The Yesterday Telegraph for breakfast

Late again

No great lament shall come of my disappointment when my next visit to Gran Canaria would have me reading yesterday’s The Daily Telegraph for breakfast because it does not arrive on the island till well in the afternoon.

I had written to The Daily Telegraph to complain that an Englishman has the misfortune of not being able to read his daily at breakfast – breakfast on holiday usually starts around 10:00hrs for me.

I can only imagine we are back to some old telegraphy technology, for the speed at which I got a response to what was initially an electronic mail, sent about 2 weeks ago - I did get an apology, so nice of her.

The Reply

The reply came this evening with the following words.

Thank you for your recent email regarding the Telegraph. Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in responding to you.

I understand from your correspondence that you frequently visit Gran Canaria and have noted that The Telegraph is available to purchase around 1pm whereas the tabloids are available to buy much earlier.

The reason for this is that the tabloid newspapers are printed in the Canary Islands and distributed along with the Spanish press; however the Telegraph is printed further away, in Madrid.

Whilst I appreciate that this causes a delay in purchasing the paper and I am sorry if this causes any inconvenience, I regret there are no plans to change our printing site at this time.

May I take this opportunity to thank you for taking the time to contact us and I sincerely hope that you will continue to enjoy reading the Telegraph.

Should you wish to contact us please email telegraphenquiries@telegraph.co.uk or telephone us on 0800 31 66 977. We are available to take your call Monday to Friday 9am-5pm and saturday 9am-1pm.

With kind regards

Definitely not with the times

Boo hoo hoo! I took the time to contact you because I could not get my paper on time, surely, arrangements can be made to ensure that the paper is electronically sent to the Canary Islands and then printed out here to sensibly call it a daily rather than an evening paper - The Evening Standard in London is already out at 11:30AM.

I guess The Daily Telegraph has not recognised that its name does not have to reflect its inability to leverage modern technologies to achieve the possible.

In the end, if I can only get my daily in the afternoon, I surely must not be charged the full whack to read stale news, maybe I should seek solace in the bosom of the Page Three Girl.

The philistines pillaging discretion

The denuding of Shimon

I was saddened as I queued up to board my flight to Stockholm this morning when CNN flashed the news of Shimon Peres the President of Israel dozing off during an interview.

It showed the depths to which we have sunk to in the quest for sensation rather than decent news that people felt showing the Grand Old Man of Israel in such a state of human frailty was worthy of publicity.

Pandering to indignity has become the ratings, interviewing the President and hearing what he had to say before he nodded off or what he would have said when he came to was not more significant, they had a better news story, an opportunity to laugh at an old man – the man is 84 for crying out loud.

Boring people and meetings

I have attended meetings where I have dozed off and sometimes maybe snored and I cannot count how many times those meetings have bored me stiffer than an Egyptian mummy – surely, a man of Shimon Peres’ stature should have been treated with a greater modicum of respect, honour and discretion.

That interviewer should have a career that has reached a dead-end from today, she can interview frogs for all I care, and maybe a croak or two might convey something worthy of contemplation.

They know no discretion

Discretion is a rare virtue nowadays and that was depicted in the CBS’ 60-minutes interview of President Sarkozy of France – he is the president and when a president attends an interview, I doubt if what he wants to talk about is his pending divorce.

The interviewer could not resist the urge to be pointedly indiscreet after he said; he would not use that forum to talk about his wife. When she went on to say that people want to know what was going on, I could only commend the President for terminating the interview, there and then – if the people who want to see the interview are the “Hello”, National Enquirer or trashy tabloid crowd looking for salacious gossip, he had better things to do – and rightly so – Nicolas.

Nosing around my piss

So the star of Formula 1 who was so mismanaged by his team that they lost both the constructor and driver championships wants to leave the UK for Switzerland where he can go for a pee and not have people waiting at the door for urinary autographs – the insatiable appetite of the press for stories that make elevate gossip to sewer news can really drive people to distraction and drive them away from home.

The Diana inquest shows that lessons have not been learnt that feeding idle minds with celebrity tripe does nothing to improve society rather, the self-same golden goose might be killed – unfortunately, the chase is for the moment - forget posterity.

The royal prerogative

One could commiserate with John Simpson when he could not get King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to talk about Iraq or Iran; well people have every right to feel so strongly about a situation that they would keep their counsel, just in case their utterances complicate situations – but the revelation that Saudis provided no matter how trivial the information about the London bombing and felt it was dismissed by the British is a grievance enough to air.

The candour of the king was evident when he said to John Simpson that he did not want to be evasive or dishonest.

My final bouquet goes to the unnamed (now named in Australia) “minor” royal who the Queen is quite fond of who has refused to be blackmailed but called on resources that allowed the dirty blackmailers to be nabbed and charged.

Submitting to the first blackmail attempt is a slippery slope that has you beholding to circumstances that would always be out of your control; come clean quick and you will never be cleaned out.