Paper Monitor
10:29 UK time, Wednesday, 29 August 2012
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
One of Paper Monitor's favourite regular newspaper features is the Daily Express's daily premium-rate telephone poll.
Today, readers are invited (at a charge of 35p plus network operator rates, or 36p from a BT landline) to answer yes or no to the question: "Should those who have never worked get dole?"
Perhaps Paper Monitor is taking a reckless punt, but this columnist predicts the outcome will be North Korea-like in its support for the negative option.
After all, results for yesterday's poll - "do we pay too much council tax?" - were a finely balanced 99% "yes", 1% "no".
(As an aside, Paper Monitor believes there is a PhD thesis to be written about Express readers who participate in these polls by voting for the minority position. Submissions, please, to Prof Monitor c/o the University of Oxford Circus, formerly White City Polytechnic).
However, the was submitted by Dr David J Peters of Eastergate, West Sussex, to the letters page of the Times:
Sir, In 1970, with an obstetric exam looming, I persuaded my brother to act as a foetus and practised delivering him several times through the legs of the piano stool using two soup spoons as forceps. Breech and other difficult presentations were also rehearsed and it was obviously a success as I later gained my diploma.
Perhaps a medical career is not beyond Paper Monitor after all.
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