Odds and sods

Also on the front page today is an article entitled "Phone giants say call for price rules could backfire". It's a definite area of public interest, although the story template that is "Large, dominant firms argue that regulation is bad" is a bit uninformative.

What I found particularly interesting* was the reporter's use of scare quotes around words that really didn't need them. For example, you probably don't need to call termination rates "termination rates" - that's just what they're called. More to the point, why did she feel the need to put "big two" (of mobile phones, Vodafone and Telecom) and "duopoly" in quotes? Would anyone seriously claim that they don't constitute a duopoly (depending, at least, on how 2 Degrees fare)? Talk of customers being "ripped off" by the "big two" is more of a value judgement, but if you put it on Your Views then I think most people would tend to agree.


*Not that interesting really.

------------------------------

Perhaps someone could submit this article from page A3 to Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington's Monkey News? Or just shoot me in the head:

Minty, the free-roaming capuchin, is on the loose again - but it may not be a case of monkey business on her part this time.

...

------------------------------

So, you know, hassling Your Views is too easy because anyone can go on and write whatever bigoted, nonsensical stuff they like. Not like the Readers' Forum (the letters page to you and me):

Gays are supposed to have an empathy that Chris Carter clearly lacks. An empathy that might have had more regard for the single-income families with three children whose tax dollars fund his lifestyle. Families that get nothing for nothing from nobody.

Rob Harris, Upper Hutt

I shouldn't really have to do this, but here goes:

• "Gays"? Really? In 2009?
• They are supposed to have empathy, are they? Other things that "gays" are supposed to have, according to what I learned from American sitcoms: high-pitched voices; tight pants; good, if flamboyant, fashion sense.
  
• The last sentence isn't a sentence, it's a fragment - a fragment containing a triple negative that makes the writer sound like a grumpy six-year-old.

Come on, Herald: I know you're trying to cut staff, but just because the person in charge of selecting the letters for publication is sick doesn't mean that you just get a temp to bung in the first ones out of the mailbag.