I ve got a new hero, or heroine to be precise. Ruth Ball is not local, but Fenland s mums would do well to follow her example, even if her actions did land her in a spot of bother with the law. Her crime? She refused to cave in to her four-year-old daught

I've got a new hero, or heroine to be precise. Ruth Ball is not local, but Fenland's mums would do well to follow her example, even if her actions did land her in a spot of bother with the law.

Her crime? She refused to cave in to her four-year-old daughter's tantrum and adopted firm but sensible measures to discipline her.

But a busybody, who should have had better things to do, reported her to the police. And a police officer, who most definitely had better things to do, appeared on her doorstep next day to warn her against shouting at her daughter and shutting her in the car.

It all happened in Dunstable, after Mrs Ball's daughter Liegha launched into screaming pester-power mode after being refused some sweets.

Mrs Ball told her daughter quite forcibly to be quiet. When she continued to scream she picked her up and put her in the car to calm down.

She stood only a few feet away for a few minutes before getting into the car to drive home.

From what I've seen at our supermarket checkouts, with frustrated parents consistently giving in to demands from unruly children, it is clear there are many who should take heed of Mrs Ball's good old-fashioned parenting.

Bear in mind that her daughter may grow up instinctively knowing right from wrong.

n I do seem to have got up the noses of a few members of the motorbike fraternity with my 'Think Bike' remarks in this column two weeks ago.

Readers will have seen the letters in last week's paper. There are more this week, and there have been e-mails far too abusive (and illiterate) to be worthy of consideration.

As for suggesting I have never been on a motorcycle, I must be one of the very few people who has taken part in a car rally as a motorcycle pillion passenger.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that motorcyclists are any worse than car drivers, but the rather exaggerated reaction from some of them suggests I may have tweaked a nerve.

I still wonder, though, about the motivation of the biker in black leathers who roared off from the traffic lights in Churchill Road, Wisbech, a few months ago and performed a neat wheelie as he sped along the carriageway, leaving a clutch of baffled motorists in his wake.