NORTHERN PLANNER

I had a conversation on the phone last night with an old friend. It doesn’t matter what it was about, but it reminded me that when you get older, friends become like family.

I don’t mean in the surrogate family sense – you know young people who have all moved away to different cities –  but real family. People you’ve grown to love and belong with – like it or not

At some point in your life you realise there’s some people you know better than anyone. You have a shared history that no one else will ever match. Others have come and gone along the way, but these are the people you’ve chosen to be your friends for life, consciously or not. They’re not perfect, they wind you up but you love them anyway. Just like your real family.

  It’s a wonderful, comforting thing, but like all relationships, it needs work. With marriage, kids, work and whatever else, it’s easy to neglect them, just like you sometimes forget to call Mum. But, apart from Mrs Hovells, I don’t laugh with anyone like I laugh with my lot, no one else ‘gets me’ and accepts my faults. I’m odd, always have been, so are they and that’s a real joy.

One’s thing for sure, the days of Piers Morgan are well and truly over. A while back he tried to make the Mirror a more serious paper and cover issues in depth. Sales plummeted.

No wonder then that the front page is devoted to Leona from the X Factor. Most of the paper is devoted to the gossipy lifestyle stuff we saw in the Mail, in fact the only real difference is that The Mirror is clearly pitched at a lower income bracket. The sport is virtually all football hyperbole with some racing thrown in.

Interesting on page two, which is like a longform contents page with a precis of what will be covered – basically sport, showbiz and opinion. The news bit is a couple of snapshots not covered elsewhere.

This is where The Mirror first reveals it’s loyalties. ‘Blair to make his personal plane journeys carbon neutral’ and ‘a massive 95% cut in government websites will be launched today …to slash red tape…and give a better service to the public’. That’s it.

Two news pages. One devoted to the US air strikes at the Al Qaeda tatgets in Somalia. The title, ‘PAYBACK’. Interestingly, the other page is scathing article on the home office. Sounds like they’re not so loyla after all, except a caption reads ‘Mr Reid has demanded a majot probe’. ‘A probe is already underway to discover how he was left in the dark’. In other words, it’s not the government’s fault and they’ll sort it out. Neat.

As for Kevin Maguire, with the only ‘news opinion’ in the paper, he has a pop at Cameron glossing over his priveledged background and manages to turn the Ruth kelly private school affair into a pop at the Tories as well, as ‘the small band defending (her)splurging of £15,000 to buy private tuition….is dominated by Tories’. ‘do not underestimate (Gordon Brown’s) fury over the row she triggered. Very clever.

So the is perfectly pitched to it’s audience. Lots of interest and lifestyle. Nothing wrong with that, it’s what sells, but what little real news there is little more than thinly veiled propaganda. The only reason I prefer it to The Mail is that it doesn’t use limited, bent facts to prove it’s argument.

‘Let’s see what’s out there’.

Jason’s got an interesting quote on planning. Gemma’s new blog is already a place for useful advice like this and this. Love have some sober reflections on the future. Interuption is a word you here a lot these days, Marcus has a post that gives another perspective and is also a cracking read. One Woman Running is planning coffee for young creatives, but planners don’t seem to like any coffee morning without them and are muscling in. Jason from LB Toronto has interesting thoughts on how to treat your target audience. Now that Rob Mortimer has got broadband sorted, he’s rearing himself away from the Wii and posting regularly again. His review of last year is up to the usual Mortimer standards. This post from Helen about episodic storytelling made me thing about the value of a good story. Beeker’s having fun with unplugged night. JamesB continues to give us meaty stuff to think about, like this post on human relations and materialism. Rob is scared of the Iphone and he’s got some wide observations on the rubbish they sell in airports. Finally, Scamp has some good advive on getting to meet creatives and meeting Gwen Yip. Good for teams after their first job, great for planners looking for ways to develop relationships in other departments,

I tried, I really tried. But the headline of yesterday’s Daily Mail didn’t start us off well. The leader screamed, "A lesson in hypocrisy" and went on to describe the alleged double standards of Ruth Kelly (cabinet minister) who’s is sending her child to a £17,000 a year private school. The rights or wrongs of this are up to you, maybe you think people in government are honour bound to make an example, maybe you think people have the right to do what they think is best for the kids. But the tone of the article persuades you to one point of view only.

