2004_01_january_saty forum uk papers

One thing the British do not whinge about – unlike Australians — is their newspapers.

And why would they? The British Press is a wonderful beast, or should I say beasts. And there is another reason for the lack of whinge which will I explain anon.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been sampling the best and the worst of it. Some days, I am sure, I was the only person in Britain to have bought a copy of both The Times and the Daily Star – the opposite ends of the British national press.

Britain has 10 national dailies: five broadsheet, serious papers; two midbrow tabloids; and three red-top shocker tabloids.

The Daily Star, was called, by someone I knew who worked on it, the Daily Bonk. (He was a football writer.) The Bonk does not even have a veneer of news. Rather it has some splinters and chaff of news inside; the veneer is the smooth semi-clad woman on the front cover who sells the paper.

The bits of news inside give the Daily Star sufficient respectability for nearly a million people to buy it. If anyone wants porn there is any amount of it on the internet and in cling-wrapped magazines in newsagents. But that is a different market. There is still a very large market in “respectable”, soft porn bought under the guise of a daily paper which can be read – or ogled at – in public and in, at least some, family homes.
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2004_01_january_saty forum cycles

Urban Services Minister Bill Wood is searching for “missing links” – not the ones that will prove the theory of evolution, but the “missing links” on the cycle-path network.

The idea is to find high-use paths (used by cyclists and pedestrians) that do not link up, so they can be given higher priority in the next capital works budget.

This is fine, but he should first ask how the paths were created with missing links in the first place. How can a planner or an engineer create a path that stops at a “missing link” and then resume some distance away? Why did they do that?

The answer is that the planners and engineers are motorists, not cyclists. The path system – like other systems – should have been designed from the user in, not from the creator out, if it is to be successful.

The designers need to get on the paths and cycle them, preferably accompanied by regular users.

I am not making some special plea for extra money and effort for cyclists. It is an appeal for a bit of intelligence in the spending of public money. If we are to have a system of cycle-pedestrian paths, let’s make it an excellent one; it does not cost very much more, maybe less.
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2004_01_january_saty forum blair

It seems astonishing, from an Australian point of view, that there is so much talk in Britain about the resignation of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Also from an Australian perspective, it is astounding that Blair has got himself into such a hole over the two matters that are now dogging him: the Hutton inquiry and university fees. Politics may be similar everywhere; but it is not the same. It is difficult to see this happening in Australia.

The media is full of the possibility of Blair’s demise. It is mentioned at social gatherings. It arises in House of Commons debates.

This is despite the fact that Labour has a thumping majority in the House of Commons (408 seats of 659) and that Blair is a dominating political figure on the world stage.

Blair himself has even mentioned the R word. He has said he would resign if the inquiry by former Law Lord Brian Hutton into the suicide of weapons scientist Dr David Kelly found that he had lied in insisting that he had not authorised the leaking of Kelly’s name.
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