Paper Monitor
12:39 UK time, Wednesday, 11 November 2009
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Once upon a time they were rivals, but in recent years the fortunes of the once-mighty Daily Express and the currently-mighty Daily Mail have diverged.
But today Paper Monitor is reminded that they can still sing from the same hymn sheet.
On page 12 of the Express and page 14 of the Mail there are full page opinion pieces that, while not identical twins, are certainly hard to tell apart.
The Express headline reads:
That in the Mail says:
And the confluence of the opening paragraphs is eerie.
In the Mail:
"When it comes to my general disdain for Gordon Brown the politician, I yield to few people. I deplore almost everything he has done in the past two years as Prime Minister, and the ten years before that as Chancellor."
And over in the Express:
"This newspaper yields to nobody in its low opinion of Gordon Brown's leadership of the country. We said when he first became Prime Minister that he was not fit to do the job and have been taking him to task for his multiple failings ever since."
So, just to clarify, nobody is yielding.
The pieces are both about the Sun's attack on the state of Gordon Brown's handwriting, revealed in the letter to bereaved mother Jacqui Janes, who lost her son in Afghanistan.
And both take roughly the same position: Brown rubbish leader, letter very messy, hats off for writing to all the bereaved, Sun nasty.
The Mail's leader goes even further than the opinion piece by Stephen Robinson. when it says:
"So wasn't there something discreditable about the way this private conversation was recorded and published as part of a campaign against his conduct of the war?"
The 