The rest of the news section carries on in pretty much the same way, I can honestly say that I find it hard to find out what happened yesterday. Most of it is argument, with few facts. When there are facts, they are skillfully used to highlight one side of the story. This is fine for editorial of course, but not for the ‘news’ section (in my opinion).

For example, there’s an article that discusses the rise in the cost of living. The headline reads, ‘The sums that sink Labour’s (notice Labour. not government) claim of 2.7pc inflation rate’ – before you go further they’re making your mind up for you. The government puts the rise in the cost of living since 1997 at 15%. It’s based on the retail price index, which they rightly point out leaves out housing costs and council tax.

But here’s the rub. ‘The tories say that the typical family is paying £9, 925 more in mortgage payments. in tax…..’. There are more things the tories say, but notice that the government figures are official, yet the Tories ‘claim’. But this ‘sinks Labour’s 2.7% claim’. Now they move on to state some figures, but this is in the last third of the article where most attention spans have gone. Helen suggested that part of this little project should include Andrew Marr’s excellent book, A short History of Journalism and I think she’s right. For now, one thing I remember is that articles are designed to get the story out in the first paragraph, as the further someone reads, the less likely they are to take it in. People skim the first para and decide to move on, or not. One last thing, nowhere do they mention what the rise in average income is compared to the rise in the cost of living, and anyway, mortgages have risen with the free market, surely a Daily Mail staple? Or they after a bigger state?

The comment section is huge. There’s David Seymour convinced that pay as you throw rubbish collections are a money making wheeze, not about recycling. He may have a point, but at least it will encourage us to waste less. A good thing surely.

The Mail then comes into its own, with about 15 pages of Hello magazine type gossip, style, diets and health. If you thought The Mail wasn’t a housewives paper, this should change your mind.

Then the sport falls in to the trap of the front of paper. Less results and analysis, more headlines,and mostly football.

So overall, I got what I was expecting. Opinion, lifestyle and and little else. But  of course, bearing in mind the audience, it’s easy to say this is fine, it’s what they think, so give them what they want. It does become a bit frustrating when these factoids get quoted to you though in conversation though.

I like this post on the Howies blog about songs to makem you run faster, and the selection was good too. I can’t run anymore (thanks to worn out hip cartiledge) but I do swim, so I demand someone makes a decent personal music player for the pool. Or is there one already?

Her indoors has her birthday four days before me, so we had a big birthday bash at the weekend , leaving yesterday as a nice quiet day. I finally got to watch The Thick Of It, which was absolute genius.

I got lots of books, CD’s and stuff which was jolly nice.

Mrs Hovells is very good at choosing clothes.

Good wine is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

As is Mrs Hovells’s lasagne. Is there anything more heavenly than the smell of slowly frying garlic?

So the first experiment in truth.

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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.

Next northern planning summit is in Leeds January 18th.

It’s at Arts Cafe and we’ll have grown a bit. 7 While everyone else is having coffee, we may indulge in something a bit stronger. Simon Griffin from Love in Manchester will be joining us, which may mean an expedition over the pennines in the near future, it’s only fair. I’ll be looking forward to grilling him about Yorkshire Tea.

JamesB may be staying at mine. Don’t know what he’s expecting (although there is vague mention of full English), the first time we met ended up sleeping in his own garden. We haven’t put the tent away from summer yet, might not bother now just in case.

Scott’s got these mini city models in the office. I’ve gone on about architecture before, as has Famous Rob. It’s funny how no matter the high street’s may get homogised up close, the individual character shines through when you step back a bit. It’s just a bunch of shapes, yet you instantly recognise:

Paris

New York

London