Paper Monitor
11:06 UK time, Monday, 23 June 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Happy first anniversary, Mr Prime Minister. Well, one says "happy" but Gordon Brown may have started the day with hand to furrowed brow, relieved to have made it this far after the kerfuffle of the past 12 months.
A leader in the Times has some sage advice for the PM: "Here is some bedside reading to instruct his thinking and stiffen his resolve from someone who surely has his best interests at heart."
Who might this concerned wellwisher be - the editor? Rupert Murdoch? But so far as Paper Monitor knows, the Australian tycoon has not gone out of his way to woo the present incumbent of 10 Downing St.
No, the five books on the list are all by Gordon Brown. "For the answer to his problems as Prime Minister, namely the character of his leadership, lies within."
Let's face it, the only person likely to pack a tome such as Moving Britain Forward: Selected Speeches 1997-2006 for their summer reading is Gordon Brown himself.
Meanwhile, in Saturday's Guardian, a classic example of when spellcheck goes wrong. Or a Freudian slip. Reviewing the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Bill Gates: How a Geek Changed the World, Sam Wollaston notes that it took "two years of negotiation with Microscope to secure the interview". Now, this ain't a substitution that Word spellcheck makes. Paper Monitor would make a joke at the Grauniad's expense, but people in galss houses...
And Max Hastings pens a heart-felt on how the country's descent to hell in a handcart is because of over-use of four-letter words: "Every time TV chef Gordon Ramsay screams obscenities on screen, he kicks civilised values between the legs." This, from a publication which last week ran a piece which used the sweary chef's favourite expletive 30 times. In a single article.
The Daily Mirror, too, is up to its usual tricks, claiming "EXCLUSIVE!" on an article which rehashes tonight's Panorama on the Primark factories caught using child labour, illustrated with a still familiar to anyone who has seen trailers for the show.
And in the Sun, a hubby's dilemma of what to get his wife for her birthday solved... a new body. Ah, yes, liposuction and new boobs for the missus - a gift that just keeps on giving.
The 
