On May 14, 6:59*pm, "Tim Roll-Pickering" T.C.Roll-
wrote:
wrote:
You seem like a bright enough chap. I don't honestly believe you can't
see the difference in scale there.

As I said the site was crashing my browser (and has a dire search engine) so
I grabbed the first stable links I could get. I remember more substantial
pieces in the Standard but it's always been one of the worst of online
papets.

Yes, the newspaper market is the way it is in that the Standard has a
monopoly in London.

Only because the other evening paids have died out. The Standard is, of
course, under much pressure from the freesheets but has managed to carve out
a niche for itself. But it's not as if the Standard has a guaranteed
monopoly - there's nothing but market forces stopping a rival paper from
trying to offer an alternative.

That's offensive at the best of times, before they
start swinging an election based on their own personal prejudices.
The Guardian, of course, isn't a London newspaper.

It hasn't really been the "Manchester Guardian" in decades. It is part of
the national-based-in-London press and so in one sense *is* a London paper,
albeit not a local focused one. Do you think any of the national papers
would have given anything like even proporional coverage to a hypothetical
Mayoral election in, say, Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool?

One thing the Standard does seem to have a monopoly on, and which I
have been very aware of as someone who doesn't buy newspapers, is
those fake handwritten boards on every street corner proclaiming
"Boris Does a Thing" every single day.

I'm sure that must have an effect.