Save the Papers!

The other day, I went to read an article written by a journalist working for The Sunday Times on their website (I hadn't bought the paper as The Independent on Sunday is my Sunday paper of choice). I was slightly dismayed to discover that if I wanted to read any of their articles it would cost me between £1-£6 per week. But then, when I thought of it, the cost was justified. By going on the internet to read the news, I was adding to the slow but inevitable death of the newspaper.

Funny thing for me to talk about, don't you think? A teenager growing up in the age of the internet, practically born with a phone in one hand. Yet for a few years now, I've read the paper every night before going to sleep. At first The Sun, before moving on to The Independent, and now the i (since day two!). It's something I don't even register nowadays, just a force of habit, a daily occurrence, like eating breakfast or making tea as soon as I get home.

As the internet has become more widespread, and the idea of instant news has become more commonplace. Why buy a newspaper for £1 when you've read everything on Twitter? Why read all the news that's broken late night yesterday when you can read news that's broken five minutes ago? Newspapers are becoming worryingly redundant as more people turn to the internet.

So why do people still bother? A main problem with this internet is that with so many sources, it's hard to know who to trust. Who's reliable, who's biased, who's parroting rumours, etc. Reporting the facts has been done in so many ways it's dissolved into slush. We need newspapers (and their articles posted online) to give us quality reporting. Our lives would be dominated by pathetic gossip that's difficult to trust and impossible to regulate.

An industry like newspapers has been around for many, many years. Measures like paying to read stories on the internet are just a response to change, a method of keeping their heads above water. Annoying, yes. Necessary, yes.

Lego

Yesterday, my mum bought me some lego. No occasion, just some lego. Apparently, I can make it into three different shapes! Planes, boats, cars! A world of imagination, for under £4!

When I was younger, I won a competition. I had to build an object out of lego, so I built a spaceship. As a prize, I won "Clickits" (A whole week before they came out nationwide!), and a big tub of lego. Sadly, I don't have the tub anymore, but I do have memories of endless days of lego building.

Lego is great fun, at any age. It's one you can never resist playing, no matter who you are and who you're playing with. It's also bloody expensive, when you get the branded stuff. Lego Star Wars a key example (You can get anything in Star Wars brand these days). For a kit building the Millennium Falcon, they want over £100 for it! No thanks, I'd rather spend my money on books.

But no-one really cares whether or not it costs extortionate amounts, because when the plastic is torn off the packet, and the little pieces are strewn across the carpet, nothing really matters except the lego. All the pieces of an impossible puzzle, with a terrible instruction guide that you wouldn't understand even if you were paid.

At the end of the day, no-one cares about the lego. They don't care about the hours of fun that ensue. But they bloody well care about the pain that shoots through a bare foot in the middle of the night.