you can also sign the petition to stop Murdoch taking over BskyB: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/

I think the Avaaz one has the most traction, but it might be the same one: http://www.avaaz.org/en/murdoch_messages_2/?twi2

I'm not going to act on this impulse for obvious reasons, but is anyone else really curious about what is in The Sun this week and what was in the NOTW at the weekend?

Have they put the story on page 7? Are they sort of covering it and talking about it like it's happening to someone else?

Also (and I feel dirty doing this but thought I'd add a little balance to the debate), I feel that I need to defend Tesco SGR. For a local supermarket it's got a pretty amazing number of lines and has a particularly wide selection of fruit and veg and wines for a shop of its size. I understand the more general objections to Tesco as a company but Tesco SGR seems a particularly well run one. Also boycotting a store because of a rude member of staff in a supermarket is pretty bizarre. One member of staff of the 50 who probably work there can hardly be seen to demonstrate a general policy of rudeness. Those places have very high staff turnovers and if you've ever wanted to avoid speaking to any staff at all, they're the place to do it. Also, if someone is rude to you, tell the manager. If they do it often enough they're unlikely to be working there for long.

I don't think I ever speak to anyone in Tesco (oh how I love those automated checkouts), but can buy pretty much everything I need (unlike many other small supermarkets, including the generally beloved Budgens in CE), whereas in Waitrose I always talk to the staff to exchange recipe ideas and discuss the merits of romanescu cauliflower.

This story is annoying me more by the minute. The way things are going i will be boycotting Ford, Halifax, Coop, Mitsubishi, Virgin Holidays just for making it a big deal and pretending to care. Any announcement made by a company that they're taking this stance is purely for opportunistic reasons, nothing else. Even that nobba up in Crouch End Budgens is doing it for the PR.

Let the police do their (proper) job, let justice take its course, let people decide on their own to buy the paper of not. And to the advertisers....nobody reads your crappy ads anyway!

Whether or not advertisers are pulling their business for PR reasons or not is moot - obviously it is for PR reasons, as they wouldn't want to be associated with a reviled publication.

But it's not the effect that move has on the public that I care about; print media (and TV for that matter) relies heavily on advertising. If they lose enough big contracts, it would seriously damage them as a business.

How many advertisers have said they are definitely pulling their ads from NI publications by the way? There's a lot of fence-sitting going on.

@ andy. the comment related to some of them flogging the numbers in the first place. Not quite in the officers handbook that one even if it was just a couple of them.

@ emma. If its a question of taste and positive association, i think these companies would have pulled their spends a long time ago. The NOTW is unquestionably a paper which clean family brands would not associate with yet they tolerate it because its popular and sells their products.

All this is about is cheap publicity and beating up a paper with a lot of haters. To be honest, its a taste of its own medecine for the NOTW. Had to happen sooner or later! My position is that undoubtedly something needs to happen here, they've broken the law and more importantly have overstepped the mark with the public and some of its subjects who thought they had their trust.

However....

Every so often this country gets whipped up into a frenzy, we scream for heads to roll, we say its all an outrage, we start a facebook campaign, we send petitions, we boycott companies and their products, our parliament debates it for 3 hours, we spunk £millions on a enquiry to quench the thirst for blood .....and then it goes away and we carry on as normal because eventually the noise quietens, its not in our face every day, and we realise that there are many more important things in the world.

.....remember Tony Hayward. Anyone getting upset that he's just about to make a killing on oil again having helped gunge the gulf. Nope, because its not in our face and we haven't got a zillion facebook groups to join.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/17/tony-hayward-vallares-venture-ipo

@Brodiej

I was being sarcastic.

I broadly agree with you, though. It's weird that we're asking people to resign, as if they're accountable to us. Business people only resign if they harm the future prospects of that business. It's not like politics.

The way we make people accountable is with law. If anyone has broken the law then they should be punished by it. Good article in the Independent today about how this might all fall under RIPA. This mob justice has left me thinking about a Man for all Seasons. A mob running ahead of the facts, even if it's a well meaning one that you broadly agree with, is still a mob.

Last ever edition to be sold on sunday, all profits to go to charity

Ha - no worries Brodiej. I spend my entire life arguing the case, I think I would just end up boring myself if I started a thread on here. I'll sum it up in three words:

Cadbury's Wonderbra Meerkats

when it's gone it's gone

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/notw/nol_showbiz/1342226/Youre-in-great-Form-Rosie.html

Yes twitter is going into overdrive about that.

Morning. No, my anecdote about Cadburys is about their strategy for advertising through the war, when in fact, it was extremely difficult to get chocolate because of rationing etc. It was like the ultimate application of Pavlov's theory. Cadburys dominated the market for decades after rationing was lifted.

The "buzz" created by the Gorilla, as these campaigns are measured, was enomous. I forget the stats, but I recall an upsurge in sales of their core brand - Dairy Milk - was significant. The successive campaign, with the airport vehicles, not so much.

..V.

Astonished at the stupididty of people who believe the final copy of NOTW will become valuable in 50 years time.

I haven't had time to read this whole thread, but...I don't care whether or not tesco is supporting NOTW / The Sun - I'm happy to boycott them no matter what!  Imagine a SGR without tesco..mmmmmmmmmmm

A couple of weeks back all the manned tills were out of service, so everyone had to use self-service. Initially I wondered if this was some kind of trial for a wholly automated store, but then I realised it was more likely simple incompetence.

That said, SGR without Tesco? Yeah, great. We can pay more for a worse selection at the street's TWO Sainsbury's instead. Take that, The Man!