Travelling into work today in the wake of the rush-hour mayhem, in a single tube carriage I counted 20 discarded copies of this morning's Metro newspaper, published by, guess who, Associated Newspapers, the owner of the Daily Mail.
This evening, if I decide to travel home after 7pm, I'm sure I'll count at least the same number of waste copies of London Lite, Associated's evening publication, and The London Paper, the rival offering of the Murdoch stable.
I'm as guilty as the next man of accepting a free copy of one or t'other, as they're thrust into my hands on the way to the tube, but I'm fairly certain that I, and hundreds of thousand of others, would decline to take a copy if, say, a 5p levy was charged.
Of course, the Prime Minister would run the risk of upsetting two of the most influential newspaper publishers in the country, but I'm sure he'd be willing to place this fear to the side and take the same public-spirited stance that he's adopting over plastic bags. The waste copies of these papers are a blight on the nation's capital.
To be fair to Associated Newspapers, though, Metro and London Lite do not use much virgin material – I find most of the ‘news' is recycled from other publications.
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