SHORTLY after Barack Obama was elected as US President, I posed a simple question: when would we look back on those days of joy and euphoria and ask ourselves when it all went wrong?

Well, the answer, judging by the results of this week’s Massachusetts senatorial election, would appear to be round about now.

A year ago, Obama was a symbol of hope and reconciliation to millions of people. He also came across as an engaging and charismatic individual. I still think he is and that he has immense potential to do good in the US and the world.

But he is also a working politician. Like all politicians he has learned that translating vision into legislative and economic reality does not come easy. Most of all he has found out that politics often revolves around compromise.

Many of his natural supporters feel that Obama has diluted his plans for the economy and healthcare and shown weakness. This, of course, has not stopped his opponents branding him a dangerous radical. Some of their comments, which effectively brand him an impostor, make me wonder if they’ve watched too many episodes of The X Files.

I have no doubt that the next 12 months will bring more disappointments and probably more compromises – they are never in short supply in his business. But his enemies and friends should give Obama a chance. I suspect that one day history will judge him less harshly than they do.

JUDGING by some of the reaction that followed the Manchester derby match this week, you could have been forgiven for thinking you had witnessed the fall of the Roman Empire, not a football match.

Talk of shifts in the balance of power, ends of eras and so on show that common sense goes out of the window as soon as the kickoff whistle blows. It’s still a game, remember.

As so often, the real drama is off the pitch, however; in the seemingly endless flow of cash that Sheikh Mansour guarantees City and the apparently bottomless pit of debt that United’s association with the Glazers seems to have landed them in.

There are lots of theories about what finally sent the Romans to the wall. Just about everything from Christianity to cold weather affecting the harvests has been blamed.

Some think that the culprits were the people at the top, a small, super-rich elite who lived high on the hog, spent money like water and neglected the people at the bottom of the pile who tilled the fields, manned the armies and paid the bills that made their opulent existences possible.

Maybe there’s a lesson in that for today’s soccer Caesars.

IKNOW this is a bit of a stereotype, but car salesmen don’t have a particularly good reputation do they?

In the fight for our trust and affection they might beat politicians easily enough, but they would be lucky to scrape a draw with estate agents and journalists.

So credit where it’s due and well done to 13 dealers in Middlesbrough who this week signed up to the council’s new Green Car Scheme aimed at raising consumer awareness of exhaust emissions.

Cars remain the main source of pollution in urban areas. It is up to us all to reduce their impact on the environment, so it is good to see the trade taking this attitude.