Well we all know that don’t we, it’s the Middle East, Ukraine.

Well, maybe.

Yes, they are in the news and like much of our news reported in a way that seems to increase anxiety about them. But why are they the news? Before anyone starts shouting ... ‘it’s obvious…’ let’s just pause for a moment.

I’ve just come back from a holiday north of the border, switch on Scottish TV and it’s dominated by the Referendum vote: passionate arguments, stickers saying yes and no all over the place.

Yet, south of the border, hardly a peep, it’s as if it’s no business of ours. Why? Is our London focused media not interested? Is the North of England not interested?

We are two weeks away from an event that will profoundly shape the next 50 years or more of our political and economic life probably more than many an international crisis could and yet we seem to hear so little.

Whenever you ask the question; ‘What’s in the news?’ It’s usually also good to ask whose news? Who decides?

I say all this not to be cynical but to be cautious, It’s very easy to get caught up in ‘the news’ about major international events we cannot always influence directly (and there’s nothing wrong with awareness of these or offering money to relevant charities) but there is a second type of news, what we could call ‘doorstep news’.

These are the things that we can be aware of, that we can make a real difference to.

It may be helping community police deal with the petty crime that can blight life; it may be working to create opportunities for our youth for work, friendship to the lonely, food for the hungry.

News doesn’t just happen far away it happens in our own streets.

News isn’t just an event that we are powerless to influence it is something we can make. C.S. Lewis once said, ‘The greatest events in every age never reach the history books.’ The same is very often true of the news.

Ian Dewar - Chaplain of Royal Lancaster Infirmary