Residents' Association Forum

For about four months now, I have had no Elmbridge Guardian.

I rather like it.  Unlike the Kingston Informer which presumes the reader lives in London, it is a local paper for local people. ;)

I rang the publishers this afternoon to complain and got an American-sounding call centre.  The person at the other end said "oh yes, there isn't anyone doing that round".

(!)

So much for the credit crunch.  Are Newsquest Media (or whoever) saving costs by getting people to pay for adverts but not actually delivering the papers?

Has anyone else found this?

Nope - but then, my daughter does the Guardian's round in our bit of TD...  They pay hardly anything though, so maybe they can't recruit anyone near you.

idea - we need to set up "Guardian drop sites" in our local pubs!  I don't think my new neighbours on either side go to the pub...

I suggest you email them with request / for info about your local delivery; also to offer the idea of leaving a pile in local pubs:

delivery@london.newsquest.co.uk

five e-mails have got me nowhere TBH.  That's why I rang.

Wait and see...

Well, added to no Elmbridge Guardian, we now have "no Kingston Informer" even if that rag is more squarely based across the border in London.

My neighbour just mentioned it and it struck me that, although the amount of waste paper in my blue-top bin is reducing, I now have no idea about local news.

I'm getting no local newspapers at all!

Have the free newspapers gone bust in the credit crunch?

With growing internet news on one hand and costs/reducing advertising revenues on the other, local newspapers worldwide have been feeling the squeeze and often collapsing (the headline 'newspaper folds' always gives me a laugh).  I was chatting to a guy  who works for a printers in Pennsylvania a month ago - he said it was the same there.  One of my brothers was laid off the Birmingham Post and Mail which is in dire straits too.

But you still have access to local news....  visit the area of the Secret garden around 11.00 on Saturdays, or...
You have this website.... moving into the gap.  Want to write some reportage?

The Guardian still comes through, not every week though. The Informer I can't remember the last time I saw it?
We used to get calls fairly regularly asking if we had received our copies but again I can't remember the last time we had a call.
Shame really as you can still pick up on some interesting news.

Midibob  8)

And this just in from Giggs Hill Green...

it's hot, hot, hot! ;)

TBH I miss the local news, particularly from the Guardian, and I prefer "push" to "pull" - I'm not going to go trawling the net to see if a cat got stuck up a tree, but I'll enjoy reading it in a newspaper.

So have our newspapers folded?

EDIT Or is midibob just getting Gold Card Member service?  Maybe we should arrange a "Secret Garden Newspaper Reading" of midibob's newspapers every month.  It would have to be in a pub, of course, unfortunately...

TBH if these free newspapers are still going, while advertising rates are down, I don't know what I'd pay to be in a newspaper that is only distributed to midibob! ;)  and irregularly, at that!  ::)

Come to think of it, I haven't seen an 'Informer' for months.  Pity - it is a perfect fit for the tray at the bottom of the parrot's cage.

I have to fold the open Guardian up by an inch at one end.

Hey,

This is Jonathan Portlock from the Elmbridge Guardian. I am sorry to hear some of you are not receiving your newspaper. If any of you want to give me a call about it my direct number is 020 8330 9552.

In the meantime, you can now buy a copy of the paper at these local shops: www.elmbridgeguardian.co.uk/contactus/wheretobuy/

Cheers!

Welcome to the forum, Jonathan.  Thanks for the response.

What are the trends at the Guardian in these hard times?

Can it be that certain street postcodes never receive the news - like in the days of the East German Democratic Republic, Dresden (8020?) was known as the "Valley of the Clueless" because they were the only place that couldn't receive Western telly?

Maybe when the Google Streetview cars come past, we need big banners saying

"WE HEART NEWSQUEST MEDIA AND THE AGENTS WHOM THEY SHALL FROM TIME TO TIME DESIGNATE TO DISTRIBUTE THEIR NEWSPAPER" or

"HELLO BURGLARS - ALL OUR STUFF IS SECURELY IN THE BANK BUT WE WOULDN'T HALF HEART SOME GOODS AND SERVICES AS ADVERTISED FROM TIME TO TIME IN THE ELMBRIDGE GUARDIAN"

EDIT Thanks for returning my call just now, Jonathan, and I hope my neighbours and myself shall soon be getting our Guardian again.  As I said to you, I have been trying to get the Guardian delivered for six months now and I have never come across anyone who said they would actually try to do something before - not even the woman from the call centre (who would have been lying anyway!) ;)

EDIT 2/8/09 It just struck that, without the free newspapers, I have no idea how much houses are being offered for (there is a steady stream of bumf through the letterbox as it is).  Still no newspapers...

