Can Bloggers Benefit From Press Collapse?

It's ironic that this year the print media has been full of the imminent death of newspapers.
Media companies have been hammered by a combination of continuing falls in newspaper sales and sharply lower advertising revenues, largely blamed on the recession.
The truth is that for the past five years newspaper sales have been in decline and the recession has only expedited the downfall.
Enders Analysis, the Media research service, has announced that they expect as many as half of the UK's local and regional newspapers to shut within the next five years and they see casualties in the national titles as many are running at a loss and are only being sustained by the good graces of their owners.
The Guardian Group are mulling over pulling the Observer and the Independent has been on life support for some time and is widely expected to be the first to pull down the shutters.
Press journalism is facing an array of tough decisions as to how to respond and at the moment it is not answering the questions with any conviction.
Some newspapers have raised the cover price to make up the shortfall from their regular readers while others have slashed the price to attract more to their title. It will be interesting which of these two business models succeed.
Other titles have moved away from the traditional idea of reporting news in favour of sex, scandal and celebrity. The Daily Star has taken this route, along with a price cut, and has seen sales increase by 20%.
The Murdoch press is still formulating plans to charge for accessing the information on their websites, a plan that it is hard to see as achievable as the abundance of free information sources online mean that readers cannot be expected to pay for access to news. The situation is even worse in Britain due to the BBC's mandate to remain free. With an online operation that is publicly funded it skews the UK's media landscape away from paid-for online news entirely.
Advertising revenue collapse, falling sales, 24 hour news stations, the availability of free online news sources and the fight over those willing to pay to fill the white space between the articles means newspapers will inevitably close or at the very least instigate a major overhaul of how they operate.
To some this is not seen as a negative thing, merely inevitable and part of the process of technological and social evolution.
The biggest winners are going to be those with the deepest pockets and altruistic owners but online media, and bloggers in particular, could become a vital part of the new shape of information sharing.
If groups from the tens of millions of bloggers can get their act together and offer up a single website with bloggers contributions and an equal share of the profits to contributors, then they could step in to fill the inevitable gap that is swiftly due to open up.

Back To The Future

I don't know if it's the bus fumes but i do find myself thinking some strange things while sitting in traffic.
What would happen if the world began spinning around the other way?
How many syllables are there in the word horse?
If a surgeon was stranded on a desert island with his surgical tools, how much of himself could he eat?
What did the first person who milked a cow think he was doing?
If i took out my eyes and pointed them at each other, what would i see?
I'm usually sent spinning back to reality by abuse by angry drivers queuing behind me but today i saw an advert for the Time Travellers Wife and i've spent the day pondering what i would do if i could go back in time?
There has been so many films and books about time travel that it is obviously something that has been pondered by many others.
The general theme seems to be to go back and change history in your favour with a person you regret not copping off with at the time or to quote Quantum Leap, to put right what once went wrong.
Yes, that's all very worthy but in reality, i guess the first thing anyone would do is to scrape together as much money as possible and rush down to the bookies.
Maybe after we have made enough money to afford a man to squeeze out our toothpaste for us every morning, our minds may turn to other things.
I'd like to turn up at a record company in 1988 with my guitar and sing them every song that has made number one since 1990 or go to a publisher with a book idea about an island full of dinosaurs that have been resurrected from some pre-historic DNA in tree sap. I'd probably nick the Da Vinci Code and claim it for myself also.
Righting what once went wrong would have to wait, i'd have the back catalogue of REM and Guns 'N' Roses to play to some pony tailed record executive first. Two songs i would make sure i put my name to are 'Time of your life' by Green Day and 'Losing my Religion' by REM.
I'd also pop a letter in the post to Princess Diana and tell her that that she might want to give that Paris trip a miss in 1997.

Happy Birthday Billy Ray Cyrus

Before he become known for playing the father to his real life daughter in Hannah Montana, the name Billy Ray Cyrus here would lead to a quick burst of 'Achy Breaky Heart' and then a derogative remark about mullets.
Little did us Brits know that far from pollute our charts with that one song and then disappear off to spawn the offspring to stink up our charts over a decade later, he was a pretty big noise stateside.
Now i'm no fan of country music. It seems to be all about someones dog dying or their lover running off and taking the car but apparently over 20 million albums were sold to Stetson wearers across the globe.
How many songs he actually sang about cars, dogs and his lover leaving him i don't know and don't much wish to find out but he is famous now for acting with his daughter, Miley Cyrus.
To be fair to him, he ain't no Dustin Hoffman but he does okay which is more than can be said for his god awful offspring.
Obnoxious, shouty and annoying, i decided i didn't like her when she appeared on Johnathon Ross's chat show to promote her film earlier this year and dissed the Queen. Actually, it was Helen Mirren but she's probably more popular than the Queen. Not only did she refuse to say her name when they were on the show together, referring to her only as 'Her', she said that she didn't need any acting advice from her. I've seen you act Miley, i'd take the advice when offered sweety.
Horrible kid and i bet she ends up running off with your car and running over your dog in the process Billy.
Hey, you could write a song about it when she does.

