I was in a WH Smith branch (a High St newsagents for anyone not from the UK still reading this "debate") yesterday and saw they had a whole shelf of own brand publications about the royals.There was one for each of the main players, complete with suitably regal looking portrait picture on the front cover. What made me smile though was that they'd put them on the top shelf not far from the porno mags, an irony that must have been lost on the store manager.

We probably wave the royals the way Americans wave the stars and stripes - it's a way of giving the population something to gather around / identify with, the feeling that there's something above the money grubbing sleaze that is politics. A kind of national version of good cop / bad cop.

I've been trying for some time to work out whether the Daily Mail is cause or effect. Whether it's leading the charge or just the mouthpiece of people who've "come to that conclusion all by themselves". I'll probably never find out until one of the papers does an article on it - and not even then as I don't buy any of them any more.

Do people buy newspapers to broaden their minds or confirm their prejudices? I used to be an avid reader up until about 10yrs ago but something changed and I still haven't worked out whether it was me or them. Whether the internet forced them into niche areas or whether out of on-line, tv, radio, papers etc something had to give and it was the papers. Now my cynicism knows no bounds, particularly with the Mail's partner in crime, the Daily Express. Their "health miracle of the day" headlines are about as blatant an attempt to sell newspapers to the old, infirm and ill as it's possible to get short of employing Indian computer virus salesmen to do it for you.