DID you know that cheques have been saved? Yes, the banks have relented for once and announced they will continue to issue chequebooks and honour cheques for ever and ever, instead of phasing them out in the next couple of years.

For some unfathomable reason, that little piece of news was slipped out by the banks last week when everyone else’s attention was distracted by the Murdoch soap opera at News International.

Here was a chance for the banks to show that they do care for other people, but they chose to announce their U-turn when no one was taking a blind bit of notice, rather than grasp a golden opportunity for some good publicity.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no friend of the banks. When I see the profits they make and the bonuses they pay out to their hugely overpaid staff, I’m all for a session of bank bashing. But this time they’ve got it right. Not everyone trusts the electronic or virtual world when it comes to their money, and there are times when the electronic world is not suitable at all.

What about the child taking dinner money to school? Suggestions that they could take a prepaid card to be fed into some kind of card reader at the school instead of carrying money miss the point.

Prepaid cards can be used by anyone and if a child can be mugged by the playground bully or a heroin addict for dinner money in cash form, they can be mugged for it in the form of a prepaid card.

But a crossed cheque can only be paid into the recipient’s bank account, so there’s no point in mugging a child for a cheque. What about people who are wary of sending their credit card details over the internet when buying something?

Having myself had my credit card details stolen and seen strange internet transactions appear on my monthly statement that I had nothing to do with, I sympathise with them. A cheque in the post, provided it doesn’t get lost, avoids that problem. Let’s hear three cheers for the cheque, and Mr Bank Manager, I expect my new chequebook to arrive in the next post.

The pardon for cheques is just one of many stories that have been submerged in the ocean of ink and TV images devoted to the phone hacking scandal. What else has been happening in the world that the News Of The World can no longer report on? An earthquake has shaken Britain’s biggest naval port at Portsmouth, no, not the latest upheaval in the Ministry of Defence, but a real seismic event in the middle of the English Channel, measuring 3.9 on some scale or other.

A medical treatment for diabetic patients who develop eye problems has been banned by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, Whitehall spent at least £275 million in 2009/10 on giving training to staff who didn’t think that it had had any effect on their ability to do their job, and a space probe has successfully gone into orbit around an asteroid called Vesta in a journey that could provide a long-term solution to the earth’s metal shortage.

All of them are interesting and important stories, but I have to admit, while all that was happening, I engaged in blood sport on two consecutive Tuesdays and watched the hounds attack the foxes at bay.

First it was the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee giving senior police officers grief, then it was the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee dragging the Murdochs in and giving them grief.

Some stories are just too big and too mesmerising to ignore, even for the banks being nice.