Peter Viney's Blog

Added on Saturday March 4th 2023. The perfect contrasting headlines …

In Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle there is an ongoing battle between the dictator in the palace, and the holy philosopher (Bokonon) in the jungle. They depend on each other’s existence for their own:

Then I understood that a millenium would have to offer something more than a holy man in a position of power, that there would have to be plenty of good things for all to eat, too, and nice places to live for all, and work for all who wanted it – things Bokonon and I were in no position to provide.
So good and evil had to remain separate; good in the jungle and evil in the palace. Whatever entertainment there was in that was about all we had to give the people.

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, 1963

A friend who taught journalism said ours was the only house where copies of both the Guardian and Mail  were to be found. We used to have both delivered together. We bought The Guardian for its media reviews and general quality (but never bought it on the social work supplement day), and The Daily Mail because we were continually looking for authentic texts for teaching English as a Foreign Language. The broadsheets were too difficult for learners, the tabloids too full of slang and idiom for learners, as well as too addicted to bad puns in headlines, like Welsh Wails whenever there were protests in Wales about something. When we saw a story we thought might be useful, we would check every newspaper’s version at the newsagent’s. Invariably, the Daily Mail was the most suitable for learners in vocabulary and language level. Thats why we had it delivered.

Over the last couple of lockdown years, I’ve been interested in the number of negative comments about Daily Mail readers and Guardian readers. I have a strong conviction that those casting slurs against the other, have not read the rival newspaper in years.

Three papers categorize the populace. Sun readers is used as an insult and means ‘underclass.’

We talk about Guardian readers and Daily Mail readers.  Guardian readers in this context means the liberal, state-employed administrative classes, those teaching in state education, and media employees especially at the BBC. Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle has called The Guardian ‘The North London local newspaper.’ (From experience, I’ll add actors, because the Guardian crossword is the standard way of whiling away times between takes on a film set).

Councils no longer see it as any part of their job to provide what most of us would consider proper public services. They exist to feather their own nests, to create cushy jobs for Guardian readers.

(Andrew Littlejohn, The Daily Mail, 25 February 2014)

The Daily Mail is supposedly staid, Royalist, often older Middle England and Brexiteer.

You know the sort of thing: EXCLUSIVE: Diana thinks Kate is perfect but doesn’t believe Meghan’s the one: confidante reveals the princess still speaks to her from beyond the grave (and even told her to vote Brexit).” Huge thanks to the tireless standard upholders at Mail Online. And we’ll come back to the Mail very shortly … The Mail in particular has run a number of columns by the likes of Janet Street-Porter …

(Marina Hyde, The Princes & The Press. The Guardian, 4 December 2021)

Neither is entirely true (well, the Mail were indeed on the bad side on Brexit), but the paper most fond of talking about Daily Mail readers is the Guardian, and the paper most fond of talking about Guardian readers is The Daily Mail. A Sunday Times review recently said a TV show would appeal to both Guardian and Daily Mail readers. i.e, everybody.

For years the Daily Mail complained that the Guardian’s monopoly on state adverts for administrative jobs in the health service, education, social work and local government amounted to a covert government subsidy. 

Now, the Guardian is categorized as obsessively ‘WOKE’:

Apart from the Guardian, the Daily Mail targets the BBC, and especially Radio 4, which they consider to parallel The Guardian. I’m a BBC defender. I was at a party just before Covid where a Brexiteer railed against the BBC as communists, and a Corbynista railed against the BBC as extremist right-wingers. If both sides of extremity hate you, you’re probably right.

The left categorize The Daily Mail as right-wing. In fact since its change of editors a couple of years ago it has moved much more centrally. It is definitely not a government praise-sheet and lampoons Boris Johnson regularly. My suspicion there is not a moral stance so much as having a preferred candidate for the job waiting in the wings. I also think it’s switched from Gove (who I dislike much more than Boris) to Sunak.

Some days the political affiliations blaze out. They both share the Boris Becker story and the sleazy “Tory MP who watched porn in the House of Commons” – a headline for The Guardian, lesser for The Mail, which adds that his Tory wife is standing loyally by him. The Guardian does not have the story about Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner drinking beer at a social event during lockdown.

On the other hand, The Daily Mail also has a long history of persistent campaigning journalism, such as the call for justice for the Stephen Lawrence murder, and then for the green lobby, the Mail instigated and led the campaign to stop single-use plastic bags in shops. It is definitely no friend of the Metropolitan Police and campaigns against police corruption.

(ADDED LATER: In July 2022 it ran a major article advocating the nationalisation of water companies, and backed it up with a short leading article.) The article could have come from The Guardian.

Currently The Mail is much exercised about civil servants (central and local government) who they believe are not doing enough during Covid and who are unwilling to drop working at home. This view rings bells with the self-employed (who are likely Mail readers). We are planning some work on the house and architects, builders and tree surgeons have all complained to me that they have worked through Covid, either at home or outdoors, but they believe local government officials are doing far less work than their equivalents in private industries and that it is scandalous that simple decisions which used to take six weeks now take six to nine months.

