NORTHERN PLANNER

So the first experiment in truth.

.

First of all, it’s a broadsheet, something I’m no longer used to. It felt a bit unwieldy at first, I wouldn’t read it on a train, but it felt delightfully grown up to hold an old style serious paper again.

The Telegraph in brilliantly written. Apart from maybe The Guardian (though I’m biased there) I find it the best written paper in the UK. The sport section is probably the best there is, full of stuff that’s written with the same rigour and attention to detail as the front page stuff. This is not common.

I was mortified at the size of the international section. With only five pages covering not very much, I don’t expect Telegraph readers to know much about life beyond these shores if this there only source of information.

I found the front of paper well balanced and easy to get through. There was just enough detail, but not too much to get through. Overall, the tone seemed fairly well balanced, I felt I was reading facts as opposed to opinions, although I got annoyed at two things and interested in another:

1. The front page headline says, "Brown pledge to challenge Bush over war on terror", when actually he just said that he would speak his mind.

2. On page two, there’s an article about a cabinet minister who has taken a child out of state school and into the private sector. The text begins with ‘LABOUR faced fresh accusations’, not ‘THE GOVERNMENT’.

I was very surprised at the lack of opinion articles. Some would call this a good thing, since a newspaper is, well, about news. I on the other hand quite like this, if it’s not at the expense of space for facts. They have a neat trick of pointing you to comment and opinion online, but when the web can give you instantaneous news, I wonder if the future of papers is more argument in paper and more facts online.

That said, I enjoyed Janet Daley’s article, titled, ‘If the eco snobs had their way. none of us would go anywhere. The thrust of her argument is that just as more people can afford travel, eco issues will price it back out of their reach. She doesn’t think it’s fair that only the rich will be able to afford extensive travel in the future – but my answer is that it’s only know we’ll be paying the full price.

What really worries me is this, "It is certainly possible that the premises of the environmental campaigners are sound: that we are in mortal danger and this is the result of human activity". POSSIBLE!!!??? Isn’t the only argument how bad, not if? She does go on to mention that she’s not a scientist, so won’t put forward a scientific argument (which doesn’r really help her case?), but the  she uses Malthus’ 19th century predictions that only plague, war or natural disaster would save the world from mass starvation in the next fifty years.

Of course, technological innovations saw them through with new intensive farming methods, and she argues that innovation and technology can save us again (if there’s a problem at all) . But for her to argue against doing what we can now, instead of hoping for nuclear fusion or a hydrogen fuel cell seems like madness to me. We got lucky back then, who’s to say that we will this time? This breathtaking complacency astounds me. Of course, we’ve all been wrong before, but her argument seems similar to someone with a lump on his testicle not seeing the doctor, that way he won’t have to worry about having cancer and even if he’s got it, there will be a cure anytime soon, Won’t there?

I enjoyed disagreeing with her, so despite the thin comments, I’ll be coming back to the Telegraph for opinion to test my own bias. I’ll also flick through for some quick news too, it seems fairly well balanced.

One last thing, aesthetics. The typeface and layout make it feel stuffy, old and backwards. or maybe that’s the point.