Twitter vs. Letters to the Editor

Page 18 & 19 in today's copy of The Times features my favourite section of the newspaper - Letters to the Editor - which are a collection of letters responding to recent news articles. I have previously said how this was a small demonstration of democracy; where the 'small people' are heard. But there is one chink missing in this armour of argument, which is the selective nature of the letters from 'reputable persons'.

Normal people do not get a shoe-in today as heavyweights with titles such as "President, Royal College of Physicians", "Emeritus Professor", "Minister for European Union Affairs and Chief Negotiator", "Dr.", "Consultant Surgeon". Seriously SIR James Dyson, you're making everyone else look awfully modest!

I am personally unenthusiastic about the Coalition government's proposal of a Graduate Tax, and read excitedly the letter which begun: "Sir, The Government's proposal to charge graduates for their degrees as a higher tax on future earnings does not mention the contributions graduates make to the nation during their working life." A bit patriotic but whatever... right? But then I realised it was the views of just another pompous academic.

Unamused, I checked out Twitter feeds on "graduate tax".

Some are pretty straightforward:

"Coalition should reject the graduate tax precisely because it's 'progressive." "A graduate tax is a tax on hard work + success; bad idea." "Graduate tax under fire from the left and the right."

But I was attracted to these ones more:

"Graduate tax: "...But there aren't special taxes on those with A-levels or stroke victims." "Graduate tax?! Noooooooo."

Now there is a limit to how long your letters can be to The Times, but it is not as constricting as the 40 characters or so of Tweets. But nevertheless, scope for immature or plain silly comments seem to be far wider on the unregulated but diverse web. A politician's nightmare...!

"Ed Balls, talking about work/life balance on This Week just said: "People are juggling. It's hard to keep all the balls in the air."

So Twitter does reflect the idiosyncrasies of modern democracy and new social media may be better than the traditional format of the Letters to the Editor. But then, it would be so cool to address a letter as follows: 

Editor of the Times

London

(none of that street name/post code rubbish!)