The Guardian has slightly reduced in page size lately.  It now fits the bottom of the parrot cage perfectly, without me having to fold an inch up at the edge.

I do read it first, of course...

could you add an extra cycle in where a person reads it before the parrot's cage gets it?  I've now had no local newspapers for many weeks and no Guardian all year.

Clearly, there is an open day of public buildings in that part of Surrey annexed by the Greater London Empire in a week's time.  (e.g. Coombe Conduit).  I'd never have known...

I recently had a thought that I haven't had any local newspapers delivered for ages. I admit that I can't remember when I last received one, or even what the two papers were called. I rang the Surrey Advertiser and they said that free local newspapers are no longer delivered in the area due to cost cutting. I'm rather disappointed, since reading the paper was a good source of news on local crime, goings-on and house prices, even though I wasn't an avid reader!

???Over the last 18th months I have received at least four telephone calls asking if I have received the Guardian.  I give the same reply "I haven't received it for at least two years".  Each time they say "sorry, we will make sure one is delivered"

If they call you, they are almost certainly doing random checks on the delivery slaves to see whether they did deliver or whether they stuffed the lot into a wheelie bin.  The will undoubtedly have remonstrated with the person managing the delivery chain round there.

(I know this, because my daughter does the Guardian deliveries in the Church Walk/Church Lane/Ashley Rd triangle.  I also know that they find it hard to get people to do this)

what, they find it hard to get people to stuff the lot into a wheelie bin?  :D

Angelica confirms my suspicions that deliveries are being cut back.  However, as with many cost-cutting exercises, it's cutting off your nose to spite your face.  Even in these straitened credit crunch times, you can get a rough idea of the value of the houses along many roads in Thames Ditton by adding up the number of houses, dividing by two and multiplying by a million.  Do the advertisers in the free newspapers really want to pass up the opportunity of selling to us?  what exactly do the advertisers believe they are paying for?  If it were me, I wouldn't pay to advertise.  Then the free paper is in trouble.

Still no Elmbridge Guardian.  In the meantime, I have found the full Kingston Guardian (not just the property) free to take away in a basket outside one of the estate agents near the bookshop on Victoria Road, Surbiton...

An Elmbridge Guardian story about a great guy from Thames Ditton for those of you still out of the loop.

http://tinyurl.com/mc8aj8

Forget the postal strike - I've just had an Elmbridge Guardian delivered!

That's the first in over a year!

Dear Diary!

;D

Excellent.  I think the Fairy Godmother may be a member of this forum....

You know, I think that fairy may well be known as Jonathan Portlock, and I have e-mailed him to say thanks...

EDIT This is what I mean by preferring push to pull.  Not only would I not have associated an orange Focus with a pumpkin-themed panda car, I would never have googled for Molesey "sewage tower"...(!)

http://www.elmbridgeguardian.co.uk/news/4703812.Tower_to_stop_sewage_flood_approved_in_East_Molesey/



(EDITED AGAIN to spell Portlock correctly...)

The pumpkin police car was another brow-clutching moment...
[img width=300 height=210]http://www.elmbridgeguardian.co.uk/resources/images/1084483/?type=display[/img]

article: http://www.elmbridgeguardian.co.uk/news/4712891.Police_unveil_their_pumpkin_solution_to_antisocial_Halloween_night/

Sigh. (Though my 13 y/o daughter thinks the car is 'pretty cool' - I have become an old buffer)

PS: It's Portlock.  You may be confusing him with the 'person from Porlock' who famously interrupted my fellow-alumnus Coleridge's opium-induced inspiration half-way through writing Kubla Khan

don't they tend to park opposite Sainsbury's in Surbiton?  (the reg of the car in question might be appropriate for a fat copper, but not to be repeated here...) ;)
Thanks.  Changed.

I confirm that, although I am hiding under the table this Hallowe'en, I am not in a drug-induced stupor...so I've changed it.  Wait!  What's that?

I hear them coming to my door, I hit the lights, I hit the floor....

