Paper Monitor
11:07 UK time, Friday, 2 November 2012
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
The papers are full of snakes today. Well, one anaconda called Albert.
Paper Monitor has not seen THAT FILM set on a plane. But what is it about these reptilian slitherers that so gets under our skin?
The anaconda even died in the 19th Century. Turns out 20ft long Albert is stuffed, a fixture (or should that be fitting?) in the Foreign Office's HQ. Rumour has it he hangs from a library ceiling, ready to pounce on Whitehall mandarins and bean counters that incur his wrath.
Now Albert is (sorry) following William Hague's decision to spend £10,000 re-stuffing him. It has The Thick of It written all over it.
But then it doesn't. For we're all a bit too postmodern and knowing to take it seriously. As the Foreign Office spokesman says: "We will not be constricted, nor will we scale back, in our dedication to preserve this historic national treasure".
Ah so it's one of those nice stories, then, like the Downing Street catfights. We all play our role. Officials deliver punning statements, journalists enthusiastically scribble them down and the reader laps it up and tells their colleague at the mythical watercooler, which is probably a machine dispensing cuppa soup and milky tea.
Paper Monitor got out of bed the wrong side today. This story is all so jolly cosy. It sucks. Over to Neville in Snakes on a Plane.
"Enough is ENOUGH! I have had it with these mother(something) snakes on this mother(something) plane! Everybody strap in!"
Couldn't have put it better myself.
PS No new developments on the paper poppy count. Indy and Guardian still going without. How long can they hold out?
The 
