OUR story on the county council investing its pension millions in tobacco shares while operating an anti-smoking policy brought a typically swift response from the authority’s leader, Keith Mitchell.

Go to his blog at krmcbe.co.uk/political_blog.htm if you want to read it.

We particularly enjoyed him likening the Oxford Mail and its journalists to harlots for daring to run a story which is clearly in the public interest.

He also posed what he feels is a relevant question: does Newsquest, the Oxford Mail’s parent company, also invest its pension funds in big tobacco?

The short answer to that is I haven’t got a clue, but I will try to find out. The answer may well be yes, but Mr Mitchell is comparing apples to pears to make his point.

After all, the county council pension fund is, ultimately, funded using taxpayer cash. Ours is not. But we’ll get Mr Mitchell an answer anyway. No doubt he can accuse us of being hypocrites. Better than being likened to harlots, I suppose!

”HOW often misused words generate misleading thoughts”, said the Victorian philosopher Herbert Spencer.

I couldn’t agree more. So it is that feedback from several readers this week has forced a rethink on our terminology when reporting the awful crime of child sexual abuse; in particular, our coverage of court cases involving the accessing and distribution of indecent images involving minors.

Common journalistic terms like child pornography, which we have used in the past, are not appropriate. Child abuse, or child sexual abuse is. Our thanks to those readers who took the trouble to raise this with us.

THE Mail newsroom receives thousands of emails, phone calls and letters (yes, people still write them) each week.

Many are great local stories. Some are not.

So to the person who emailed to ask us to ‘investigate’ after they ordered a pizza which was cold and the mum who complained that her child’s haircut was too expensive, we know you feel strongly about it, but that doesn’t make it a news story.