Horror to the left of us, horror to the right of us; no wonder some folk have tuned out of news bulletins.

Except of course that won’t make any of it go away.

It’s sad but true that nobody on the international stage gives much of a toss these days about what a UK Prime Minister says or thinks about a crisis, still less the leader of the principal opposition.

Just the same, their followers and voters DO care and while the carnage in the Middle East or Ukraine may not take top billing with the electorate when they can barely make ends meet, what leaders say and do still matters.

For what it’s worth I think the folk at the top should be seen to be thinking for themselves when, too often, it seems they wait to see what the line from the White House is, then toe it regardless.

It’s also depressing how quickly the news machine moves on.

One minute we’re watching bodies being wrenched from collapsed buildings as a result of an earthquake in Afghanistan then pulled from the rubble after Russian missiles hit apartment blocks in Ukraine and now endless footage of the devastation in Gaza and funerals in Israel.

Small wonder they talk about compassion fatigue! It’s not that most of us have stopped caring about human misery, least of all when it affects entirely innocent children, it’s just sometimes difficult to cope with the sheer volume of multiple catastrophes.

In which regard, one of the saddest bits of footage was two wee children reunited in hospital in Gaza after their home, and probably their parents, were lost to bombing.

Maybe the medics, overstretched as they are, will be able to patch up whatever ails them physically.

Yet you have to wonder what the psychological toll will be.

These wee ones have seen things no adult should have to witness, never mind kids who are scarcely more than tots whose world, quite literally, has crumbled around them.

They will certainly be mentally scarred for life.

Worse still they might grow up to think that the answer to terrorist violence is to become a terrorist.