn – or U-Turnado as we called it the next day.
Another little wrong put right, prompting Alan Macnab, of Darlington, to come onto my blog to raise the possibility of the trackbed of the original Stockton and Darlington Railway being granted World Heritage Status.
“Imagine what could be achieved in terms of tourism and a boost to the local economy,” he wrote.
Imagine.
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