Happy Fearmonger Day, when the time comes to highlight the cloud lurking within the most silvery of linings:

But the figures are worrying. Although convictions for sexual offences against children are falling, the proportion of offences that relate to internet crimes against children are going up.

“It’s a problem that's simply not going away,” said Dr Quayle.

It takes an almost magical talent for sensationalism and journalistic chutzpah to turn a fall in child sex offences, and by implication an even greater fall in offences involving actual offline acts of abuse, into a scare story, and I agree that we all ought to be very worried. About the B.B.C.