Too Cold for Comfort

Jesus fuck!  It's cold!  Not as cold as it could be, this time of year, but still uncomfortably cold.  Thankfully, the snow which fell overnight didn't last long and, by lunchtime, had largely been washed away by the (freezing cold) rain.  Of course, the short-lived nature of the snow hasn't stopped the media from scaremongering.  Last week tabloid newspapers had headlines bellowing that we were about to face three weeks of heavy snow which would bring the UK to a halt and make normal life impossible.  As ever, this was utter bollocks, but I'm sure it still worried a lot of people, (apparently there are still people out there who believe what is printed in newspapers).  However, scaring their readers rather than informing them seems to be what most newspapers in this country believe their primary purpose should be.  So I'm expecting to see many more headlines announcing the onset of a new ice age over the next few weeks.

Speaking of newspapers, I noticed that The Guardian whacked its cover price up by another 20p today.  I'm beginning to suspect that The Guardian is trying to make its own predictions about the imminent demise of print media come true by alienating readers of its print edition by continuously pushing up the price of a paper which correspondingly keeps getting thinner with fewer and fewer features.  I know the paper wants us all to use its online version, but the fact is that I can't read that version in the bath, in the car or on the train.  (OK, if I had a smart phone or tablet, I could do the latter but I don't own either and have no intention of owning either.  Besides, reading something on an inconveniently sized screen is quite different to reading real print).  Perhaps I should fight back against this trend by starting a print edition of The Sleaze.  Quite frankly, the way Google is cutting off traffic to sites other those they own and those big brand name sites they get advertising revenue from, it would probably have a fair chance of getting more readers than the website. 

(Speaking of traffic, or rather speaking of measuring it, once again my main stats service has stopped counting traffic in real time.  It is currently running an hour behind.  I'll be lucky if I get any more stats from it today.  I know there is traffic by looking at the back up stats service and server logs.  I'm afraid it has got to the stage where I'm so pissed off that I'm going to name and shame:  Statcounter - it is utter shit.  'Real time stats' should mean just that, not showing the stats from two hours or more ago.  Avoid them like the plague).