News is a funny old thing. The supply of it is highly erratic; sometimes weeks go by and nothing much happens except some idle speculation about Tony Blair standing down, and other weeks so much happens all such thoughts are buried in the deepest recesses of our collective mind. The demand, however, stays the same, with a finite amount of news space in the papers and room for the same amount of stories on TV. It’s not like they ever decide to publish a supplement because there is too much news to fit in the main paper, and there is seldom an extended 10 o’clock news on BBC, cutting into Jonathan Ross. Another funny thing is how they manage to churn out a full paper on a Monday – what the hell happens on a Sunday worth commenting on? But when I buy the Guardian (my paper of choice on a Monday, due to the Media bit and G2 ‘review of the reviews’) there is always lots of news about a speech Gordon Brown will make about something nothing to do with the economy, or about some radical new plan to shake up immigration.
Does the news matter? Not really. When you are on holiday and don’t read any of it do you feel any worse? I suppose it gives you something to talk about in job interviews and during long days in the workplace. It also informs you of where wars are, so you don’t organise your next human rights convention in
