Paper Monitor
12:02 UK time, Thursday, 9 October 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Without patronising your readership, how much IS £500bn?
£19,230 for each British taxpayer - Daily Telegraph
£16,000 for each British taxpayer - Daily Mail
£20,000 for each British taxpayer - the Sun
At about £2.4m per packed Tube carriage of people - Metro
"347 years of war in Iraq... three-year income tax break for everyone in the UK... free meals for every pupil for 250 years, 110,000 more police officers... 1,080,000 miles of stacked pound coins" - the Daily Mirror
"£500 thousand million, or £500,000,000,000" - the Independent. Hold on, WITHOUT patronising your readership.
Meanwhile, on to some light relief with Caitlin Moran in the Times, something of an oracle when it comes to pop culture.
Paper Monitor, not being four, nor 14, nor any age in between, is almost wholly innocent of High School Musical. Nor could it identify a tune from this mega-franchise if the entire soundtrack was played at full volume through a mobile phone at the back of a bus. Like that will happen.
But it bows before the mighty Moran. If she says High School Musical rocks, then what time is it? It's time to rock on.
Critics may carp that it is "calculating and saccharine... demographically representative... like a full-length Benetton ad," says Moran. But she believes it is far more subversive and culturally aware than its given credit for.
"[O]ne of the most cheering aspects of High School Musical... is just how much emphasis is put on inclusivity and tolerance. The interesting, quirky, creative outsiders always triumph. The fat kids can really bust a move."
She also waxes lyrical about its "upbeat yet yearning power ballads" - downloaded for her own listening pleasure, not just her children's - and its handsome star Zac Efron. It's here the column veers towards an 18 certificate rather than a family-friendly U.
"I think about his future career a great deal. I want to see him in a remake of Grease... I want to see him singing Hakuna Matata from The Lion King, naked; but that's by the by."
Caitlin, that thought - you said it out loud.
The 
