Hoard appeal

Glad to see that the campaign to keep the Staffordshire hoard in the Midlands is gathering pace - it would be sad if it was allowed to go abroad, as has been suggested in the last few days.

Not sure that they do the cause any good by enlisting posturing popinjay/TV historian David Starkey as their mouthpiece, though. He says: "It transforms the history of the Midlands from some kind of obscure Brummie slum into the centre of England - but we're just at the very, very beginning."

Yes, that's right, because before this, we had no idea that civilisation had even reached the Midlands in the early Anglo-Saxon period.