Jus' another one, barman...

So let’s see, what has attracted the old attention today then?

Initial annoyance at the fact that I couldn’t get hold of my usual copy of The Times was compounded by the discovery that not only is the Independent more expensive, but that its “advanced” sudoku is actually rather easy. Clearly there is a difference in expectations between the two sets of readers. And to think twenty years ago, at the height of the Fleet Street wars and the move to Wapping, the bulk of The Times’ journalists defected to the Indie en masse. For a fortnight, three weeks it was a great paper.

I don’t really like the Independent; dunno why I bought it. The only thing it has going for it is that it is better than The Guardian which is an exercise in champagne socialism, leavened with self delusion and smug self-satisfaction. I could have picked up the Daily Telegraph, but since that is the last remaining broadsheet in the country, I find it hard to read, having lost all my broadsheet-reading skills over the past couple of years.

So that leaves the Daily Mail, the shunning of which is surely self-explanatory and the Daily Express which plays the Dandy to the Mail’s Beano.

Anyway, lumbered for the day with the Independent, I see that Mel Gibson is blaming alcohol for his recent bout of anti-Semitism. Well, I guess you can transfer the blame for anything to something else these days. “I drink too much and it made me hate the Jews.”

Yup, I’m convinced. I'll buy that bridge, now.

Stupid git. He drank so much he forgot that racism isn’t something likely to win you any friends. I haven’t liked the man for years anyway. He’s made one film too many where the British – particularly the English – are irredeemable bad guys, and he doesn’t mind how much history he has to bend (or plain make up) to get that idea across. That’s another form of racism. Now, by exposing himself as anti-Semitic in an industry with such powerful and influential Jewish representation, he may just have cut his own throat. Or burnt his bridges or some other such colourful metaphor.

Let’s hope, shall we? Then I can rest easy knowing that I’ll be increasingly unlikely to see a new movie with him in the starring role.

Hurrah!

But if I do, I don’t want to read about it in the Independent.

Jus' another one, barman...

So let’s see, what has attracted the old attention today then?

Initial annoyance at the fact that I couldn’t get hold of my usual copy of The Times was compounded by the discovery that not only is the Independent more expensive, but that its “advanced” sudoku is actually rather easy. Clearly there is a difference in expectations between the two sets of readers. And to think twenty years ago, at the height of the Fleet Street wars and the move to Wapping, the bulk of The Times’ journalists defected to the Indie en masse. For a fortnight, three weeks it was a great paper.

I don’t really like the Independent; dunno why I bought it. The only thing it has going for it is that it is better than The Guardian which is an exercise in champagne socialism, leavened with self delusion and smug self-satisfaction. I could have picked up the Daily Telegraph, but since that is the last remaining broadsheet in the country, I find it hard to read, having lost all my broadsheet-reading skills over the past couple of years.

So that leaves the Daily Mail, the shunning of which is surely self-explanatory and the Daily Express which plays the Dandy to the Mail’s Beano.

Anyway, lumbered for the day with the Independent, I see that Mel Gibson is blaming alcohol for his recent bout of anti-Semitism. Well, I guess you can transfer the blame for anything to something else these days. “I drink too much and it made me hate the Jews.”

Yup, I’m convinced. I'll buy that bridge, now.

Stupid git. He drank so much he forgot that racism isn’t something likely to win you any friends. I haven’t liked the man for years anyway. He’s made one film too many where the British – particularly the English – are irredeemable bad guys, and he doesn’t mind how much history he has to bend (or plain make up) to get that idea across. That’s another form of racism. Now, by exposing himself as anti-Semitic in an industry with such powerful and influential Jewish representation, he may just have cut his own throat. Or burnt his bridges or some other such colourful metaphor.

Let’s hope, shall we? Then I can rest easy knowing that I’ll be increasingly unlikely to see a new movie with him in the starring role.

Hurrah!

But if I do, I don’t want to read about it in the Independent.