Dear Liz

You can say this for Metro, that it's free and it doesn't actually give you MRSA. But, having said that, I think of the company it keeps. It is part of the Daily Mail and Evening Standard stable. The Standard is a particularly unprincipled propaganda machine. When the Thatcher government wanted to abolish the Greater London Council it had absolutely no democratic mandate to do so, but the Standard carefully prepared the ground for it. Practically every issue in the mid eighties contained stories designed to present the council and everything it did in a negative light, and that's to put it mildly. The Standard shovelled cartloads of shit into the fan.

A few years later, they noticed (oh, look!) that one of the world's greatest and most populous cities had been left with no democratically accountable governing body. It was clearly absurd to think that 33 separate authorities could act in the interests of London as a whole, so the Standard campaigned for a new Greater London authority. Another success for London's great evening paper!

Sadly, Londoners promptly forgot the great debt they owed to the Standard and elected the left-wing Ken Livingstone as mayor. The dear old Standard is now, true to form, again devoting its front pages to any story that will damage Livingstone in the forthcoming mayoral election.

Journalistic comment is, and should always be, free and the Standard should support whatever candidate it thinks best for London. But freedom carries with it responsibility. That's the bit that's been missing here