Scotland Boycott

The Scottish justice's decision to release Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the terrorist behind the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, has prompted a "boycott Scotland" campaign, echoing the gloriously over the top French boycott when they refused to play along with the Iraq War fiasco.
Americans are being urged to cancel any pending travel plans to Scotland, stop buying Scottish products and stop doing any form of business with companies from Scotland.
A website has been set up featuring a list of e-mail addresses for prominent Scottish politicians, as well as contact details for Scottish newspapers and a list of Scottish products and companies. One call i have heard is for Scotch whisky to be renamed as Freedom Liquor. Have to admire the amount of imagination that went into that one.
The site says a boycott is the 'only way to send a clear and direct message' of American anger over the decision.
It's particularly ironic as Scotland is about to embark on a massive US advertising campaign for the Year of Homecoming in an attempt to attract American with Scottish roots to visit Scotland.
I'd love to see Americans boycott all things that come from Scotland. You will have more rooms in your front rooms without that television and you would have to unplug that phone and your hospitals would save a fortune not having to pay for penicillin or anaesthetic.
Luckily for you, MacDonald's just sounds Scottish so you can still go there.

Dude Looks Like A Lady

What a mess the athletic governing body is making over the South African 800m runner Caster Semenya. They have asked the athlete to undertake a gender test to establish whether to title the letters Mr or Miss and have hired a barrage of doctors including a gynaecologist, an internal medicine expert, an expert on gender and a psychologist to find out.
A result is not expected for months but they could have taken 6 easy tests in a single afternoon and it all would have been wrapped up before tea.

1 - The picture test. Show them a picture of a beautiful, scantily clad woman. If Caster starts drooling and a pervy grin appears across their face and they mutter incoherently when you talk to them, its a dude. If Caster comments on how her roots need doing and those red shoes don't go with those stockings, then it's a female.

2 - The grudge Test. Simply ask Caster if there is anybody they dislike. If there are less than 3 then it's a he. If there are over 50 going back to that ginger girl who stole that red crayon from me at nursery school or the woman who handed me my change in a way i didn't much care for in Asda in 2001, then it's a she.

3 - The Barbecue Test. Fire up a barbecue and leave the grill unattended for 30 seconds. If on your return Caster is seated in the same place and showing no interest in the cooking burgers, then she's a lady. If on your return Caster is flipping over the burgers and warning people to stand clear as they squirt more fuel onto the glowing bricks, then he's a man.

4 - The Car Test. Stand the South African in front of a car and open the bonnet and ask Caster to check the oil. If Caster looks blankly back at you and asks for the phone number of the AA, it's a lady.

5 - The IKEA Test. Hand over a flat pack bedside cabinet and observe. If Caster carefully reads through the instructions and calmly constructs the cabinet, it's Miss. If Caster rips open the packaging, hits it about with a hammer, swears and complains that the holes don't line up for 20 minutes before realising that they have the wrong bit, it's Mr Semenya.

6 - The clock Test. Ask Caster to meet you at a designated place at a certain time. If they arrive fifteen minutes late, they are a woman.

See how easy it could have been.

Gamers

Gamers have a hard time of it most of the time. Nobody seems impressed when they reach the 37th level on Killzone 2 and nobody has ever got a date on the strength of being able to complete Grand Theft Auto Vice City.
As if gamers don't have a bad enough image already, now the researchers for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have compiled a profile of gamers and its not pleasant reading for anyone who has '5 times Champion on Tiger Woods PGA Tour' on their CV under accomplishments.
The researchers found that they had an average age of 35, are often overweight, introverted, are more likely to suffer depression, are less outgoing with less developed social skills than non-gamers.
Nice, calling them fat social lepers will work at lifting their depression and get them out of the house but science may have found a solution and confusingly its computer games.
Researchers at the East Carolina University have discovered that some games actually reduce tension and stress with just enough mental challenge to keep people occupied while putting them into a state of relative mindlessness. That state appears to have health benefits and has a salutary effects on any mental problems such as depression.
Video games, causing the mental health problems and then solving them.

I Just Don't Get It

I have enough problems juggling my own finances without trying to work out how nations run there's but the figures just don't add up.
How can Britain be the sixth richest country in the World when we have a debt of 2.2 trillion?
The USA tops the richest nation league but has a debt of 11 trillion while the second placed Japan owes 7.5 trillion.
Someone, somewhere must be lending out all this money because where else are we getting it from unless we are getting things on credit on some sort of global buy now, pay later scheme.
The eight richest countries are USA (11tn debt), Japan (8tn debt), China (400bn debt), Germany (2tn debt), France (1.5tn debt), UK (2.2tn debt), Italy (2tn debt) and Russia (200bn debt). That's 7 of the G8 countries so we can throw in Canada and their 1tn debt and that's all of the countries that steer the world finances seriously in debt.

