All change

Sorry to read (in the December issue of the National Union of Journalists’ magazine Journalist) that Roy Greenslade “cannot, in all conscience, remain within a union I now regard, albeit reluctantly, as reactionary. The digital revolution is here and I am a digital revolutionary.”
This is sad news. Greenslade he has always been a powerful force for unity in the industry. Even when he worked on The Sun, he managed to reconcile his union membership with offering every assistance to publisher Rupert Murdoch in his disputes with the NUJ. Greenslade even dragged himself into work through picket lines and barbed-wire fences in his attempt to bring about a peaceful settlement to Murdoch's dispute with his printers over News International's move to Wapping in the 1980s.
Greenslade, who was once a radical young reporter in the Dagenham area of east London, is now professor of journalism at the City University and writes a much better blog than this one, making full use of all the facilities of the Guardian Unlimited site (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/greenslade).
I agree with him about some of the democratic benefits of the digital revolution. It has huge potential for improving the free flow of public information. Indeed all this information appears in a blog (http://debeauvoirnotes.blogspot.com/).
The invention of the Internet has not eroded the power of the major publishers, nor improved the working conditions of journalists. Greenslade is a beneficiary of publishers’ power, and often makes very positive use of that advantage. It is sad that, with his long-awaited return to revolutionary principles, he is formally finalising his abandonment of any industrial connection with organised journalists.

Pitch battle
England 2 Croatia 3: The pitch at Wembley looked to be in atrocious condition, verging on water-logged. Worse, it still had the scars and the markings from a recent American football game played on it.
Clearly the economics of the new stadium dictate that the pitch is going to get overworked to the point of being unplayable.

Up the Windsors
Congratulations to Mrs Windsor and her hubby on sixty years together, which is pretty good going by anyone’s standard.
The press has been churning out drivel by the ton about what a hard-working existence they have. In fact they have an army of flunkeys around at every corner, mainly at taxpayers’ expense, to make sure that their affluent lives go smoothly.
It suits the ruling class very nicely to have a powerless, non-elected apparently God-appointed person at the top of the social pinnacle. It sanctions the complete irrationality of the UK’s institutions. So much easier for commentators to brown-nose on about constitutional monarchy than to examine the realities of a 21st century democracy-tinted plutocracy.