Opinion-makers: Who to read today.
Who is that masked man? Who cares? Photo credit: Nahatanoj
The Stig revealed – but who cares?
Former Forumula Three drive Ben Collins – a not overly well-known action man who is evidently very good at a lot of sporty things – has won the legal right to claim, in his autobiography, that he is The Stig. The identity of The Stig, the white suited, be-crash-helmeted driver for the BBC’s hugely popular motor show, Top Gear, has long been a point of question. But not everyone really cares about the answer. The bigger issue is the fact that the BBC wasted license payers’ money to stop Collins from making the claim. Richard O’Hagan, writing at The Daily Mail, complained, “So, we are all allowed to know the identity of The Stig. Forgive me if I don’t get excited. In fact, forgive me if, instead, I point out that this is yet another example of the BBC wasting license fee payers’ money because they don’t know their own product, they don’t know their own audience and they don’t understand the world that we live in.”
So wait, the US economy isn’t as bad as we thought?
In the last few weeks, major economic indicators coming out of the US have been pretty dismal. But, argued David Indiviglio, perhaps July wasn’t as bad as we all thought – perhaps just miserable, versus really, really miserable. “Because this market wasn’t allowed to naturally recover, its suffering has been prolonged,” Indiviglio observed. That said, “July’s indicators don’t portray the road to double dip as much as they do a very slow, painful recovery. The economy is generally getting better, but barely. If this trend continues, and sentiment improves, then the recovery could gain speed. But real estate threatens to hold it down if it experiences much additional deterioration.”
The spending habits of the homeless. Photo credit: Mark
Homeless candid camera makes for creepy reading
Last weekend, a Toronto Star reporter decided to do a bit of undercover reporting on the spending habits of the city’s homeless. Jim Rankin took to the streets armed with pre-paid credit cards, handed them out to panhandlers and told them that he wanted the card back after they’d bought all that they needed on it. “Some were unbelieving at first. All were grateful. Some declined the offer. Some who accepted didn’t come back, but those that did had stories to tell,” Rankin reported.
The report has gone viral, as formerly homeless freelancer reporter Pem Charnley said in an op-ed piece for The Guardian. But it doesn’t make for particularly enlightening reading, Charnley protested: “I think we can all concur that this is a rather tasteless piece of exploitative journalism. Let’s dangle the card and see what happens, all in the name of investigative reporting, eh? I for one would refuse to draw any conclusions, or resort to armchair psychology in a bid to analyse the honesty of those without a roof.”
To create a more active and personal community of Periscope readers and commenters, we've moved our comments over to Facebook. We welcome your feedback, click here to let us know what you think.
leave a comment