On Friday night, my partner and I watched her hometown football team Blyth Spartans – a bunch of spirited part-timers – beat the full time professionals of Hartlepool in the FA Cup. The town went wild.

On Saturday, the local premiership team, Newcastle United, continued their unexpected run of form by beating the all-conquering Chelsea, ending the Londoners’ 23 game unbeaten run. Again, the joy in this football mad city was palpable.

Yesterday, the UN published its index of national rankings of 60 industrialised countries on their efforts in tackling climate change. All three UK news outlets where I saw the story – The Guardian, the BBC and the Independent – used the same headline: Australia came bottom of the list. You had to read well past that headline to find that the UK came third.

Third!

Out of 60?

Beaten only by Denmark and Sweden?

That’s brilliant!

So why aren’t the news outlets running that? Is it because the truly want to pillory Australia? Is it because bad news sells? Or is it because the media line has been “PM Cameron promised the greenest Government ever and failed” and this doesn’t fit that narrative? Who knows?

But whichever, it is a real shame, because, as any top sportsman (or newsagent from Blyth with twinkle toes for that matter) will tell you, you’ve got to celebrate success. Celebrate and build on it. Because that’s the way to keep on winning.