Online Newspapers

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Rupert Murdoch’s News International have announced that from June anyone wishing to view the Times or the Sunday Times online will have to pay £1 per day or £2 per week.

It’s a brave move and only time will tell if it is a successful one. You can read almost any newspaper online in Britain and other parts of the world, and I do wonder if those now reading the Times online will merely switch to another newspaper.

I suppose the charges are not onerous, and anyone having a subscription to the printed versions of the newspapers, will have an automatic pass to read them online. On the other hand, if you have the printed versions, why would you want to read them online?

I scan half a dozen newspapers each day via the internet. It seems that from June, there will be one less to read.
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And Answer Came There None!

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I’ve said before that Prime Minister’s Question Time is a waste of time and effort, for it seems to me to be either a slanging match between the the leaders of the major parties or else a sycophantic pat on the back to the governing party by one of their own MPs.

What does surprise me is that there seems to be no Commons rule under which someone asking a question can insist on it being properly answered rather than drawing forth invective unrelated to the question asked.

Thus yesterday we heard David Cameron ask the Prime Minister three times whether the government would rule out a compulsory inheritance levy to pay for its plans to provide free personal care for the most vulnerable people in England. Cameron pointed out that one option in the government’s Green Paper was for a ‘£20,000 levy on every single elderly person in this country except the very poorest’ and repeatedly urged Mr Brown to rule out a levy.

It was a fair question since more than seventy councillors responsible for social care provision in England in a letter to The Times called the plan ill-conceived, suggested it had major weaknesses and would mean cuts to services. But he didn’t get an answer.

Personal care for the vulnerable and elderly is a subject I’m interested in. I am, after all, now fully qualified as an ‘old geezer’ and would like to know if I am going to have to pay for the so-called free treatment.

But, as in the case of the question posed by the Carpenter to the Oysters, answer came there none.
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Aaah!

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Did you know that Kate Pong recently gave birth to quintuplets? No, I didn’t think so.

But the good people of Newport in Shropshire thrilled to an announcement in Births section of The Times on 1 September announcing the birth of Beyonce, Tyra, Bobbi, Barrack and Earl. The story was picked up by local newspapers as well as a couple of the nationals all curious about the infant’s strange names.

But once you know that the quintuplets were born to a chocolate Labrador, the names don’t seem quite so strange. A fact that was innocently omitted from the newspaper entry.

Nonetheless, it is good news for a change. Congratulations Kate!
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