My questions are:
1. Where are we all borrowing this money from?
2. How can the richest countries be such when they owe out so much money?
3. How did we get our finances into such a mess in the first place?
4. How are we going to pay it all back?
5. Who are we to tell anyone how to run their country when we can't even run our own finances?
6. Why are we not demanding the resignation of such incompetent money men?

Our Shame Over Lockerbie Bombers Release

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is the Libyan convicted of killing 270 people in the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. He was sentenced to serve a minimum of 27 years and is presently serving his time in Greenock prison in Scotland.
I say presently because all the signs are pointing towards him being released tomorrow on compassionate grounds as he has terminal cancer.
I have yet to meet anyone who agrees with even thinking of releasing him back to Libya, the overwhelming thought being that he didn't show any compassion to the people he killed twenty years ago so let him rot in his cell, a sentiment i agree fully with. The other thought is why are we even dealing with Colonel Gadaffi who is suspected of calling for the attack in the first place and was arming the IRA for decades.
What is interesting is that far from being whispered by the media, the idea that British Government is leaning on the Scottish justice minister because this is ALL ABOUT OIL CONTRACTS IN LIBYA is being trumpeted loud and clear.
Libya is reported to hold the largest amounts of oil and gas in Africa and Britain's largest oil company, BP, has contracts potentially worth billions to drill for it.
The attack killed 35 students from Syracuse University in New York and Scottish authorities are facing opposition to his release from the US Government and the relatives of the American victims not to release the bomber from jail.
The Scottish government confirmed that an announcement would be made in Edinburgh at 1pm tomorrow saying: "We've a strong justice system in Scotland, and people can be assured that the justice secretary's decisions have been reached on the basis of clear evidence and on no other factors."
As reports from Scotland have told of Strathclyde police rehearsing a small convoy of police outriders and a vehicle with blacked-out windows driving from Greenock prison to Prestwick airport, we can be assured that once again, oil is behind another massive miscarriage of justice.
As we have showed before with dealings with the Saudi Arabians, Britain will whore itself out for a slice of the oil pie.
What our Government, and the Scottish Government, is about to do is downright shameful.

What To Do With Zombies

I expect that at some time or another, we have all been accosted by a demon or a creature of the night and wondered just what we should do. Luckily, the Canadians have been on it.
Usually if the words 'Scientific research shows' appears at the start of a news item, i turn the page quicker than it takes to read the words 'scientific research shows' but finally the boffins have came up with something that is useful.
The University of Ottawa and Carleton have discovered that a zombies attack would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.
In their study, the researchers set out to answer the question 'If there was to be a battle between zombies and the living, who would win?'
The conclusion was that we would if we "hit them hard and hit them often" adding "It's imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else we are all in a great deal of trouble."
Now if we put to one side the obvious question of just how much of a soft touch must the people who hand out research grants in Canada be, we should give the question of fighting the undead some thought.
Zombies always seemed a bit rubbish to me. Slow, clumsy and easy to keep outside of biting distance.
Much more of a challenge would be vampires but they can be kept at bay by making the sign of a cross and if for some bizarre reason you can't do that, just make sure you are standing in sunlight and they are kept kicking their heels in the shade while you flick matches at them. Night may be a different story though and you probably should raid the local church for holy water to keep by your bed.
Probably the worst kind of undead we could be over-run by would be werewolves. I hardly think the thing would stop and twiddle its claws while we fashioned a silver bullet out of our jewellery so the University of Ottawa should concentrate on how to defeat them instead of Zombies. Maybe it will get a bit of time after it's latest groundbreaking research on 'The Pope: Is he Catholic?'

British Medals For British Athletes

I always think that us Brits cheat when it comes to events like the World Athletics Championships.
Rather than compete as England or Wales, we lump 4 countries together and call it team GB or something which seems unfair on everyone else. That said, we still suck so nobody kicks up too much of a fuss.
Maybe if we could ditch Ireland, Wales and Scotland and choose 3 other countries to pal up with we would do much better.
Before the events even began we knew that the Caribbean countries would clean up in the short distance sprinting while the Africans would leave us panting in their wake in the long distance.
The East Europeans would snatch up the medals in the throwing events which just leaves us scrambling over the events where you have to run and jump.
As we proved at the Olympics, us Brits only excel at the events where you can sit down at the same time so we got the golds at cycling and rowing events.
All this doesn't bode well for us at our own London Olympics in 2012 but i had a brainwave while watching the BNP thugs in action over the weekend.
For three weeks only, we should take a leaf out of the BNP book but instead of British jobs for British workers, British medals for British athletes.
Every British athlete gets first choice of medal that he or she wants and whatever is left, the rest can share out among themselves.
If we can start a campaign now, highlighting the frightening prospect of foreign athletes, coming over here and taking all our medals, in stadiums that the hard working British worker have paid for with their tax contributions, we could clean up.
I'm sure we could bring David Cameron into the fold, he isn't one to miss jumping with abandon onto any bandwagon that happens to be trundling past him and as a right winger, well, you expect him to come up with ludicrous ideas anyway and this is as ludicrous as it gets.
British medals for British Athletes...it's the only way.