The nub of the argument is that Britain's current landed estates are nothing more than an unfair historical accident and that very few (if any) of our richest landed families have done anything which in John's and David's eyes now merits their vast wealth. The article ends by asserting that "before you say it's a crazy and can't happen, please note that most other countries have had land revolutions at some point. The enduring feudal legacy of British land ownership needs to be tackled for the benefit of wider society". So, no doubt with a stirring rendition of la Marseillaise as an accompaniment, I think we are all supposed to knock on the door of Sir Euan Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe (its local connections mean that the Calthorpe Estate is a particular target) and ask him to hand over the keys to all the loot.

I hope that I'm not the only person who thinks this is an idea that is at best a wee bit daft and at worst downright dangerous. Here's three (I trust pretty obvious) reasons why:

(1) Everyone involved owns the land in accordance with the laws of this country. How they inherited the land may seem unfair and arbitrary, but it isn't illegal or obviously wrong. If you are going to redistribute land, when was it ever 'fair' (whatever that means) that some people had property and others didn't?

(2) If you're going down John's and David's route, there doesn't seem to be any intellectual justification for stopping at the hundred richest families. Why not the richest thousand? Or the richest million? Or the land of anyone who earns enough to be a higher rate taxpayer? Or the land owned by anyone who pays tax at all? Heck, if we're going to have a revolution, why not have a real cracker where we confiscate everyone's land and run the country along proper communist lines?

(3) Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but the whole idea has the hint of snobbery (or inverse snobbery at least) about it. Picking on posh and rich landowners is no more (or less) arbitrary than deciding to confiscate the land owned by former commercial lawyers called John who run SMEs, business academics in the Coventry area called David or Dundee United-supporting lawyers called Stuart all in the name of the greater economic good.

Dr Linus Pauling, the only person to have won the Nobel Prizes for Chemistry and Peace, once said that "The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away." I for one can't help but think that John's and David's idea is definitely one to be thrown as far away as possible.

Step forward Mr Kolodziej, a recent law graduate, who worked out how the trip could have been done, videoed himself doing it and sent the tape plus a request for $1million to Mr Mason. Mr Mason refused to pay and Mr Kolodziej has sued him for the money.

In UK law at least, Mr Mason could well be advised to get his cheque book out. One of the most famous of all legal cases involved an advert issued by the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company, who manufactured a carbolic smoke ball as a cure for flu and other illnesses in the 1890s. They were confident of the success of their product and placed a number of adverts offering a £100 reward (a lot of money in late Victorian England) "to any person who contracts the increasing epidemic influenza colds, or any disease caused by taking cold, after having used the ball three times daily for two weeks, according to the printed directions supplied with each ball." A Mrs Louisa Elizabeth Carlill saw the advert, bought one of the balls and used it three times daily for nearly two months. She then caught the flu and successfully sued for the money, with the court accepting the principle that a person can make an offer to the whole world which is capable of being accepted.

A similar principle may well apply in the USA, although each case depends on its own unique facts. In Carlill, a key issue was the fact that the offer of £100 was backed up by £1000 being placed on deposit at a bank - it was therefore to be taken seriously and wasn't an advertising gimmick. More recently, Mr John Leonard failed in his attempts to redeem 7,000,000 Pepsi points for a Harrier jump jet, on the basis that the Pepsi TV advert on which Mr Leonard relied was cleary intended to be a joke. Mr Kolodziej's chances of success may well depend on his persuading the court that Mr Mason was being serious when he issued his challenge.

In the meantime, if you want to avoid being involved in a legal cause célèbre, be careful what you 'offer' to the world at large.

In 1999, when Mr Jones was the successful manager of Southampton, he was falsely accused of child abuse from a time when (in the mid 1980s) he worked part-time in a Merseyside school for children with educational and behavioural difficulties. The allegations were entirely made up - his (still anonymous) accusers admitted as much - by a group of former pupils at the school who were themselves in prison at the time. Despite there being no evidence against Mr Jones whatsoever, the allegations were made public, he lost his job and spent £400,000 clearing his name. His family went through goodness-only-knows-what trauma (including a visit from his local social services department to see whether his four children should be taken into care) and Mr Jones to this day endures deeply unpleasant chants from opposing 'fans' at grounds across the country. Tragically, Mr Jones believes that the news of his arrest caused his previously healthy father to fall into a coma from which he never recovered - something Mr Jones blames on the police leaking the story to the press.

