Newspapers
Newspaper sales are heading one way. People don’t / can’t read any more. But as I’m an old fashioned git, I still buy a paper every day. It gives me a chance to walk round the block with my dog.
I’ve noticed that if you only read the Telegraph you start fulminating at the slightest alteration of the status quo, and if you only read the Guardian you go on demonstrations and think the world is plotting against you.
So I buy a different paper every day. It used to be
Sunday: Sunday Times
Monday: Daily Telegraph
Tuesday: The Guardian
Wednesday: The Times
Thursday: The i Newspaper
Friday: The Daily Telegraph
Saturday: The Guardian
Then I noticed that Monday’s Telegraph was simply a rehash of the previous day’s Sunday Times, apart from the columnists, and as the Monday columnists are Charles Moore, Boris Johnson and Jane Shilling, I can probably live without them.
Charles Moore has a charming brother named Rowan, who writes intelligently about architecture. But he is such a blinkered conservative a shiver runs down my spine when I read him.
Boris Johnson is an educated fool with an ego the size of a planet. His is dog whistle journalism, a call to rally his troops around him as he tilts for the Tory leadership. I hope he doesn’t get it.
When I was an estate agent with Pavilions of Splendour I showed Jane Shilling a converted chapel in Penge. She loved it, and I hoped I might have made a sale. But then the owner rang me up and said ‘You know that nice lady journalist you brought round the other day? She came back and offered me a sum just below the asking price to do a deal direct so she didn’t have to pay your fee.’ So I don’t have a high opinion of Ms Shilling.
So now my daily buy goes like this:
Sunday: Sunday Times
Monday: The i Newspaper
Tuesday: The Guardian
Wednesday: The Times
Thursday: Daily Telegraph
Friday: The Times
Saturday: The Guardian
What other columnists shall I get enraged about?
