Piles of papers

I hope fellow Londoners will join me in this new “gripe” I have with the great City that come in the form of free newspaper distributors. Whatever happened to the good old days (which makes me feel old as I shouldn’t really be reminiscing about the good old days at my age) when if you wanted to read a newspaper you would go to the shop and pay a fairly small sum for the privilege.

Now, my journey from the Tube to work, which takes about 7 minutes, is filled with me politely saying “no thank you” to at least 4 free newspaper distributors per journey. Don’t get me wrong - I have, on occasion, taken them up on their offer and enjoyed the delights of London Lite and The London Paper (no I don’t know the difference either) but with so many people already in London, do we really need the extra bodies to clog up the streets and get in the way of rushing commuters on their way home?

Not to mention the strains on the environment – the amount of paper used, the number of them I see lying on peoples desks at work in near perfect condition obviously not being read and even worse the ones littering the streets – flying along the road with the wind or being drenched by the rain and sitting soggy next to a drain. Are there really that many people who begrudge paying 50p for the Evening Standard, or reading the Metro which is a great paper having built its base in stations where it is controlled by the confines of being underground. Do we need this many free papers? Are we really that stingy?