And yet he was innocent. In addition to his accusers admitting that they concocted the whole thing (Mr Jones was one of a number of people against whom allegations were made, some of whom were wrongly imprisoned), one alleged at the trial that the police helped him to plug holes in his evidence.

At the end of the trial, the judge made a telling comment: "No doubt there will be people who are going to think there is no smoke without fire. I can do nothing about that except to say such an attitude would be wrong. No wrong-doing whatsoever on your part has been established."

If any good can come from this unpleasant tale, I would hope that society stops attributing guilt to people who have been accused (whether rightly or wrongly) but not found guilty of a crime. Lawyers, especially those involved in criminal defence work, are often pilloried for defending people who society assumes must be guilty. And yet, as Mr Jones's own experience shows, you only have to be falsely accused of a crime to appreciate the importance of the presumption of innocence in our legal system. As he himself admits "You know, that is a phrase that I used to use a lot. 'No smoke without a fire'. It just seems obvious that if there is a controversy surrounding someone, then something has to be wrong. But that is not a phrase you would hear me saying now. I have learnt the hard way that it is possible to be accused without there being a shred of truth". To help make the point, Mr Jones's book is simply called "No Smoke, No Fire".

That's not to say that those found guilty of crimes should not be punished in accordance with the law - rather, a serious plea that we avoid reaching our own judgment on people until the judicial process has run its course. I hope you agree.

Contrast this lack of fanfare regarding Lord Collins's appointment with the coverage in the American media of President Obama's decision to nominate Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court. Having spent five or so minutes on this web page of one of the main US broadcasters (picked entirely by random, other American news networks are available) and, in addition to Ms Sotomayor's academic and legal background, I know that she was born and raised in the South Bronx in a tough housing project, is inspired by her nurse mother (who raised her and her brother, now a doctor, single-handedly after their father's premature death) and her favourite baseball team is the New York Yankees.

I also know that her background is mainly in commercial law (as is Lord Collins's), which commentators consider may mean that the Republicans will struggle to challenge her appointment, although there is concern as to whether a recent ruling on affirmative action (which is itself about to be considered by the Supreme Court) is correct. There is also much debate as to whether the possible appointment of the first Hispanic to the Court is a great day in American history, or whether the Democrats making this point are conveniently forgetting when they blocked an earlier (and Republican) Hispanic appointee. The identity of senior judges matters in the US in a way that just doesn't happen on this side of the Pond.

I have always found the contrast between how the UK and the US appoint its judiciary fascinating. I know it's fashionable for Brits to knock America as being litigation crazy but, behind every headline about people suing McDonald's because they didn't realise that the coffee was hot (although this story would appear itself to be an urban myth), there is one of the most advanced and democratic legal systems in the world. We don't have to copy America, but I can't help but wish that we took a bit more interest in who is appointed to judge over our lives.

This afternoon, Prince Charles is speaking to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA to its chums) on the occasion of its 175th anniversary. The speech is almost 25-years-to-the-day since, when addressing RIBA's 150th anniversary, the prince famously described the proposed extension to the National Gallery as "a monstrous carbuncle"; in doing so, both scuppering the proposed scheme and incurring the seemingly never-ending-wrath of a chunk of Britain's architectural elite.

25 years later, and history is repeating itself. The latest controversy relates to the design for the proposed development of the Chelsea Barracks site in London by (Lord) Richard Rogers, the incredibly eminent and distinguished architect behind the Pompidou Centre, Lloyds' of London and the Millennium Dome amongst other buildings. The Prince disagrees with the steel and glass design proposed and has commissioned a separate architect, Quinlan Terry, to produce a design more "in keeping" with the area - including the neighbouring Royal Hospital designed by Sir Christopher Wren.

Within the construction industry, the debate has been wide-ranging (with a leading trade magazine conducting a poll - which Prince Charles's preferred design won) but has increasingly become vitriolic, with leading architects publishing a letter of objection and urging a boycott of the speech. The main criticism is that the success or failure of the Rogers' design will depend on the normal planning laws of the land - which should apply equally to all buildings - and that it is unfair for Prince Charles to use his high profile to scupper the plan.

On the other hand, the degree of vitriol seems harsh and unfair. The built environment affects us all - and I would hope that all architects (distinguished and otherwise) would want to design buildings in which we all want to work, rest and play. I find the suggestion that a small intellectual elite should impose their views on us without comment or criticism very hard to take. Perhaps this is an example of the architecture profession protesting too much?

