I see the newspapers are in trouble.

I can't say I am surprised, and while I'm not exactly delighted, I'm not shedding too many tears either.

I have always been aware of newspapers.  Whether it was the parents bringing home The Irish Times every day and The Observer on Sunday [yes – my parents were very upper crust!] or whether it was the calls of "heraldormailorpress" from the paper boys around Dublin.  When the papers had been read they were recycled for wrapping rubbish, serving chips and in some houses even used as jax paper [but not ours – as I said – we were upper crust and used those slabs of greaseproof paper that just smeared the stuff all over your arse].

The problem with newspapers is that they are too damned one sided.  Just as an example, they have been full lately of the "plain packaging" story with at least a couple of items a day.  Every single article has taken the view that this is "the right thing" and I haven't seen a single item to counter the arguments.  Equally there has been a fair bit about the protests against Irish Water and the jailing of protesters, and again the main papers are pumping out the line that the protesters are low grade criminals and completely missing the point that people are being jailed for exercising their right to protest.

So along comes the Interweb and people at last have an opportunity to see opposing sides to the arguments.  I grant that Cyberspace is full to the brim with crackpots, conspiracy theorists and cranks, but there are also many well informed, rational commentators who are able to give a balanced view.  I'm not sure where people would place me in that spectrum, but I do endeavour to source my material from the well informed crowd rather than the crackpots.

The Irish Times has announced that it's going behind a paywall from Monday.  I suppose it's a logical step to try to cut their losses as they at least recognise that people are now using the Interweb as a news source rather than the printed version.  It doesn't bother me as they apparently are going to allow us to read ten items a day and then try and charge us for eny extra items.  I believe it's simple to get around though – to read beyond the ten items, just open a new "private" window in your browser and voila – access to the next ten items.

My only problem is what am I going to wrap my chips in?

And what am I going to wipe my ……..

Oh never mind.