Would the Guardian please, please stop. and the other papers too.

I'm in Australia, and seconded.

nobody knows who won yet Paul, chill out.

Um, that's not Paul's point...

clark county went big for bush.

I'm still terribly confused by that whole Clark County stunt. Really badly handled.

there's a verb tense called future. . .

The joke was that I am in asia and therefore a few hours ahead. Obviously I am not actually in the future. It was a joke, a weak joke but you clearly missed that one. Maybe you are behind....

Sorry, it's just that it is really hard to get any other news at the moment (and I am sitting in a newspaper office) and the guardian is what I rely on for my news about back home. i appreciate that it is an important election in many ways but it is still two white millionaires with no real differences between them. And you'd think that the Guardian was a US newspaper the coverage that is being given.

the Clark County thing. yes, that made me cringe.

i think this is a good point. andrew marr of the bbc has written a book about uk news coverage. i haven't read it, but i did a read a review in the, um, guardian. one of the points made was that uk newspapers have withdrawn regional correspondents in the uk to focus on london and lifestyle issues, whci are cheaper and easier to report. they have also reduced international correspondents, except in the us. while there are obviously other reasons for this - the grwoth of tv and the internet and more popular sources of this kind of news being a main one, i would imagine - the point is valid. and that is that uk newspapers and the media in general now spend so much time focussing on the the us at the expense of much other news.

one of the reasons for this, i think, is that its easy. and for people of the left, it gives us a nice feeling to laugh at all the crazy right wingers in the the us. think of all those reports / books / films / tv programs about the evils of american corporations / oil / racists / religious nutters / SUVs / etc... go into any book shop in the UK and there will be loads of books on these subject - many more than on similar subjects in the uk and europe and elsewhere.

so my point is, i think people on the left in the uk - and i imagine, to a lesser degree maybe, in the rest of europe and elsewhere - spend too much time focussing on the evils of the nutcase right in the US because its easy and glam, and less time than they should be spending looking at their own countries. its all very easy to feel smug about how bad the us, but the uk is going down a similar path - arrogant war mongering leader, destruction of the welfare state, etc...

therefore i agree - the uk press should focus less on easy and cheap coverage of the us, and more not just on the rest of the world but on the situation in the uk and the rest of europe too

The Guardian should also stop cramming their weekend supplements with bought-in (ergo, cheap) American articles which have zero relevance to British readers.

For "London and lifestyle" read "my mates on the Fulham Road." Can't imagine what relevance that would have to readers in, say, Aberdeen.

The difference is that we don't have a Kerry to challenge Blair's Bush.