As always Yes Minister provides

<i>Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; The Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; And The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Oh and Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.</i>

That is perfect. I had forgot about that Yes Minister bit. Brilliant. . .

PQ likes folks to think he knows a lot about the UK - knowledge mainly derived from watching Coronation Street- but honestly where did he come up w/ page 3 girls in the Daily Mail???>

Well it is one of those ilk - maybe the Sun - one paper I believe and you of course will know for sure as about everything British even though you are a Yank - what paper it is - that there is one I have no doubt - being a newspaper junkie - picking up papers in trains, the Tube - so what paper is it?

http://femusings.org/news-in-briefs/

Yeh it is The Sun - easy to mix up with Dily Mile you know - page 3 topless bimbos - guess it is not a family newspaper.

Scrawled on Fleet Street walls long ago "MURDOCH IS BAD NEWS" - during a strike in protest of Rupert Murdoch's moving his printing operations off Fleet St down river someplace - and that rings true today - Murdoch (owner of the august Times) is bad news - boycott any Murdoch newspaper - even to wrap garbage!

Thanks, unclegus for the Edinburgh information
I will check out, online, the suggestions..Daily Mail, Independent, Guardian, Telegraph
What marvelous information is available on this site.!!
In the US, we are also starting to switch to internet news, Dickie_Gr, but we MUST have paper copy in our hands for breakfast. Hope this trend away from "hard copy" paper editions doesn't lead to their demise.
I agree, janisj, that was brilliant, alanRow. Funny. Classic.

Having now spent a little time online, I think I have settled on the Guardian, the Independent, and the Telegraph. Not necessarily in that order. Didn't like the Daily Mail AT ALL..didn't look to find a Daily Sun online version.
Here are the links I used, let me know if there is a better one for the Guardian. I typed in guardian.co.uk, but came up with these alternatives:
http://www.theguardian.com/world

http://www.theguardian.com/us

http://www.theguardian.com/uk

And this one for the Independent:http://www.independent.co.uk/
For the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
And for the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

The printed Daily Mail is nothing like its rather lurid website.

They have conservative or even Tory papers in Edinburgh? Didn't know they even had Tories in Scotland - except maybe one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Mundell).

<i>In terms of blatent sexual exploitation The Sunday Times tries to place scantily clad 25 year old female models on every page. I think last Sunday they achieved this on 82% of their pages which is a new record. </i>

Very funny! You made me dig my copy of Sunday Times out of the dustbin to see what you were on about. There <i>was</i> a photo of middle-aged women who had undergone double mastectomies posing for a charity calendar, but no "scantily clad 25 year old female models" that i could see.

Gordon_R: That thought did occur to me, also. Wonder why they make the online version so "lurid" ???...to use your term
Since the Daily Mail was described as being for housewives and retirees, I doubted they would read it if it was like this online version!!
Will certainly check out the actual papers, and thanks again, all of you, for this wonderful conversation and information.

The biggest Tory of all must be out in his wellies mucking about keeping the stupid colonists at bay or I am certain he would have responded to this by now.

No the last Tory from Scotland died just the other day - the rest have gone south of the border for safety.

My favorite way to spend a Sunday, a rainy Sunday, while visiting the UK is to walk to the news agent and buy one of everything and a packet of McVities digestive biscuits. Perhaps two. They are delicious with tea in the morning and just as delicious with cheese and whisky late in the afternoon.

We usually stay with friends who have widely differing political opinions, differing from each other as well as from us. Some of them are as horrified to have"that rag" in the house, though what ?"that rg" might be differs from friend to friend. I have been asked to hide papers when I put them out for the dust men.

Here in America, we read he weekend FT with regularity..

>>"like the Daily Mail, known for always having a topless bosom young lass just inside the cover"<<

I believe it has a certain reputation for snidey columns and captions about photos of various female celebrities, not topless (that hardly sits with its censorious, curtain-twitching style), but generally along the lines of "Hasn't she let herself go", or "How can she get rid of her cellulite", and so on.

>>UK is to walk to the news agent and buy one of everything and a packet of McVities digestive biscuits. <<

Must be plain chocolate</u> Digestives for me . . . Fills an entire Sunday.<u>

My personal favourite in the weekday stakes is the Times which I actually think is the most neutral (despite the Independent claiming so to be). The Times officially changed sides at the last election though which gave me serious pause for thought and every now and then I have paroxsysms of guilt at reading it. The Telegraph is very right wing, the Guardian very left. I quite like the Guardian but it has on occasion some quite badly written articles that put me in mind of 1st year media student essays. Also, I thought the Falling Man article a few years back was very nearly unforgiveable.

I used to like the Independant and they used my old employer to write occasional science articles - it impressed me that they would source information from the industry rather than simply go with an editorial. Again, they have gone a bit worthy and lectury in recent years.

On a business and science writing course once I learned that The Sun has the highest clarity index of any paper, and I will admit a grudging admiration for some of their headlines. The Daily Mail, as well as being rabidly afraid of everything and everyone is famous for 'partworks' i.e serialisations of stuff like the Duchess of Windsors knicker collection in nice glossy cut out and keeps.

One other thing - the Sunday papers often have a completely different editorial team and thus a different tone.

I am learning a lot, but have a question I wish you all would talk about: It seems from what has been said that the meanings of LIBERAL and CONSERVATIVE in the UK are different from what we, here in the US, mean. What do each mean to a Btit?

Tories (Conservative) in the UK would be middle or very slightly left in the US. Labour has factions and in US terms would be center-left to very far left. The very far right in the would partly be the UKIP. In general every faction is a little left of the comparable group in the US.

This is pretty general -- and the factions don'r translate directly to comparable groups in the US.

Many Brits will disagree w/ this but that is my observation being a Californian having lived in the UK and visiting often.

Thanks, janisj. VERY CONFUSING. I put UKIP into google, not knowing what that meant and found this:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Politic...United_Kingdom

Had to laugh at the lst part of the description of the labor (labour) party

"Had to laugh at...." Why? Only humor I saw was at the end of the BNP bit.

<i>Only humor I saw was at the end of the BNP bit.</i>

I think describing David Cameron as a "notable figure" is pretty funny.