Uncategorized

thecatchupblogparttwo

Oh, and just a quickie addendum: it seems that some kind of newspaper distribution war has broken out on the streets of London as of today: as I came out of Baker Street tonight, there was a guy handing out the Standard Lite standing right next to a very bored looking Evening Standard guy not selling any papers. I’m not sure how smart a business move that is.

Then, around the corner–presumably at whatever designated distance away from the tube they are required to remain–were swarms of thelondonpaper people (at least five different stands on the way back to our flat alone–have they gone for blanket coverage of the whole of central London?) I picked one up, you know, just to have a look, and actually had a guy slightly further down the street try to give me another copy of the same paper…

I mean, I’d love to see the Evening Standard go under as much as the next guy, but does it have to be Murdoch that does it? And with the resources he has to do so, it doesn’t really seem like a fair contest, does it?

Update: (05/09/2006) And today, walking home, I noticed that the Evening Standard guy hadn’t even bothered to turn up–driven out of business after one day by his sister paper. Slightly further down the street I saw a thelondonpaper guy standing on the corner with a stack of papers… and he was clearly so desperate to get rid of them that he’d taken to posting them through the open windows of the passing buses as they waited in traffic next to him.