A dull old Sunday. A day to skim through the papers and enjoy some finely written journalism, to pick up ideas (might Condoleeza Rice one day be President of the US?), and to educate myself in matters large and small.
I’m fed up with teasing articles about David Cameron and the word “wooding” (there shouldn’t be words in the English language that the Ranting Nappa cannot define). Thank heavens for the online Urban Dictionary which is the only place to offer a simple but badly punctuated definition: ‘To do a male or female up the anul – im bored of normal sex, I might do wooding to Jane tonight’. All very easy-to-follow but careful, my Mum is reading this blog. Anyway David Cameron is married to Samantha, not Jane.
A sensible piece by John Simpson in the Sunday Telegraph draws attention to the restrictions which the new Terrorism Bill will place on journalists (I thought we had a government that believed in the freedom of the press). But then there are examples of stupid, deceitful, manipulative journalism such as the fake arab sheikh (a News of the World reporter) who lured poor Sven-Goran Eriksson to the Burj-al-Arab hotel in Dubai in order to prise out some indiscretions. Also the Sun reporter who infiltrated Sandhurst to show the laxness of security protecting our royal princes (bless them). As a result of the journalist’s enterprise the Head of Sandhurst was all but fired (saved from John Reid’s wrath only by the intervention of Prince Charles).
I cannot but hide a smirk when I read about Waterstone’s poor Christmas trading results. Isn’t it obvious that giving away bestsellers at half price leads to margin reduction. Fine, blame it all on Tesco and Asda, but the supermarkets make their profits out of groceries, not books. They can afford to loss-lead on minority items like books and DVDs, traditional booksellers cannot. Amazon (the other target-for-blame) made huge losses for years while they built up market share and now, cleverly, rely on third-party traders like myself to provide a profitable and growing revenue stream.
And then there is poor Manchester United, poor hardly-done-by Cristiano Ronaldo, poor (foul-mouthed) Wayne Rooney and (most-of-all) poor Sir Alex Ferguson and his even fouler mouth…. so hardly done by. My heart bleeds.
