Rupert Murdoch is not daft

Whereas the decision to ask for payment for reading The Times, Sun and News of the Screws website will doubtless reduce readership of those websites, I am sure the modelling has been done to indicate that it would boost profits (or reduce losses) for News International when compared to the current (virtually) all-advertising model.

Even if a relatively small number pay for some services, it could make the whole thing profitable. Remember, Rupert Murdoch and his company are very experienced at managing subscription services via Sky.

And it is surely inevitable that eventually more and more newspaper websites will require money in the meter to read. We are kidding ourselves if we think we can go on enjoying free access to such enormous banks of crafted journalism. Push will soon come to shove. It must be hurting their sales of hard copy papers.

That could mean some pay-for-articles (as the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal have had for some time) or paying subscriptions for entire sites.

But I do think we need to remember that there are different tiers of newspaper quality.

At one end you have simple ticker tape news services, giving basic news stories. I suspect such services will remain free.

At the top end you have beautifully crafted (or indeed not-so-beautifully crafted) opinion pieces and highly researched journalistic exercises, which I think we will increasing see becoming pay-for services.

The problem for newspapers is likely to be for those in the middle: offering not basic wire services but not particularly well crafted journalism that people will pay for.

By the way, this dilemma facing newspapers is not new. If you take my local newspaper the Newbury Weekly News, they have never allowed some of their "crown jewels" to appear on the internet. For example, the only way you can read their letters pages (which I have heard are very popular) is by buying the physical newspaper.

By the way, I can't imagine myself paying to read Murdoch papers but I have paid a very small amount (a couple of quid) to use an existing pay-for Murdoch service, which was to delve into the absolutely superb Times archive, which goes back about 20-30 years. I found some very rare articles which were from well before the advent of the full-on internet.

Well done Billy boy, half centurianship and the new £10 poms

Due to being very kindly accompanied into the first minutes of half centurianship by some very nice friends offering excellent food, wine and conversation, I enjoyed the company of that excellent journalist, Katie Couric, on CBS Evening News this morning via Sky. Well done Billy Boy for hopefully shock-thawing US-North Korea relations and allowing us to sleep a tad more soundly in our beds at night. As we picked our way through Manchester in the early hours we chanced upon some spirited youngsters queuing up amidst tents and sleeping bags to become new "£10 poms" courtesy of an enterprising travel agency. Good luck to them and thanks and love to everyone who has helped me along the way to my big 5-0.

The majesty of Manchester

I'm spending a week in Manchester for various reasons - both business and pleasure.

On Saturday I had sufficient time to stroll around this august city and breathe in some of its history and architecture. Standing at the site of the Peterloo Massacre (right) was a particular, poignant, highlight.

I also enjoyed visiting the magnificient Museum of Science and Industry and the People's Museum. The latter is currently being hosted by the former, during refurbishment (of the latter).

For a namby pampby Southern wimp such as myself, it was wonderful to imbibe the majesty of Manchester's architecture and the grit and achievement of its history.

I took about a thousand pics with which I will not bore my reader. But here are just a handful which came out well:

A nice set of arches near St Peter's Square

The wonderful Manchester Town Hall. I was lucky enough to be able to sneak inside and enjoy its gothic splendour!

An example of Manchester's vibrant modern architecture.

The glorious Midland Hotel, at which my wife and I once stayed at the expense of Granada Television (a long story involving an appearance on a very short lived peak hour ITV game show. Do you remember "Perception" presented by Alison Holloway? Of course, you don't.).

My favourite. A building near the Midland Hotel which looks like a particularly neat cake.

Specially for @allanmknox , the banks of the Ribble near Clitheroe, Lancashire.

Stop this airbrush ban nonsense

I agree with Tom Papworth on Liberal Vision. Banning airbrushing of models in adverts when they are aimed at minors? Come off it. It's silly. Really silly. (Please read Tom's piece for a more thoughtful discussion of this, and read on if you want an ignorant and confused rant).

Whether or not to ban something is not a simple judgment, of course. There is a case for banning when, for example, public safety is badly and clearly at risk (and I accept in the case of the young and image sensitivity, it is). Ralph Nader's advocacy of the automatic window stopper in the US, is an example. And yes, I once got drowned in vituperative vitriol when I suggested pointy knives should be banned (I'm still licking my wounds on that one, a year later). Same argument. If a product is outlandishly unsafe, there's a potential argument to ban it.

