As a former editor of the BMJ, I'm partly upset but actually more amazed that a long-term reader of the BMJ should think that it should be anything new for the journal to be campaigning and political.
Long-term readers of this series on the Hugo awards may recall that it started by raising the question of why critics sneer at science fiction.
It might best be described as well developed, which won't come as a great surprise to his long-term readers.
Margaret Drabble is reportedly displeased that her publisher, Penguin, wants to "rebrand" her: "I do feel publishers are under very strong pressure to sell books rather than encourage long-term readers".
No, the best place to eat a scotch egg (and apologies to long-term readers for the predictability of this conclusion) is in the pub – one that makes its own scotch eggs, fried-to-order, so that as you take a bite, the outer shell is still audibly crisp and hot juices run from the meat as you cut into it.
(Long-term readers will remember that I was scarred, perhaps forever, by a dreadful succession of gannet-carrying, gannet-death and gannet-burial-at-sea mishaps which mightily amused the lovely town of Ullapool but which will mean I am never again able to look a gannet in its mad-blue eyes without flinching and, at the very least, offering up a herring as a belated apology).
Long-term readers of this letter will know that we have been bullish on oil prices for a long time.
Long-term readers of this column will raise an eyebrow at their P/E multiples (24 and 21, respectively), but they are solid institutions with a brilliant record of controlling interest rate risk.
I would rather my blog grow at a slow and steady organic rate resulting in long-term readers than to hype up and then fizzle out to die.
In the long term, however, readers noticed that the paper had gone from being slightly crap to completely crap.
With print sales in long term decline attracting digital readers is key to future survival, however the question remains as to the value of a digital versus print customers.
