Cutbacks

One of the saving graces of The Sunday Times here has been that it ran a full two-and-a-half pages of cartoons and a half page of puzzles and bits and pieces for kids in its otherwise uniformly appalling Life section. The pages were a colourful reminder of a kinder, happier world. So, inevitably, someone has decided to cut them back by a full page to leave room for more of the other dreck with which they endeavour to rot the minds of the citizens of this island. At least, I assume this is the reason for the (unannounced) disappearance of said page for the last couple of weeks.

So it's farewell to The Born Loser, The Wizard of Id, Blondie and the weekend version of Get Fuzzy, just to name the ones I can remember from the good old days. I can see a vague logic regarding the removal of the first three. They might have been unfairly regarded as rather old-fashioned, a little passe. Certainly they had a distinct charm, and charm doesn't cut it in the new century, I'm afraid. But the loss of Get Fuzzy defies any kind of logic. It still runs as a daily in The Straits Time, for goodness sake, and its art-work was the highlight of the final half-page of cartoons that was. I suppose it really doesn't matter at all about the loss of the kids' stuff. Again, all it had going for it was a kind of gentle calm and kids don't buy newspapers anyway.

I'm only surprised the editors haven't been doing the usual crowing over the improvements offered to you, the reader. They generally greatly enjoy letting us know how everything is getting better, especially when it obviously isn't.