And, of course, there is evidence that the whole model/advertising industry creates very unhealthy pressure on youngsters which can exacerbate depression and other mental illnesses which sometimes endanger life. I welcome the policy paper on this whole subject (and hope to read it to reduce my ignorance as soon as I can find a copy). It certainly initiates a discussion which is healthy. I particularly welcome the proposal to make cosmetic surgery businesses publish their success rates. The whole cosmetic surgery industry drives me relatively crazy. The risk of death under general anaesthesia is so great that no civilised country should have such a general casual attitude to cosmetic surgery, as ours does.

And I am all for discounted membership of gyms and other methods to encourage physical exercise, as the paper proposes. Bring it on.

Ban airbrushing? So should we also ban skillful lighting? Nice clothes? Soft focus lenses? The old technique of Vaseline on the lens - should that be banned? Glossy TV programmes which use digital video techniques to improve the picture quality? Should we take the gloss off the paper of magazines aimed at youngsters? Twiggy refuses to be photographed before 12 noon because she's wrinkly in the mornings. Should we ban afternoon photos of Twiggy?

And how do you police a ban on airbrushing? How can you prove whether or not a picture has been airbrushed? And is there not an easy way to get round it with other digital techniques such as adjusted brightness, contrast, colour saturation, hue etc etc? Or indeed mechanical devices such as filter lenses?

Banning of such a narrow technique is not the answer. Education of youngsters and parents might be. Exposure of such techniques might be. But we really do risk making a laughing stock of the otherwise, no doubt (reading from a summary only at the moment) laudable paper "Real Women" by having such a risible suggestion within it.

For goodness sake, Jo Swinson has singled out (as well as a picture of Jessica Alba) a Twiggy advert picture for Olay. Are 16 year olds really swayed by Twiggy?! She's over sixty! And in her Olay photo (above) even after airbrushing - she looks it! What 16 year old uses Olay anyway?! It's unmitigated nonsense!

...And if you don't believe me here's a comment from experts: A spokesperson for the Advertising Standards Agency said it would be difficult to intervene and control airbrushing. They said the agency only intervenes if advertisements are misleading:

We received more than 26,000 complaints last year and could probably count on one hand the ones that had anything to do with airbrushing. General enhancement of images does go on - whether it's better lighting, fake steam added to hot food - but the majority of people are aware of it. If it comes to being misleading, like wrinkles being removed from an advert on wrinkle cream, then we could intervene.

Just to prove that I did try to find some background info on this, despite not finding the actual conference document, I did find the discussion document from the last conference on which it is based. There's no mention in there of airbrushing, but it does pose these questions:

20. How can we encourage women to have a more healthy body image? What role could the media and advertising play in generating this change of attitude?
21. How can we as society rebalance our ideas about female physical ‘perfection’ and challenge current trends in critiquing the female aesthetic? How can we ensure that models are healthy and maintain a healthy body weight?

...and contain this statement:

There is evidence that media portrayals of the ‘perfect’ female aesthetic is a driver in
eating disorders and psychological problems, however as a society we must take responsibility for the part we play in fuelling this industry – the popularity of magazines carrying commentaries on the physical appearance of celebrities leaves us in no doubt that there is an appetite for such critiques of the female aesthetic.

Patel XI

A classic. Dewsbury Young Stars Cricket team all have the surname Patel. Even the scorer is called Patel. Excellent! One wonders how Brian Johnson would have handled a commentary on a game involving them. One suspects that some hilarious commentarial cock-up would have ensued.

Quad erat demonstrandum

I was rather disturbed by suggestions in the media today (try as I might I haven't found evidence that the Liberal Democrats' favourite minister, Phil Woolas, has said this) that involvement in the sort of demonstrations we saw against soldiers parading in Luton earlier this year would lose people points if they were trying to become or remain British citizens.

Come off it. The right to protest is an integral, traditional part of the British way of life. By definition, everybody is not going to approve of, and agree with, every protest.

If we all agreed with everything everybody wants to protest about, there wouldn't be any point in protesting about it.

QED

Did anyone's Grandma's tits ever get caught in the mangle?

I'm beginning to wonder. For many years, I was told by one of my vast panoply of brothers that our grandmother got her (see title) caught in the mangle. They even showed me where it happened and described it in excruciating detail.

Then I met someone else who said the same thing happened to their grandmother.

Then another.

Then another.

Um. I was then beginning to wonder whether there was some catastrophic failure in the health and safety features of mangles. Then I googled the title phrase and found out that it is an expression.

I haven't laughed so much since grandma got her tits caught in the mangle.