Basically the Mail knows its main readership are not civil servants (I have some sympathy, but I’ve been self-employed since 1980).

Going back to Rod Liddle’s comment that The Guardian was a (North) London local newspaper. Delete ‘North’ but this London-centric aspect was reinforced when The Guardian tried to find out whether ‘Waitrose woman’ (middle-class, Southern and not a fan of Brexit or culture wars) was being won back to Boris Johnson. It did its survey in a Fulham branch in West London, and I suspect the rest of the country would have guessed in advance that it found most shoppers supported Labour or Lib Dem.

I go back to the days when we read both, and it was incredible how often the Mail and Guardian recycled each other’s non-political news stories, often with credit, often the next day or two days later. It went both ways. I’m talking about Widow finds wedding ring she lost while potato picking fifty years ago type of stories. For me, that’s because they spent so much time studying each other looking for something to get offended about.

I believe they need each other.

This hoary old list dates back so far I used to use it with students in the mid 1970s. It still gets repeated.

THAT LIST:

• The Times is read by the people who run the country.
• The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country.
• The Guardian is read by the people who think they ought to run the country.
• The Morning Star is read by the people who think the country ought to be run by another country.
• The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country.
• The Financial Times is read by the people who own the country.
• The Daily Express is read by the people who think that the country ought to be run as it used to be.
• The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it still is.
• The Sun readers don’t care who runs the country as long as she has big tits.

The list pre-dates The Independent or The i, but I’d add The i is read by people staying in hotels or eating in coffee shops, who get it as a free copy.

I’d also add that The Daily Express is far to the right of The Mail, and read by people who like to see daily warnings about imminent extreme weather events.

I’ll also add that no one in Liverpool has read The Sun since its appalling reporting on the Hillsborough disaster.

The Daily Mail has done more than any other paper to ensure that “Woke” is now negative:

The Daily Mail has always had a good Women’s supplement (Femail) and a good Health supplement. Note the line The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. Some years ago, in an argument in Question Time on TV a politician (I don’t recall which one, but someone opposing Conservative … Labour, Respect or SNP) scoffed that ‘the Daily Mail is only read by women,’ that was an OUCH! Putting your foot in your mouth moment if ever there was one, his derision revealing basic misogyny. That was a sharp intake of breath moment in the audience. It may have been connected to the point being made that the Conservatives have had two female leaders and Prime Ministers. Labour have had neither of either, and yet had some of the best female candidates of all.

The Daily Mail is genuinely the most popular paper among women, who find the Page 3 model / Page 3 girl in The Sun / Daily Mirror / Daily Star less appealing than men. Page 3 has featured a topless model in these papers for decades.

2022 October note: The Liz Truss premiership seems to push The Daily Mail considerably further to the right again. There’s jiggery-pokey going on to the extent of inventing the word ‘Wokery.’

Tuesday 7th March 2023

They’re still sniping at each other. It goes both ways.

An extract from the text:

We long ago stopped newspaper deliveries and get different papers on different days. Tuesday (see above) is always The Daily Mail for its health pages. A doctor friend who specialised in nutrition told me that people who read The Daily Mail on Tuesdays knew more about nutrition than the average GP. Saturday will be The Daily Mail, as our second newspaper because their TV Guide is at least as comprehensive as The Radio Times and costs £1.10 rather than £3.75. Let’s add the Monday centre supplement on the weekend’s football. Excellent.

If you shopped at Waitrose and spent£10 you could get the Mail, Guardian, Times or Telegraph free. (Stopped early in 2022). We would always get The Guardian on Friday for music, film and theatre reviews. We always get The Sunday Times on Sunday. Sometimes we try The Observer (as Sunday’s Guardian). We never like it. I really went off one week when we read all the ‘heavies’ and in the wine reviews, the Sunday Times and Saturday’s Telegraph reviewed wines from £7 to £15, while The Observer wines ran £15 to £35. Champagne socialism?

Saturday is the day when the biggest pile of newspapers in shops is The Telegaph, because you get so much of it, though we tend to look at the ad for the supplements before choosing Telegraph, Times or Guardian on Saturday. The Guardian is so expensive on Saturdays … £3.50 … that I would only get it at Waitrose free. Though now we buy it for the excellent Saturday supplement.

As I look for theatre reviews, for many years the two best reviewers were Michael Billington in The Guardian (now retired), and Domenic Cavendish in The Telegraph. If I know a major review is due by Cavendish, I will buy The Telegraph. Always interesting was Quentin Letts in The Mail, because he tended to a contrary view to the consensus (which was well argued). He has moved to The Sunday Times.

Both The Guardian and Daily Mail have successful digital editions without paywalls, both are read widely in the USA. I get heartily sick of running smack into paywalls when trying to check reviews.

If you only ever read one newspaper, you’re in favour of the vicar preaching to the choir.

If you’re a Guardian reader, try a copy of the Daily Mail one day. (I suggest Tuesday).
If you’re a Daily Mail reader, try a copy of The Guardian one day (I’d avoid Wednesday).