I know that it’s practically the job description for newspaper columnists to spout complete nonsense, but Janet Street-Porter really annoyed me in today’s Independent On Sunday.
(I’d link to the article, but the brief intro you can get on the Indie’s website doesn’t include it. Brilliantly, The Indie charges a pound for a single article – the printer paper only cost me around £1.70 and I got a lot more than a single article. You can buy a subscription, but I prefer not to. Still, The Indie’s Ivan Fallon calls newspapers giving away their content “insane“. Indeed reading that article in the Press Gazette, Fallon’s not rushing to do anything. Who’s website do we think is making more revenue? The Independent’s or The Guardian’s? I wonder….)
Someone somewhere has suggested using some of London’s parks as campsites during the 2012 Olympics. Street-Porter thinks this is mad because we’re building lots of hotels and if visitors can afford Olympics tickets then they should be able to afford a hotel.
Clearly Street-Porter’s not stayed in London hotels on her own penny recently. London remains one of the world’s most expensive cities. Poor quality hotel rooms can easily top £100 per night. Yet the average price of a 2012 ticket will be £40, with tickets starting at £15. Nevermind free events like the marathon, cycling and walking.
The Olympics will see visitors from all over the world – in particular they’ll include visitors from poorer nations and continents. They’ll only be able to afford to camp. The London parks may or may not be good places to put camp sites, but we are going to need them. London has uniquely few campsites for a Western European capital city. And Street-Porter is a renowned rambler too!
Seriously, I was always told that if you haven’t got anything sensible to say, say nothing.