So please stand and cheer whilst the UK Higher Education sector steps forward and takes a well-deserved bow. Pride of place goes to the ability of our universities to attract overseas students to live and study in the UK. According to the Higher Education Policy Institute's Director, Bahram Bekhradnia, international students (who are treated as an export for these purposes) contribute more to the UK economy than exports in the drinks, textiles, clothing, publishing or media sectors. In fees and living expenses, the more than 300,000 overseas students living and working in the UK between 2006 and 2007 spent over £4 billion. HEPI calculates that this is a net contribution to the UK's GDP of more than £2 billion. By any measure, that's a lot of money, and would merit that description in boom times as well as bust.

It's also good news for the West Midlands with a number of our leading institutions - Aston University in particular (overseas students paid Aston over £14m in fees, 16% of its total fee income, in 2006-2007 and will have invested much more into the local economy) - proving to be very attractive to overseas students.

So, despite all of the press stories about exams (both at school and university) getting easier, the UK education system is still widely admired for the quality of its teaching and research.

However, Mr Bekhradnia warns that there are a couple of clouds on the horizon. First, the fact that, although popular, a UK higher education is expensive. In 2006, Australian Education International calculated that the average total cost of a UK BA or BSc was $93,382; about $10,000 more than an American public university ($82,986) but significantly less than a private American college ($161,257). This makes Britain the second most expensive destination for international students.

He also warns that a number of those countries who export the most students - India and China in particular - are investing heavily in improving their home-grown higher education provision, suggesting that the potential number of international students will shrink over time. This presents a different set of challenges for UK Higher Education; not least in relation to academic collaboration and the provision of the UK degrees abroad. The good news is that our universities' track record of success suggests that they are more than ready to meet the challenge.

Now why didn't Mr Darling mention this in the budget?

For those who don't know it, St Andrews is a charming, quirky and characterful place in an obscure corner of Fife comprising lots of golf courses, three beaches (including, famously, the one at the start of Chariots of Fire), more history than you can shake a stick at and a wonderful university where, too many years ago than I care to remember, I managed to persuade the examiners at the Department of Mediaeval History to award me a degree.

It's a decision of Dr Louise Richardson, the university's new principal - or rather the reaction to it - that has got me worked up. The furore centres around a student society - the Kate Kennedy Club - which exists to maintain the traditions of the university and the town, uphold and improve relations between the two and raise money for local charities. It is perhaps best known for its colourful and popular annual procession of famous people from the university's past. It also attracts controversy because it refuses to allow female members

Until recently, the Club had the official support of the university. Dr Richardson has decided to withdraw that support because the University can no longer endorse a club "from which so many of our students are excluded at birth". To quote further from the announcement of the decision: "The official endorsement of any club or society which excludes people because of their gender or race would be completely at odds with the values of this university, and our commitment to foster an open and inclusive international community of scholars and students in St Andrews."

I should stress that I wholeheartedly agree with the decision, not least for the reasons given in the previous paragraph. However, not everyone agrees. Some of the comments on this web-page are quite strident and there are even rival Facebook groups (supportive of the decision; and against).

All of which has led me to this blog. You may think it a bit odd that I still care so passionately about what goes on at my alma mater, but St Andrews is that sort of place. I also accept that in the grand scheme of global problems "University principal in equality furore" may not be front page news, but if you've read this far I hope I've tweaked your curiosity.

What genuinely surprises me is that in the 21st century (or in the 20th for that matter) there is a groundswell of opinion that discrimination on the grounds of gender is justifiable and that decisions taken in favour of equality are somehow political correctness gone mad. What do people think?

The allegation, from the Information Commissioner's Office - the government quango with the responsibility for ensuring that there is both free access to public information and adequate protection for our personal data - is that, for the past 15 years or so, a private investigator called Ian Kerr ran a business in Droitwich (with the rather anodyne name, the Consulting Association) which charged over 40 named construction companies £3,000 a year to provide (illegally-held) information on 3,213 construction workers. According to press stories, some of the 'information' was incredibly prejudicial so far as the individuals named on the database are concerned, with comments including "communist party", "ex-shop steward, definite problems, no go", "do not touch", "orchestrated strike action" and "lazy and a trouble-stirrer".

Leaving aside the legal difficulties facing Mr Kerr and the individual companies for the breaches of the Data Protection Act (the Commissioner has a history of levying fines of up to £5,000 - although its power is notionally unlimited - and individuals who can show they lost out on jobs as a result of the databse may have a claim in damages for loss of income), this is appalling PR at a time when the construction industry doesn't need it. One of the main concerns appears to be that the database was used to blacklist employees with a history of trades union activity, which, if true, doesn't speak well for the employment practices of the companies named by the Commissioner. And these included household names such as Balfour Beatty, Sir Robert McAlpine, Laing O'Rourke and Costain.

