Question will not go away
Long gone are the days when a politician's private and personal business remained free from public scrutiny.
Just over a century ago, William Gladstone, seen by some as our greatest Prime Minister, used to invite prostitutes into No 10 Downing Street.
Those in the know scratched their heads and let him get on with it. But most people didn't know. These days it would be a resignation issue, though most experts reckon Gladstone did nothing more than lecture the ladies on the error of their ways.
There are some who feel the pendulum has swung too far from those times. Politicians find their every movement tracked by cameras and their every action doubted. Senior ministers have been badgered on the beach by tabloid reporters insisting they go home to tackle this or that crisis.
It isn't altogether fair. But then politics isn't an altogether fair business, and those who expect otherwise are at liberty to get out of the kitchen.
The adoption by South Shields MP David Miliband and his wife Louise of an American baby is a case where legitimate public curiosity runs hard up against the new parents' equally legitimate demand for privacy.
The key question is the one we pose on today's front page: Why adopt an American child?
Journal columnist and TV agony aunt Denise Robertson remarks: "I just cannot see why he would do that. He is of an age where he could easily adopt a child here."
Mr and Mrs Miliband have chosen not to answer the question - and that, of course, is their right. But it will not stop people posing it as often as they like until they get an answer.
It may be that at some stage, perhaps in four or five years or so as Mr Miliband prepares to take up one of the great offices of state - or even the greatest of those offices - that he finds the question to be rather a nuisance.
It may well prove better to be totally full and frank now. Nobody could criticise him for that.
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Who can begrudge our North heroes?
They've long been criticised for being handed out willy-nilly to famous folk who've done something special on just one occasion, but here in the North-East the New Year honours mean far more than that.
Yes, nationally it can be nonsensical: Kelly Holmes becomes a dame for winning a couple of races - after years of failure - whilst veteran comic actor Eric Sykes only receives a CBE for entertaining audiences of all ages since Adam was a lad.
But no-one can begrudge our local heroes for their gongs.
Mary Macdonald, headteacher of Riverdale Primary in North Shields picks up a damehood. She's now the first lady of the Meadow Well and is an example to all of what good can be achieved and how what was a rundown area should not be written off just because it's not trendy.
Then we've Sheila Campbell from Ponteland, a servant of the community for many years, not least through her work on Ponteland Parish and Castle Morpeth Borough councils.
And who can forget Marion Wilson and her years of service to Defra as a typist in Alnwick?
All these and many more, still unsung, deserve our thanks for everything they have done to make the lives of young and old much more worthwhile. Who can begrudge them a day at the Palace?
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