Today is the start of Anti-Bullying Week.

I first raised the issue of homophobic bullying with Joe Godwin in an email on 23rd July 2009: "... A particular concern of mine is that the BBC is not doing enough - or in fact anything at all - to counter the problem of homophobic bullying at school. ..."

On 26th September 2010 Mr Godwin emailed me:

.... Since we last corresponded on the subject of homophobic bullying in schools, you may be interested to know that I've been meeting with senior civil servants and the Children's Commissioners to see what CBBC can do in this area. I have further meetings planned in the coming weeks. ....

However after years' of silence CBBC Newsround has, this morning, finally got round to tackling the problem. And this is the reason they gave -

Martin: .. today we're reporting on homophobic bullying. That's because this year the government is giving £2million to schools to deal with it.

Why was it necessary to give a reason for tackling this form of prejudice? And, as far as I know, receiving a government grant has never been a pretext for CBBC covering any other form of bullying.

The real way CBBC could help is by making children's drama properly inclusive. So far not much has been achieved on that front.