IT COMES to something in this life when you find yourself agreeing with a Tory minister. This shocking state of affairs has arisen following the disgraceful behaviour of the Sunday Mirror newspaper with its sexting sting.

Nicky Morgan, the women’s minister, criticised the Sunday Mirror for trying to get male MPs to hand over sexually explicit pictures of themselves. Bizarrely, a married Tory minister by the name of Brooks Newmark did just that.

On publication of the story, he promptly resigned.

Morgan, who is also education secretary, said that the newspaper “seemed to be out to target a particular group of men. They will have to answer, I’m afraid, and I think there are regulations affecting that”.

Quite right. A number of factors swim around the feet of the story, nibbling away at the dead skin, as it were.

To focus first on Mr Newmark, we have to ask a simple question: why? Why on earth would any middle-aged man send an intimate picture of themselves to a young woman who slyly winked at them over the internet?

Far better, surely, for the flesh of the no longer young to only be unwrapped on private occasions with the lights down low.

We all have our flaws and I know nothing about Mr Newmark, other than his fall from grace: a tumble which illustrates how a weak moment and the internet can combine to devastating effect.

Another strange aspect to this grubby affair is that the freelance journalist who conducted the sting used photographs of women taken from social media without their consent. One of these images was of a Swedish model, named as Malin Sahlén, who was reported as saying she felt shocked and exploited on learning that her picture had been used in the fake Twitter account set up by the reporter.

Also, tellingly, the Sun and the Mail on Sunday both declined to run with the story. It comes to something when that pair thinks a story is not worth touching, rather as if the playground bullies had taken up Bible studies.

Behind all this is the larger disgrace. These stings in which an undercover reporter pretends to be someone in an attempt to entrap unwary politicians, actors or whatever are simply a disgrace. The good investigative journalist discovers that someone notable has been up to no good and then researches the story until it is fit to print. In such cases, the person under scrutiny deserves to be exposed.

The unscrupulous journalist dreams up a scam whereby someone might be tricked into doing something foolish or potentially illegal, then kicks up a self-righteous storm with the ‘evidence’ they have secured.

The editor of the Sunday Mirror, Alison Phillips, defended the article as being “wholly in the public interest”. Oh, come off it; wholly unacceptable, more like.

Far greater public wrongs could be investigated by a newspaper that conducted itself sensibly and properly. This is basically journalism as prostitution and it shames all of us who knock words together for a living.

• ONE week off, five days away, 1,000 miles added to the valiant old Volvo, driving first to north Cornwall and back, then across the Pennines to Manchester to deliver guitars, a computer and so on to number two son and call in on my father, in between helping number one son at his new flat in the middle of York, and then heading to Newcastle (on the train, thankfully, this time) for the 21st birthday of the girl who calls me Daddio.

While at my student daughter’s shared house in Newcastle, I noticed that the large television in the lounge had a very short cable dangling from its side.

I was told that this was to connect the laptop. Due to the shortness of the cable, the laptop had to be balanced on a chair and therefore wasn’t much use. “But we did get the cable from Poundland,” my daughter said by way of explanation.

At which a dad remark bubbled unstoppably to the surface. “Perhaps if you had gone to Two-Poundland then it might have fitted.”

Two people in the room giggled at that; one did not. Some dad traditions are too important to neglect.