Hello, I'm currently out of office.

An article I read recently said we're more relaxed and more productive after a good break.

So, I've gone to Barbados for a month for science.

Yours, Toby.

Take your holiday as seriously as British Airways Holidays Take Your Holiday.

Atoll protected.

It's three minutes after ten and we've got some very serious things to discuss today.

I'm going to begin with something that, thankfully, still made

Thomas's headlines there, still made Thomas's news bulletin. But I want to pause for a moment

to reflect upon the way in which we become inured to tragedy, or even to horror, the way in which

I think as a consequence of evolutionary biology,

we as a species become less shocked by the same thing, the more we are exposed to it.

I'm not expecting any prizes for this observation, but sometimes I find it helpful to have

things pointed out to me, and I wonder whether you are the same.

Imagine if you were... I don't know when you were born, obviously, but let's suppose that you were growing up in the 70s or the 80s or the 90s.

And your mom had the news on in the car, or your dad was listening to the news on the way to school.

And you heard in the news, a child in this country that a baby had died in the English Channel last night. A baby crossing

the English Channel in a small boat had died. A baby had died. How would those words have reached

you? And I think it wouldn't

have been that different as an adult the first time you heard. A baby has died in the English Channel.

If, look, if it was a baby on a yacht being crude, and I don't mean a multi-million pound yacht,

although obviously if it was a multi-million pound yacht the story would be even bigger but if if a

...