An ex-journo colleague tells me hacks don’t like sterile working conditions. They hate the silence of the office and the fact that PRs collude in that silence by doing everything by email or Twitter.

Apparently, some PRs actually try to drive more conversations onto email. One journalist, I shall refer to him only as Pint of Guinness, outlined his biggest gripe with modern PRs. “After I’d spent two minutes explaining something to this girl, she asked me to type it all out in an email for her.”

PR: Hello. We’d like you to travel to a briefing. Don’t worry, we’ll pay your train or plane fare as our client wants to meet you face-to-face. We want to talk to you about how videoconferencing does away with the need for expensive travel, saves you time and money and…hello?? Oh…He's gone.

The opportunistic violence that we've seen on the streets of London over the past few days has no place in today's society and for those of us who are proud Londoners brings shame upon the nation's capital.

Ed Miliband’s had a good scandal hasn’t he? Despite the fact that he was the political advisor to Gordon Brown for 13 years, he’s emerged as some kind of guardian of high standards in public life in the last few days. Which is quite an achievement, given the number of News International social events he and Gordon Brown frequented.

People keep asking whether Stuart Downing is really worth £20 million. Who knows? Surely they’re missing the point anyway.

Any commodity is only worth whatever someone is prepared to pay for it. So, if someone is prepared to pay half a million quid for a studio flat in Penge, then it’s worth that much, no matter how unacceptable this is to the local property market expert who missed out on the commission.