A number of companies have issued denials and Unite are threatening legal action. In the meantime, the Commissioner continues its investigations. All in all, a problem which the industry could do without.

So, who has upset my otherwise even equilibrium? The perhaps-a-bit worryingly-for-my-sanity-but-nonetheless-true answer is three posters to our own business blog and a food reviewer from the Times. First up we have Andrew, Graham and Alister, all of whom responded to Muhammad M-Hasan's recent blog encouraging Birmingham's business community to stand up and be counted when it comes to Birmingham Airport's plans for a new runway. Next we have Alex Renton, who was sent to Brum on behalf of the national paper following the announcement that Simpson's, Turners (given the recent brouhaha over Brum and its possessives, I should stress that the lack of apostrophe is the restaurant's decision and not mine) and Purnell's had all been awarded a Michelin star.

What's got me cross? It was probably the collective effect of reading them one after the other that got me narked, but all do seem to make unjustified criticisms of our fair city. Andrew suggests that the many (and rival) business organisations in the city are too busy feathering their own nests to respond as one. Graham (who has unfortunately been made redundant) laments the lack of any business community, suggesting that the only people left in Brum are lawyers and accountants who simply don't care. Alister, a lawyer from Manchester who has also unfortunately lost his job, believes that Manchester (both in terms of its business community's ability to compete with London and the quality of its airport) leaves Brum trailing in its wake.

Which brings me onto Alex Renton. In what is on the whole a positive piece on Brum's foodie revolution, he still manages a somewhat stereotyped comparison of the "neither posh nor charming...poem in concrete" that is our city with the supposed food nirvana that is Scotland's capital. He also produces the truly bizarre comment that "coming from Edinburgh like me, you feel pretty alien in the Bull Ring" and suggests that locally-sourced food is an anathema to Birmingham diets.

So let's knock these criticisms on the head, starting with Andrew. Since graduating, I have lived and worked in three cities: London, Cambridge and Brum and, whilst I accept Andrew's point that Brum appears to have a number of lobbying agencies, they strike me as far more vocal, persuasive and successful than anything my two previous homes had to offer. I would give a special mention to both Birmingham Future and Birmingham Forward as impressive voices for our city. As for Graham, the suggestion that lawyers and accountants don't care about the city is bonkers. We live and work here too; as do our clients. And as Alister's own experience testifies, professionals in the city aren't exactly immune from the economic downturn.

Which brings me onto the negative comparison with Manchester. I've never flown from Manchester Airport, so can't comment (save to say that since moving to Birmingham I've never needed to). However, the suggestion that Manchester or London are somehow protected from the recession in a way that Brum isn't seems at odds with the daily news reports. And if you are just looking at legal jobs, then one trade magazine reckons that over 2,100 jobs have been lost, with job cuts happening in Manchester and the Big Smoke as well as in Brum and elsewhere.

Finally to Edinburgh, which remains one of my favourite cities in the world and whose centre is undoubtedly an architectural joy. But it's not all perfect - Irvine Welsh wasn't making things up when he set Trainspotting there and Ian Rankin didn't get all of those gloomy ideas for Inspector Rebus novels because life in Edinburgh is uniformly beer and skittles. Edinburgh also has its fair share of ugly concrete. As for the comment that people from Edinburgh can't cope with the Bull Ring...this invites a number of responses from the (admittedly catty) suggestion that people from small provincial cities (which is what Scotland's capital is compared to Brum) shouldn't throw stones (no doubt, locally-sourced stones in Mr Renton's case) when they come to a proper conurbation to the more prosaic observation that had he looked about a bit he would have discovered the market and all of its local produce.

So come on folks. Brum's not perfect (where, apart from the front row of a Bruce Springsteen concert, is?); but if you're going to have a go at our city, at least have an accurate one.

The scary gang includes half the current leaders of the G8 group of countries - Presidents Obama and Sarkozy and Prime Ministers Berlusconi and Medvedev - as well as 2 of the last 5 British prime ministers (Thatcher and Blair) and 3 of the 7 American presidents before Mr Obama (Nixon, Ford and Clinton). And if you're from north of the 49th parallel, you deserve a special mention because Prime Minister Harper is the first Canadian leader not to be part of the club for nearly 40 years.

