Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
A new year deserves a new strand - so all hail the launch of Premature Eleculation Monitor.
At the heart of the idea is when exactly the general election campaign begins.
According to Monday's Guardian it was yesterday, when Gordon Brown appeared on the Andrew Marr show and David Cameron was pictured cradling a baby.
says today's Guardian.
Not so, according to the Times, which tells us the
But all this looks positively tardy when you consider the number of times HM Press has already announced the, ahem, opening salvo of the general election campaign.
There was GB's New Year's statement - noted in thus:
"Gordon Brown fires the starting gun on the 2010 general election campaign today, using his New Year's message to attack the Conservatives as the party of the 'privileged few'."
Back in April 2009, by the chancellor, who a few months later .
But was he too late? Had the gun in the Queen's Speech? The following month the election campaign was under way, although disappointingly no mention of guns, opening salvoes, battle lines etc...
In other news...
Maybe it's a sign of the slow start back to work after the Christmas break, but the Daily Mail is reprinting world records that, well, aren't true.
To be precise they've just been made up by a trio of comedians. Example:
"Most misquoted phrase: 'the world is my oyster'. Invariably used to mean 'the world is at my feet.' Which is not what it means at all... The phrase means 'I will have to use force to get what I want.'"
Flick forward nine pages to p24, and alongside a story about the "suicidal despair of 1 in 3 young jobless" there's a case study of 21-year-old Daniel Abbott.
It starts like this...
"When Daniel Abbott finished his IT diploma at the age of 21, he thought the world was his oyster."