Splinters

So there's a new Guardian format out, whoopadydoodaah. And yet curiously enough the paper's website remains the same; fonts'n'all. Given all the publicity they shelled out on their precious new typefaces, I'm surprised they didn't manage to get their site to match the paper on time.

As a matter of fact I'm fairly keen on the paper's new format, slightly weedy headlines not withstanding. One rather flawed new feature however is to allow someone who believes they've been "unfairly treated" in an editorial, to have, not just a letter, but their own COLUMN, every day, to have their own say.

Sounds fair enough, right? But not when it produces the kind of putrid spew that this plutocratic blob of shite from Gate Gourmet comes up with in today's paper.

For the uninitiated Gate Gourmet is an airline food company who's treatment of its workers leaves Dickens' penny-pinching mill-owners in the shade. I'm sure the Mail, Express and Telegraph will do the Gradgrind job of backing up this scum in their editorials, and letting this bastard son of Bounderby have his weaselly little say within their pages without giving the union's point of view. It's a testimony to the Graun's namby-pamby liberal centrist "let's see both sides" approach that they dutifully give this scumball a platform, just because they dared to say a few typically over-cautious words in favour of the strikers.

The truth is not always "somewhere in the middle." Will the BNP and spokesmen for Augusto Pinochet get their chance to get some "balance" in future? There's one advantage an old-fashioned newspaper has over the web format in this context; the satisfaction of ripping it up and chucking it in the bin when it's this putrid.

On the plus side an there's a quite entertaining interview with Gore Vidal in today's issue too. From the little I've read of Gore's fiction writing I can take or leave it, but his wonderfully imperious and arrogant presence in interviews definitely leaves the world a slightly brighter place.