Sven gets the Blues...

• Posted by Rob Irvine at 4:44 PM | add or read comments (1)

More silliness from North Wales police traffic cops on tomorrow's front page. I'm not giving the details away bit when you read it ask yourselves: Whatever happened to common sense?
We also have the strange story of the North Wales pensioner who was having trouble getting into her bank account. When she got hold of her official records she found out that the bank had her year of birth as 1666. She's looking well on it, I must say.
As one of many Manchester City fans living in North Wales I have asked the sports desk to make sure we give a good show to the latest on Sven Goran Eriksson's appointment as manager. Given the best crop of England players in a generation he managed to achieve sweet FA for the FA. Let's see how he gets on with a bunch of embittered no-hopers - that's the players, not the fans, but the way. City fans are as daft as the Geordies...not one proper piece of silverware in more than three decades, but they stay loyal. A few years back City had to travel down to Stoke for an end-of-season clash on a day when results could (and in fact did) send both sides down to the equivalent of the old third division. Anticipation was huge and the home fans were swamped in a sea of light blue. Quite a few City fans had, however, failed to secure tickets despite visiting the Stoke ticket office the week before in person. But that's what happens in Stoke if you ask for tickets in the home stand "for the Stoke game".

There ain't no Sanity Clause

• Posted by Rob Irvine at 11:58 AM | add or read comments (0)

It's June 25th - just the right time to stand in a howling gale and sideways rain on Llandudno's prom dressed as Father Christmas.
Yes, Muggins here had been browbeaten into joining a photocall to start promoting Hope House/Ty Gobaith's Santa Dash fun run in December. There will be TWO runs this year - one in Oswestry and also here along the seafront at Llandudno. Details in tomorrow's Daily Post. I took part in the Oswestry run last year - it was marvellous fun apart from my Santa pants persistently falling down (mercifully I was also wearing a tracksuit).
The day had got off to a bad start as it was. Our excellent front page story about a pregnant woman being left stranded by police when they seized her car was sullied by the fact that we didn't mention where the incident happened. It's all there in the full story on page five (Deganwy, by the way) but not a word on page one in what is known as the "write off".
And even worse was the problems we had at the weekend when we ran the wrong TV listings for S4C - sincere apologies for that and we are trying to sort out some proper listings to go in tomorrow's paper.
Otherwise, another spiffing day in the office.

Check out at the Hilton

• Posted by Rob Irvine at 3:31 PM | add or read comments (1)

The Press Association has just sent out a snap to say that socialite drink-driver Paris Hilton has been released from the Big House after serving just three days of her 45-day sentence.
Earlier in the day we heard that some witless bimbo has been chucked out of another house - that of Big Brother - for calling a fellow housemate a nigger (or n****r as the agency so coyly described the remark).
I'm a bit brassed off about Hilton's release, having signed the petition on jailparishilton.com - a website set up in response to her own myspace petition pleading for clemency. The petition I signed attracted loads more support and we appeared to be victorious yet just 72 hours later she's out again, no doubt ready to celebrate the moment by drinking that poncy champagne the celebs crave - you know, the one that comes in the old Lucozade wrapper.
Just hope she's got someone to drive her home.
What an appalling waste of breath she is. And how depressing that her stupid mush will be all over the papers tomorrow. Have we become such a nation of morons that we actually care about people like this? I've nothing against celebrities - if they have actually done something of note. Charlotte Church is fantastic - she belts out a good song and is a natural on telly as a presenter. But the Hilton woman...what is she except a rich, pretty, petty criminal?

This week's front pages/a little squirt

• Posted by Rob Irvine at 12:13 PM | add or read comments (0)

It's taken the best part of a year and a half but now the grieving families affected by the Rhyl Cycling Club tragedy are at last finding out just what happened in the lead-up to the crash near Abergele which claimed four lives.
Revelations from the inquest have rightly dominated the front page for two days this week. We'll be reporting daily from the month-long inquest with regular updates online, as we know there is a huge level of interest in the events at the coroner's court.
Tomorrow's edition is shaping up well - under the working headline "What not to wear" we'll be telling the story of a mountain rescue on Snowdon when some bunch of twits tried to scale the highest peak in England and Wales wearing flimsy summer frocks. The mountain rescue boys must get sick and tired of these people who put their lives at risk. I hope they stick their hands in their pockets and make a donation to the rescue team, who are all volunteers but who need expensive gear to do their job properly.
We'll also have reactions to Rhodri Morgan's legislative plans for the Assembly which he is due to reveal today - will he persuade the various opposition parties to back him or could this be the first step on the road to a no confidence vote and fresh elections?
Lots of activity online at the moment - I hope you enjoy the excellent selection of videos we are currently running. I was in Liverpool yesterday to discuss with the editors of our sister titles the various things we are planning for our websites. Internet meetings are a great way to catch up with the very latest online jargon. We had a lengthy discussion about content squirting - more particularly what sort of content you could squirt and where you could squirt it. I managed through gritted teeth to make it through the discussion without any reference to Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky or dry cleaning bills. Well done, me.

A much better blog than mine...

• Posted by Rob Irvine at 2:53 PM | add or read comments (0)

I had all sorts of fascinating stuff to tell you today but instead I'm going to ask you to push off and visit another blog. It's being written by a chap called Adrian Sudbury who works as a digital journalist on our sister newspaper, the Huddersfield Examiner.

Just two days after he started his new job, Adrian was taken very ill. He found out that he had two forms of leukaemia and had to start a savage course of treatment right away. He tells his story in his blog with great intelligence and not a little humour.

So log on now to http://baldyblog.freshblogs.co.uk/