A Small Hurrah!

Yesterday I went into collect my newspaper from Harry and he cheered me up no end.
He told me that the sales of 'The Daily Mail' have slumped quite dramatically over the past few days.
He did say that all the papers appear to be declining in sales,but 'The Mail;' appears to have been hit the hardest.
Just as an aside he did say that the sales of the 'Chronicle & Echo' were not very good either, and for a local paper that is sad news,but the decline in 'Daily Mail' sales is really excellent news.

'The Mail' has a long history of being the mouthpiece of reactionary ideas,its frantic anti-socialism regardless of facts is a shameful commentary on a newspaper in modern Britain.It does not give news,merely opinion.
It was a fierce critic of the General Strike back in 1926, and has a 100% record in hating Trade Unions.
But then it is also notorious in its support for fascism-'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' was Rothermere's enthusiastic support for Sir Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists

The Mail was even giving away free tickets to Mosley's rally in Olympia, when his black-shirted thugs ran riot and beat up people who heckled the supreme leader.Just read Clin Cross's book on the Fascists in Britain  to understand the vile behaviour of 'The Mails' favourite political movement.
Stopping his speech, turning the spotlight on anyone interrupting and sending his bully boys into the audience to grab the offending member of the audience and sling him(or her) down the concrete steps.
Very British, very patriotic,just the sort of values that made the empire great!
But then Rotheremere was a great British patriot in the fine tradition of his paper, it was a consistent admirer of one small German called A.Hitler-whom it regarded as a patriotic German.
But then 'The Mail' has always had a flexible view of patriotism.

On Facebook this week there has been a flurry of tests asking how 'The Mail' would categorise people on a scale of like to hate. I'm delighted that like millions of other citizens it would hate me as much as it hates Ralph Miliband.
However one thing does depress me, and its a dreadful reality, 'The Mail' and perhaps more specifically 'The Mail on Sunday' does employ some first rate journalists.I suppose that for jobbing writers the lure of big bucks and steady employment,even for an unprincipled vicious bully is reason enough.

My experience of the few 'Mail' journalists I have known they do seem to hold quite right wing,unreconstructed views,but I'm not sure what came first.Were they attracted to work for such a rag because they shared the same political outlook or was it 'just a job'?

I like to think that lurking in the newsroom there might be some closet lefties,but sadly I doubt it.

However if what harry tells me is right, then perhaps, and its a very big perhaps, that if even in such lower middle class areas as Northampton people are turning away from Dacre's paper,then there is indeed hope.
A falling circulation might in turn lead to a falling advertising revenue and who knows?

But if big advertisers like Sainsburys (prop.Lord Sainsbury Labour Peer) and Gordon Brown, who we understand is a chum of Dacre,if they remain schtuum  then the poison will continue unabated.
Rotheremere's old hero Hitler was fond of burning books he didn't approve of-perhaps we need to erect a few funeral pyres of Paul Dacre's squalid organ.