The connection? They're all lawyers. That's right; not economists (Prime Minister Harper again) or physicists (Germany's Chancellor Merkel) or businessmen (Japan's Prime Minister Aso) or academics-turned-journalists (our own Prime Minister) - but lawyers (or lawyer-turned-media-mogul-and-football-club-owner in Mr Berlusconi's case). This is the profession that's the butt of all of those "How do you tell when a lawyer's lying? They're moving their lips" jokes and which appears to engender the same sense of public warmth and affection (I accept I may be using these phrases out of context) as tax inspectors, estate agents and, in current times at least, bankers.

And yet the leading economic powers in the world, and many others, have a lengthy track record of electing lawyers as their leaders - with the 44th president of the United States being the latest example of that trend. All of which begs the question: why?

Apart from some flippant attempt at suggesting that there may be a link between the general unpopularity of both, I must admit that I'm not sure that I have an answer. I don't think that being a lawyer makes you any more or less qualified to run a country than doing something else; and I don't think lawyers are any more or less likely to be interested in politics than anyone else. But I do find the question intriguing. I also feel a bit sorry for the Canadians - 40 years of being run by lawyers seems a longer punishment than most judicial systems dish out for murder.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was 60 years young on December 10th last year (in fact, Human Rights Day is 'celebrated' on the same day every year) but, given the general lack of press coverage, I think all but the most ardent of news junkies can be excused for missing the big event.

The idealist in me can't help but be saddened by this. The Declaration is an incredible document - in the words of the United Nation's third Secretary-General, U Thant, which I have borrowed for the title of this blog, a "great and inspiring instrument". It is well written, remarkably free of the pomposity that is all too common in legal documents and, most importantly of all, encapsulates some incredibly important rights. It also remains hugely relevant to life today. After all, it's not as if we live in a world that is free from human rights abuse. Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth. If the daily news isn't depressing enough, I would suggest Human Rights Watch's website for a comprehensive but sombre summary of mankind's current inhumanity to itself.

But the Declaration is far from perfect. Perhaps its biggest weakness is that, of itself, it doesn't have any significant legal effect. It isn't a convention or treaty which creates, or obliges its signatories to pass laws creating, legal rights and obligations. It's more of a statement of the signatories' intent; an intention that critics say has been followed up more by breach than observance in many cases.

In the UK, the Declaration was the original precursor to the European Convention on Human Rights and the relatively recent Human Rights Act. This act, which finally made express provision for human rights in UK law, has been particularly controversial, with various sensational stories about the law respecting the supposed rights of wrongdoers and criminals over and above innocent victims.

And these concerns do raise an important point about human rights. If they are to be protected, then the rights must apply equally to everyone, irrespective of whether or not that person would respect your rights in return. One of the many criticisms (and the Christmas Day blog from the Post's own Tom Scotney on this issue certainly packs a punch) which can be levelled at Channel 4 for its decision to allow Iran's President Ahmadinejad to deliver the alternative Christmas message was that this was allowing the president a platform which was in marked contrast to Iran's own record on human rights; in particular, its recent treatment of 2003 Nobel Peace Laureate, Dr Shirin Ebadi.

The question for us as a society is whether this sort of tension is worth the freedoms which underpin it. I firmly believe that it is. I hope you agree.

Perhaps disappointingly, this joke may stem from something of an urban myth - we may be more afraid of dying after all. However, even if that is the case, it's no exaggeration to suggest that speaking in public can cause lots of us considerable angst.

But the recent US election may offer hope to glossophobes everywhere. The candidates' ability at public speaking seemed to be a daily issue of analysis and debate. And, irrespective of your views on the underlying politics, there were some fantastic examples of oratory. Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican Convention was at times electrifying; and supporters of John McCain may well wish that all of his campaign speeches were as graceful and dignified as the one he gave when conceding defeat.

However, it is inevitable that this blog will mention the man who will become the 44th President. Some of Barack Obama's speeches - his speech on race following the furore caused by Rev Wright and the speech in Chicago on election night both spring to mind - were oratory of the very highest order.

And here's the good news for the public-speaking-phobics amongst you - the President Elect apparently wasn't born with the gift of the gab. Perhaps the most interesting revelation (and certainly the most relevant to the message I'm trying to get across) of the
Panorama programme, Obama and the Pitbull: An American Tale , which aired just before the election, was a quotation from Barack Obama's agent from his earliest days in Chicago politics. According to the agent, the first time Obama spoke he sounded (with apologies to legal academics everywhere) "like the dull law professor he was". The next time, "he could have given Martin Luther King oratory lessons". The web abounds with references to the next President's oratorical brilliance, but I think we can all take comfort from the fact that it's a skill that anyone can learn.