We've now had the Guardian two weeks on the trot, before that I can't remember the last time. It's really nice to read it again and pick up on all the local news.

Many thanks to whoever....

Midibob  8)

The Guardian has a review of the year which is where I get my 2009 news from.

I note the Esher News & Mail has "folded"...

Perhaps 2010 will be the year I receive the Guardian again!? I have just seen a pig fly over the moon! .... (No sorry, in was the sun over the oak tree so perhaps not!)

maybe it was Mars!

the full Guardian is now available to read like a newspaper on-line:

here's last week's:

http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/Launch.aspx?refresh=aH160o8SbB19&PBID=750b3af5-f041-4f6c-bfb8-f4a3f122d785

and here's the menu to pick the latest week's from:

http://www.greenguardian.co.uk/e_edition/

Supplementary:

foe about four weeks now I've also been getting the "Informer" every week with the Guardian...

Hey, that's good - I haven't seen an Informer for ages.

As per my first posts the Guardian is very definitely a local newspaper, whereas the Informer presumes the reader lives in Kingston.

So is anyone here getting the Guardian, but not the Informer? the newspaper lady's beat seems to take her all the way into Hinchley Wood...

I feel somehow reconnected with the world, though I must say I am surprised to learn there is so much crime in Thames Ditton...

I RECEIVED THE GUARDIAN THIS WEEK - FIRST TIME FOR TWO YEARS !!!!!

Hello again subject, it's been nearly three years.

I was thinking how irrelevant the latest Guardian was - then I saw it was the Kingston Guardian. A one-off?

we dont get any of those things on the island, are they rubbish?

You may recall headline & a thread here that the Guardian's advertisers wanted the Kingston edition to be extended to parts of TD (KT7).  We and several others protested but our emails were not answered by the management.

However, opened out, four pages still fit the bottom of my parrot's cage nicely so although I no longer read it, it does not go to waste.

hahahaha

err no. So we no longer have a free local newspaper? AGAIN? Only the parrot remains a constant.

(http://www.seadogbytes.com/misc/FrankenThread.jpg)

Still getting Kingston Guardian regular as clockwork, though it could hardly be more completely irrelevant. Headline story - some pub is to close down. No idea where. Meanwhile, the revamped Lamb & Flag is now non-ewe. ;) Not in.

Imagine my surprise on shopping in Hurst Park to find the Elmbridge Guardian still exists! We just don't get it. :(

Rytheman - the merits of man made map line boundaries aside - we do physically sit on the boundary of two administrative areas and to be fair (and IMHO we have no more or less in common with Kingston then we do Esher and indeed, even less in common with the furtherest outlying areas of Elmbridge (save for the fact that someone drew a line and put us in Elmbridge and not Kingston).

Hi Rudi,

I must say I am very surprised at your answer. ;)

The question of the relevance of the Kingston Guardian is a different one from that of our ethnic ties and shared tribal customs across the border with the historic heart of Surrey which, of course, are many.  The border established by annexation in 1965 is in many ways less important until it comes to tax or parking.

I expect Thames Ditton was also colonised from Hounslow. ;)

Many of the stories in the newspaper are political ("the borough" = "RBK") and thus completely irrelevant to us in Thames Ditton. This is a shame, as the news from Molesey, Claygate, Esher, and Hinchley Wood is desperately relevant, but just not in the area of coverage of the Kingston Guardian.

We can see the newspaper on-line but then have to print it out ourselves for our parrot cages!

http://www.elmbridgeguardian.co.uk/

I agree with your comments Rytheman on the aspect of the political stories being RBK led and irrelevant to us (unless boundary planning related). To be honest I relay on this forum and site for most of the local news for the area due to lack of other options.

No Elmbridge Guardian indeed...

Elmbridge Guardian to close 19 May

Word has reached us that the Elmbridge Guardian is to cease publication.  This will come as no great surprise to those who have witnessed the increasing struggle of local newspapers to remain viable, and the spreading of the Kingston Guardian deliveries to much of our part of Elmbridge over the past two years.  The Kingston Guardian and Surrey Comet will continue.

We regret the loss of decent detailed and unbiased reporting on local administrations, particularly EBC, that this is bound to entail.  All the more responsibility is shouldered by remaining publications of both Newsquest and Trinity Mirror groups.

You read it here first.....