The Times gets it in the Neck

The Times of London likes to think it is very superior to all other newspapers. However over the years it has allowed this sense of superiority to lull it into lowering its standards to a disgraceful degree, without really noticing. BUT... WE have noticed, and we are not impressed. They are now employing some of the laziest journalists available in Fleet Street. And it is like incest a Hotbed of Nepotism. They are all related to each other, some OPENLY. A few have the decency to try to mask their relationships, but an alert reader can soon discern that they are married to/ carrying on with/ children of other members of staff. It makes us who would like to get £10million a week for writing a few rubbishy column inches but lack any uncles or godparents etc. on the Times' payroll, very annoyed. I buy the paper most days, only because I like their crossword, but I resent every penny they get out of me. It is currently £1 4s 0d per day which is a lot. They never print my letters that I write them either, the ungrateful fools.

Allow me to give a brief resumé of their supposition, which is that you, the reader, are assumed like themselves to
i) hate Christianity and Christians,   Well I don't. I am very devout.
ii) admire the Beatles,   Wrong! I despise Beatles.
iii) have billions of £ at your disposal,   My personal fortune consists of 2/- and the keys to the family chocolate safe (where the chocolate lives. There is usually nothing in it as the safe is not secure since all the teenagers in the district know where the key is.)

iv) are obsessed with your appearance and diet,   I am not. Any fule can see that.
v) know what quinoa and taichi are and what they are for,   Nope. Not got a clue. 
vi) live in London,   183 miles distant here
vii) avidly follow the football and other sports   No thanks, I can not abide sport.
in short, viii) are a halfwit (a rich and overprivileged one) and are related to a member of staff. 
Adhere to these demands and you will enjoy reading The Times. 

Here is a typical day's layout:

Page 1: usually a hideous photograph of a footballer or other sportsman in an unfortunate pose dominates.

Pages 2 and 3: Advertisement. Waste of paper.

Page 4: Boastful list of contents, plus frivolous reports about serious issues. This is to show the readers that Times writers care NOTHING for the suffering of others. In the bottom left hand corner a useless recipe requiring ridiculous exotic ingredients you have never heard of. The recipes have not been tested and do not work.

Pages 5-26: Home news. Never anything interesting. Occasional pictures of baby animals. Articles on topics of interest to me eg maths, science usually hopelessly ill-informed and badly-written, full of elementary blunders such as calling thoracotomies 'thoracectomies'.

I apologise for including this
but I needed to show you how nasty it is.

Pages 27-29: Trite trivial nonsense from column-writers who really ought to know better. We have NO WISH to hear another word, nay not even in a thousand years, about Matthew Parris's llamas or his young man or his estate in rural Spain. Nor do we want to know some rich nepotism-fuelled young puppy's misguided and infantile views about the political landscape thank you very much. The use of inappropriate present tense is seen here increasingly often, which I view as a very alarming development. Extremely unpleasant and vulgar cartoon fills half of page 29 and here is a sample (right):

Page 30: Opinionated opinion from the leader writers. Only read this if you wish to elevate your BP above safe levels. Also Nature Notes which is written by someone's great-uncle and you can tell he hasn't been outside in years, telling us about out of date things which finished weeks ago due to this year's early spring etc. but since they happened later in the year during 1950 or whenever he actually wrote the column we are given false information about the first sightings of wood anemones and the arrival of spring migrants.

Page 31: Letters from readers. Better than the stuff written by their own people. However as mentioned above, my own contributions are always omitted.

Pages 32-38: World news.

Pages 39-50: Business news. I haven't got any shares or gold or anything so I couldn't care less.

Pages 51-52: Obituaries. The best copy found in the obituaries section is provided by readers themselves, when they write in with their own recollections of the deceased. Court circular (v important. One MUST know where Her Majesty will be at all times).

Page 53:  Births, Forthcoming Marriages and Deaths announcements. Worth seeing as they sometimes bring information about people one knows. 

Weather Report: Concealed somewhere between pages 2-71. Can rarely be located. Why the hell they can't put it somewhere easier to find, eg. front or back page, I do not know.

Pages 55-71: may be safely used for lighting fires. Believed to contain sports news but I never look.

Back Page: a final Sports image with accompanying drivel, and then... at last! The Crossword!

However you still have the sillily named T2 to look through, which contains copy even more fatuous than that in the main paper. Often has a shockingly extreme close-up of some superannuated actress or unshaven footballer on the front cover. Horrible.

Over-indulged hip young columnists infest the pages within, voicing their offensive thoughts and stating such as definite facts in terms calculated to indicate that we must either concur or earn their scorn. They tell us about fashion, medical and psychological matters, food, feminism, London theatre shows and other stuff we don't want to know. They always use phrases banned under G-AHLK guidelines, eg. the term 'movies', 'like' when they mean 'as though', the construction 'just because...doesn't mean'. For the sort of money these people are paid you'd think the editor might employ ones who can use proper English.

Prof Tanya: Grandmothers write in to ask what to do about their daughters-in-law's poor parenting. Prof Tanya's solution always involves telling her that everyone involved is suffering mental health problems and the whole family needs to go into therapy. Often she advises that 2-yr-olds should be given their own bathrooms, and other impractical suggestions. She NEVER says "You are an interfering old harridan and should get out of your grandchildren's lives," which would be the obvious and sensible riposte.

Television and radio listings. Reviewer's choice recommendations help you to know which programmes to avoid.

Back pages : Sudoku (a pointless but entertaining number puzzle), and a new quick crossword they have brought in which means I have more things to distract me from getting on with the housework. The sudokus are graded by difficulty, and I am so clever that I only do the very difficult ones. It is a sign of their shoddy workmanship that often the sudokus are wrongly labelled and the 'difficult one' is so easy that it is an insult to readers' intelligence. 

Look at these stupid sudokus. 'Gentle Killer', what a daft name. Killers should be deadly. However, see how laughably easy this one is.

At £1.20 we expect better, Editor. Get to it.