Back in Blighty, we have an example of an outstanding orator who had to work incredibly hard to master his art. Winston Churchill was undoubtedly a brilliant speaker, but he honed, edited and rehearsed even his apparently most-off-the-cuff remarks. My favourite bit of Schott's Original Miscellany , one of the best trivia books I have ever read, is the section on Churchill and Rhetoric. In a page and a half, you get the posh phrase to describe the key rhetorical devices which might help your public speaking (antimetabole anyone?), a description of what it means and then an example of Churchill using it.

Does anyone fancy Speakers' Corner?

If I'm honest, until about a month ago, I was probably guilty as charged. Since then, I'm no longer in the taking-things-for-granted-crowd. My much-maligned better half, whose many virtues I may have occasionally misrepresented in these blogs, spent a significant chunk of November being expertly looked after by the brilliant staff both at our local surgery and Birmingham Women's Hospital and, albeit a bit earlier than planned, we are now the proud parents of the very vocal Baby Pemble. The doting dad in me would love to report that the wee one bops along approvingly as Bruce Springsteen croons Born to Run on the stereo, but if I'm honest it's probably just wind.

Anyway, I digress: Her Ladyship spent over a fortnight being examined, scanned, injected and genuinely looked after by a veritable team of midwives, doctors and carers. Pemble Junior had a week or so of the same treatment. I can't help but feel fortunate to benefit from what is still free (at the point of delivery) healthcare.

By way of comparison, I hate to think what similar care would have cost in a country like America where you would have to pay - but a quick search on hospitals in New York State suggests that the fees could easily have exceeded $40,000. And that's a country where over 15% of the population don't carry the insurance most consider necessary to meet their medical costs.

I know that the NHS is far from perfect, but it seems a damn site better than having no care at all or a healthcare system that excludes a significant chunk of its population. The Pemble family of Birmingham certainly have reason to be grateful.

Here's why: trick or treat involves kids demanding something (it tends to be money, chocolate or both round my neck of the woods) from their neighbours. If you don't provide the treat, then a "trick" might be played on you. It's the trick, or the threat of it, which might result in a crime or crimes being committed.

And the risk applies to kids and parents alike. Children over the age of 10 can be guilty of crimes (between 10 and 14, they have to know what they are doing was illegal); and parents or guardians (indeed anyone) can be guilty of aiding, abetting or inciting a crime if, for example, they encourage or persuade someone to commit a crime (even where none is committed). So here are three possible crimes to get you thinking:

Deliberately trick or treating a home or family who you know dislike Halloween (perhaps on religious grounds) could constitute harassment and a possible 6 month jail sentence.

Destroying or damaging someone else's property (admittedly a particularly nasty trick) can amount to criminal damage. In very serious cases - a really, really, nasty trick if you like - you can face imprisonment of up to 10 years, although 3 months and/or a fine of up to £2,500 is more common.

Heck - and I must admit to having missed this lecture at college - "wilfully and wantonly" disturbing someone by ringing their doorbell "without lawful excuse" is also a crime punishable by a fine. So don't ring the door of someone you know doesn't want to play ball.

And if you think that's all a bit extreme, the mind boggles at the possible offences when kids try to raise money for a Guy, bonfire and some fireworks...but that's another story.

A happy Halloween to one and all.

The comments on the article make interesting reading, with a number of disgruntled Mancunians raising strong objections and a number of other people suggesting that this is just another example of a London-centric journo patronising the provinces.

I will leave it to Manchester to defend its own honour - my main point is to disagree with those Brummies who feel patronised. Although I can understand where they are coming from, I think the article is good news. What's wrong with a (admittedly London-based) high-profile journalist who hasn't been to our city in ages forming a great impression of the place and telling the rest of the country about it?

Ever since I've moved here, I have received "jokey" comments from friends and family about Brum. And let's face it, if your main impressions of the city are formed by the views from either Spaghetti Junction or New Street Station, you're unlikely to have a positive opinion. I would suggest that the challenge for our civic leaders is to ensure that, on his next visit, Mr Parris can't help but comment even more favourably. At least he didn't compare us (in contrast to Manchester) to a "celestial public lavatory" from which I can only assume that he didn't park his car in one of our less than salubrious city centre car parks.