With Glenn enjoying a post-10k run holiday, it falls to me to keep the blog ticking over so I thought I'd tackle a classic newspaper problem.
Whenever journalists meet senior police officers, the term "fear of crime" is sure to come up at least every ten seconds.
The police worry that we (the media) convince people danger is around every corner and no-one is safe. While many people may feel like this, it is a very difficult thing for us to get right. "Teenager not stabbed" seems an unlikely headline for any publication.
A town as big as Crawley will almost certainly have at least one newsworthy crime each week so you could easily form the view crime is out of control.
I can't honesty say whether this is the reality in rough parts of London, although the national press is keen on teenage knife crime at present.
However, as keen readers will have noticed, we reported this week that knife crime is down in Crawley, regardless of what is going on elsewhere. In fact, there have been no fatal stabbings, or indeed murders of any kind, since I joined the News a year ago.
All we can do is report what goes on and hope people are sensible enough not to get carried away.
And in case you were wondering, our fearless leader didn't go to the Spurs game but he will get plenty of stick when he gets back. I look forward to his excuses...
