I had lunch today with Sir Christopher Meyer, Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission...

Sir Christopher and his colleagues had invited a small group to lunch including Chris Green, Managing Director of Yorkshire Post Newspapers, Peter Charlton, Editor of the Yorkshire Post and Paul Napier, Editor of the Yorkshire Evening Post. We talked about social responsibility and moral purpose and how we should all work in the best interest of the city.

I returned to find a copy of the Yorkshire Evening Post on my desk open at the page whose headline was 'Could do better!' the second section of the Post's five day review of 'Seven Years of Education Leeds'. Interestingly, we could all do better and it would certainly help if the Post bothered to get it's facts right! I was reminded once again of that Theodore Roosevelt quote "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

Chris