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Tom Dodds on transport matters »The headline on the front of today's Daily Express - "Now Your Shopping Bill Hits New High" - is the latest example of a worrying trend I've noticed recently on some right wing nationals.
There's nothing wrong with the story as such, but I just wonder why the Express needs to use the word "Now" in the headline. Surely the fact that the story is happening "now" is taken as read - we're newspapers after all.
"Your Shopping Bill Hits New High" seems to me to mean exactly the same as "Now Your Shopping Bill Hits New High", making the word "now" completely superfluous.
But the Express isn't the only national to do this. I've seen it in The Mail and the Telegraph as well and get the feeling that the word "now" is added to sort of appeal to the general harumphing the tweedy Express/Mail reader makes when he sees another story about the country generally going to the dogs or (that old favourite) political correctness going mad.
You can almost see the sigh of exasperation as the subs write the headline: "Now Asylum Seekers Are Allowed To Breath Our Air" perhaps or "Now Brown Cancels Christmas."
The fact that I don't think the country is going to the dogs isn't really my objection here. It's that the word "now" is completely unnecessary in the headline and seems to have been added just to flam up the story into something it's not.
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