First, a welcome to the blogosphere to Professor Adrian Monck, head of the journalism department at London's City University. Second, two declarations of interest: I lecture at City and I write a column for the London Evening Standard. I mention the latter because of Monck's sharp reponse to a statement by Martin Linton MP that more people read the Standard in Tunbridge Wells than in Battersea.
Monck writes: "What Linton meant by his throwaway comment is that it's read by commuters. And commuters, especially rail commuters, are political trash. They generate their economic value in a place that gives them no political voice. They spend most of their money there. But they sleep a train ride away. It's a measure of how disconnected politics are from people's lives that these simple facts defy our electoral system and our media. Instead politicians romanticise communities and localities. MPs are more embedded in geography than the Lords they supplanted." (Via Adrian Monck)
