No, I don't want to buy a shoe horn.

Whinge, whinge, whinge, bleat, bleat, bleat. This is the sound of the ever-lengthening queue of whiners with their hands out wanting your money (and mine - I pay taxes too) to bail out their businesses. I can't say as I blame them (unusually for me) - after all, they've looked at the banks, who've pissed away the entire GDPs of medium sized countries, and got rewarded for doing so, and thought to themselves "I'll have some of that". Today's rant was prompted by some (ex-journo) MP on Radio 4's "World at One" asking for money for print journalism. Perhaps while he's about it, he should ask for money for the buggy whip industry? Or maybe the whale-bone corset makers? Or, more recently and for similar reasons, the makers of vinyl records? Or indeed, any kind of records. You see, these people are in industries which are Going Away. No amount of bleating is going to make the slightest difference; if you produce something that no-one wants to buy, you're doomed. Yes, the State can prop you up for a while, but why should it? That merely hastens the end, since you no longer have any need to pay any attention whatsoever to your customers (remember them?) and once the State gets sick of pouring money down your hole (as it surely will), you'll have to find something else to do anyway. So, people in businesses that are Going Away (or, as the business consultants would have it, with "dysfunctional business models") shut the f**k up and start doing things people want to pay money for.