The Sensible Peoples’ Newspaper Today Is ……….. The Daily Mail

Yes, you did read that headline correctly, today as the broadsheets and red tops alike whip themselves into a frenzy like so many Roman revellers at Saturnalia over the resignation of ginger minge Rebekah Brooks and the latest revelations in the News International phone hacking, cop bunging, bin raiding and baby bugging (we might have made that one up)crimes of people working for the News of the World and The Currant Bun, it is left to the Daily Mail to say:

“Hey folks, while television news and the papers are obsessing over this story that we all knew about for years, aren’t we forgetting the Euro single currency is falling apart, inflation is up, employment is down and upshitcreekness abounds.

Well done to The Daily Mail for sounding a note of sanity.

It is always possible of course that the Mail did not have any new dirt on the News International scandal. But it would be curmudgeonly of us to suggest such a thin so we will not mention it.

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You Can’t Light A Fire With A Laptop

Great news for journalists and publishers this week was the internet’s growing realisation that you literally get nothing for free.
The impending demise of Wikipedia was heralded with glee, the free on-line encyclopedia which was once hailed as the future can no longer be relied upon, as too many people post updates which are not factually sound, but hey, maybe the authors believe it so it must be true.
All the major newspapers now have electronic versions which can be accessed for free on the internet. This has, of course, resulted in declining sales of the actual newspapers.
“Why should I pay for it when I can get it for free?” is the mindset.
But unfortunately it costs money to get it out there any which way, so in the near future one will have to subscribe in some way to view articles and reports.

This is all well and good, we applaud these efforts to lift the poor hacks out of poverty and the newspaper publishers also, but a lot more will be lost if the paper newspaper were to disappear.

What on earth would you use to wrap the present for a children’s game of pass the parcel if there were no newspapers?

What do you use to wrap unpleasant waste in, chicken frames for example, or used cat litter, before depositing it in the bin?

What can be used as a disposable covering for floors when messy jobs need attending to, painting, wallpapering, giving birth, to name but three.

How many other jobs fit nicely around the schoolday and provide a reasonable source of pocket money to the younger teenagers? Well they’ve got to pay for their fags and cider somehow.

You can’t roll a keyboard up and swat that irritating fly as you peruse the latest share prices or gossip from the jungle.

And goodness knows how you would get on trying to light a fire with a laptop.

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Keith Waterhouse

First today a tribute to the late Keith Waterhouse, an excellent and vastly underrated writer whose style in his novels, plays and satirical articles influenced both myself and fatsally. The with, style and constant high quality of his work ught to have gained him more recognition. Watrhouse’s regular twice weekly columns in the Daily Mirror and latterly The Daily Mail made it worth reading those newspaperspapers on the days he was published.

Now how about somebody at the BBC or ITV showing a bit of class by commissioning a four – part adaptation of Billy Liar.