In darker moments, I’ve considered how much better the world would be if certain people weren’t in it.
There’s the minor league of those we’d like never to have been born, like Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.
There’s maybe room for a nasty-girl fight between Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch for a place.
The more serious death-wish list is naturally topped by Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine has merely confirmed his status as a global pariah, though he was already up there after his poisoning of opposition politicians and investigative journalists and his slow, public torture of Alexei Navalny.
Bashar al-Assad was also on that list – along with the Taliban regime – and in an unexpected Christmas gift, he’s now been toppled by rebel forces, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, and has fled to his erstwhile chum in Moscow.
Assad may end up preferring death to living through a succession of frozen Russian winters, hosted by a man who’s clearly decided he’s a busted flush.
The former London eye doctor had better keep a sharp lookout when he’s walking past large windows, as defenestration seems to be a common occurrence in that neck of the woods.
He should also maybe avoid supping with Vlad, lest his cuppa comes laced with a helping of Novichok.
The news pictures from Syria are a mixture of joy and horror, as relatives swarmed on the notorious prisons where the regime tortured citizens – many of them to death – on an industrial scale.
This is a country that the West has ignored for too long, while its people suffered and many were forced to flee across Europe.
It’s too early to say if the new interim regime will live up to its promises to respect the many communities and faiths that made up the mosaic of Syria. The Taliban uttered similarly reassuring words when Afghanistan was left to its fate.
But the haste with which some countries are expecting Syrian refugees to go back home is a tad unseemly.
Most of them want to go back. But it will take time to establish stability in the post-Assad Syria.
We should at least allow a decent interval before making demands of people who’ve already lost so much.
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The unspeakable suffering endured by 10-year-old Sara Sharif is hard to even read about.
Beaten to death by her father and stepmother, it now emerges that there were countless opportunities for her to have been rescued from their clutches.
She was a subject of social services attention before she was even born, but she was failed repeatedly.
It’s hard not to scream out loud when you hear someone in officialdom claim that lessons will be learnt from her death.
Maria Colwell died in 1973 at the age of seven, after repeated beatings by her stepfather, William Kepple, while her mother stood by.
He favoured his own biological children over her and frequently bought them ice cream while Maria was forced to watch.
Neighbours reported seeing the child scavenge from bins because she was starving and teachers also reported their concerns to social services, the NSPCC and the police. But still she was left in danger.
Her death and the ensuing publicity led to a public inquiry which found a lack of communication between the agencies who were aware of her vulnerability, and inadequate training of social workers assigned to at-risk children.
Kepple was jailed for eight years for Maria’s manslaughter. His sentence was halved on appeal.
In the intervening years there have been other cases – Jasmine Beckford, Victoria Climbie, Baby P, Daniel Pelka – and now the name of Sara Sharif has been added to the tragic roll call.
At the time of writing, an Ipswich man has been jailed for life for the murder of his partner’s two-year-old, Isabella Jonas-Wheildon. The pair wheeled her dead body in a pushchair for days after her death.
How many more times must we hear “Never again”?