In the five and a half years that I've been adding to this journal, there have, almost inevitably, been horrible things that have happened in the world. Some of them I have commented upon. Some I haven't.
Within the first few months, there were the killings at Dunblane. There was the Paddington rail crash. Here on Merseyside, passions are currently running high at the release of the two boys, Robert Thompson and John Venables, who eight years ago killed the toddler, James Bulger. I've written before about my distaste for the media's role in all of these. I've had another example banging around in my head for some weeks now.
Back in May, there was a dreadful tragedy in Jerusalem when, during a wedding reception held in ten storey building, the floor collapsed under the revellers sending them plummeting down among the falling concrete and masonry and twisted metal infrastructure. Some died. Many were injured. Most survived.
There was a video camera in the dance hall recording the joyous occasion. Someone gave the tape of the calamity to the media. It was quite surreal in a way that cinema violence, no matter how graphic, can never be. One minute there was a crowded dance floor. Then a blur of flailing limbs. Then a big hole in the middle of the floor.
And people standing round the hole in shock not knowing quite what to do. Running backwards and forwards. Without aim or energy.
And the sounds. The sounds of what you couldn't see.
I hadn't meant to watch it. It just happened in front of me and I was transfixed and appalled. I avoided watching any further coverage.
I am very glad that I am not so de-sensitised that I cannot see that it was wrong to screen those images and that there is no argument of public interest that can ever have justified their repeated broadcast.