WE can take it that media personality Janet Street-Porter did not enjoy her “staycation” this summer. She claims to have had a rotten experience all round, although I suspect we can also take it that Miss Street-Porter might be rather more demanding than your average holiday at home punter.

In one of her newspaper columns this week she railed against the UK tourism industry for its failure to find her a good dinner in Northumberland or a hot bath in Edinburgh. She even turned her bitter invective on the Prime Minister for staying at an expensive hotel in the Lake District.

Furthermore Miss Street-Porter painted a less than flattering picture of Cumbria as being something akin to a Siberian gulag. “Surrounding roads packed with traffic and the weather unrelentingly gloomy,” she said of the area where Gordon Brown and family took their summer hols.

You would think, as a former president of the Ramblers’ Association, this woman would be used to a drop of rain and be more aware of the positive aspects of the Lake District. She blamed Mr. Brown for staying at a £290 a night hotel. Hardly value for money, she moaned. And the PM’s holiday was “purely for political purposes and nothing more”.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Mr. Brown found himself at the centre of an inevitable dilemma in these belt-tightening financial times when choosing which form of holiday was going to attract the least opprobrium from media and public.

By holidaying abroad he would be seen as disloyal to Britain. By holidaying in the Lakes he courted the displeasure of Janet Street-Porter, though I don’t suppose he will be losing much sleep over her comments. Of course it was political. The PM had to be seen backing Britain.

“Having a fun holiday in the UK is so bloody difficult,” raged the toothy one, targeting surly service, over-priced transport, complicated on-line booking sites and hotels and eateries that make obtaining food after a certain hour a major challenge.

She is partly right. There is still some rotten service. Britain is expensive and the Basil Fawlty business model has not entirely left our hotels and guesthouses. But her comments are a slight on the tourism industry as a whole, which is unfair on places that have upgraded facilities and put customer care to the fore as many have done in this part of the world.

And I don’t suppose she was actually up in the Lakes when the Browns were here and yes, the traffic was bad, but the weather wasn’t as biblically depressing as Miss Street-Porter depicts.

A REAL TONIC

RATHER than lament a misspent holiday in Cumbria, I suspect Gordon Brown will have gone away feeling rather chuffed with himself. For once the PM got it right by going off and ostensibly leaving the country in the hands of Harriet, Peter and Alistair.

It’s a myth that the Prime Minister needs someone to stand in for him when he is only a phone call or an e-mail away in Bassenthwaite. For goodness sake, even in this savage, uncivilised part of the country where we still live in caves, we’ve got all the trappings of modern technology to stay in contact. A major incident and Mr. Brown would be back in Downing Street within a couple of hours.

He’s actually been rather smart for once. While he was plain sailing round Derwentwater potential leadership opponents have looked, in Harman’s case, foolish and, in pussycat Mandelson’s case, slimily sinister. Meanwhile we’ve all been holding our breath this week under Darling’s watch that no fresh financial or natural disaster would befall us.

Harriet alienated half the population at a stroke by saying men can’t be trusted to run anything, while I can’t believe the nation would ever trust Mandelson, a man drummed out of the Cabinet twice, whose ruthless ambition and vanity know no bounds. New Labour might not want Mr. Brown as leader, but the past fortnight has shown that the alternatives are too scary to contemplate. And while Parliament has been in recess, the Tories have hardly covered themselves in glory what with divisions over the NHS and that poor dear Alan Duncan subsisting on rations.

Gordon’s holiday in the Lakes, contrary to what sceptics and arch-cynic Janet Street-Porter may think, has been a real tonic. He should come more often.

A RUBBISH JOB

ROY, the chap who indefatigably collects town centre and roadside rubbish for the council round our way, would probably confirm that littering has got worse.

For such a never ending task, he remains ever cheerful. But more than 700,000 bags of litter are gathered from England’s roads each year and, according to Keep Britain Tidy, a large percentage is caused by adults dropping rubbish from their vehicles.

People may say it’s only a bit of litter, but by their careless actions offenders are showing disrespect for the rest of the population who do care about their surroundings not being turned into a dump.

Keep Britain Tidy wants to make owners responsible unless they provide details of culprits who chuck rubbish from their vehicles. Roads aren’t meant to be dumping grounds and the idea of a penalty point on the licence would be a more effective deterrent than the mere threat of small fine. I suspect Roy wouldn’t mind too much either, if it made his job a bit easier.

TEMPORARY ADVERTS

ON a different litter tack, it’s that time of year when event organisers in Cumbria are looking for every way to advertise. That includes a plethora of posters and signs at the side of the road.

I’ve nothing against this. What is annoying is that so many of these temporary notices are left up long after the event had been over. It’s just a pity they are not as assiduous in removing them as they are putting them up in the first place. Perhaps if event organisers were charged for the cost of their removal they might not leave them rotting in the rain,

A GOOD BAGDON

THE show season is in full swing, the last bank holiday of the summer looms, and event organisers are praying for good weather after the disastrous cancellations this time last year.

The first time I reported a country show was all of 46 years ago, but it remains etched in my memory. As the office junior, I was given orders to ensure I recorded the breed of the winning animals, their pedigree and other salient information the farming community might wish to read.

Thus I wrote that the best in show cow was a Good Bagdon. Well, that’s what I thought the exhibitor had told me when I asked about its breed.

Turned out he’d said it was a “reet good bagged ‘un”. In other words it had a fine udder. It was actually a Friesian.

Until I joined the Herald as a callow youth straight from school my knowledge of agricultural matters was limited. Not an auspicious start to my journalistic career. At least the next time I interviewed the winner of a sheep class I had learnt my lesson and didn’t report that it had been won by a New Clipton!!