Biggest and best stories on the PRSD for 2009

There’s a lot of ‘end of year’ lists around these days (what with it being the end of the year and all). Not wishing to be left out, we at the PRSD thought we’d compile a list of our biggest news stories from the last 12 months.

1. WMN editor Alan Qualtrough kicked off his new-fangled Typefacing blog on October 1, complaining about the unregulated freedom of the internet. Could it be he was undone by the very same?

Surely he wasn’t put off by user comments such as ‘Help me out here; why is this worthy of mention?’ and ‘Why is it on this site you use the the word ‘we’ as if the whole of the southwest think the same as your fine self?’ and ‘Mr Qualtrough doesn’t know the first thing about the people he is meant to be serving. If he did he would realise that ‘we’ don’t care about football, ‘we’ don’t care if Mr Bradshaw walked into the office in his socks, we care about rural issues, we care about the price of a loaf of bread, we care about bovine TB and we care about ‘our’ paper having enough people to report these things – clearly all he cares about is cutting costs. Shame really, the WMN was such a good paper once.’

Perhaps Alan was disconcerted by the high level of user interaction – a rare thing on thisiswesternmorningnews.

Either way, it appears the Typefacing site was abandoned after a measely 21 days. Shame.

2. In June, a campaign leaflet distributed on behalf of Anna Pascoe, Lib Dem candidate for Cornwall Council elections at the time and now a PRSD ‘columnist’ (plus Lib Dem PPC for South West Devon), described Mebyon Kernow candidate Stuart Cullimore as a ‘greasy-haired twat’.

Of course, it was not an authorised leaflet, but “some kind of prank that’s back-fired”.

It didn’t hold Stuart back any, though – he went on to be elected in Camborne South by a majority of 20 votes and out-polled Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat opponents and a sitting county councillor who was standing as an independent.

More recently, he’s been taking on Mandelson over abolishing quangos and has formed a Mud tribute band (one of these is not true). Samson eat your heart out.

3. It wasn’t just Alan Qualtrough dogmatically pontificating from on high this year. The region’s councillors took to the Twitter revolution like a duck to a bicycle.

The PRSD revealed (yes, a real scoop!) that councillors were disappointed by the decision by Barry Keel, the chief executive of Plymouth City Council, to ban them from using Twitter.

Plymouth councillor Bill Stevens probably took the proverbial biscuit by frequently comparing the councillors’ situation to that of Twitter users in Iran.

He said: ‘Not even the repressive regime in Tehran, seen as byword for tyranny, can stop Iranians using Twitter in their struggle for democracy, but Plymouth City Council are so paranoid they cannot bare to have any unwelcome views heard.’

Thing is, most users in Iran weren’t wittering on about ‘Loving Len Cohen on BBC4′ (Nicky Wildy) and watching The Hangover – ‘C’mon, we’ve all had a night like that…’ (Tudor Evans).

Our Twitter-gate tale made it into the science and technology section of the Daily Telegraph website and the local papers. Were we credited with breaking the story? Well, what do you think!

4. It’s easy to put the ‘doom and gloom about climate change’ out of your mind when there are pretty girls around.

So said South West MEP and PRSD ‘columnist’ Giles Chichester when he congratulated Miss Gibraltar (on this very site – yes, another scoop!) for winning the Miss World contest in December (Gibraltar is in the South West Euro constituency, don’t ya know).

Of course, it’s also easy to cast the issue of global environmental apocalypse from your mind when you’re a self-confessed ‘climate change sceptic’, like what Chichester is.

Lib Dem MEP and climate change activist Graham Watson was having none of it. He said: ‘Whilst Giles is ogling women in his office, I will be in Copenhagen campaigning for a deal that will preserve our planet.’

Fiddling while Rome burns? Hey, we know which we’d rather be doing.

Other stories that have been chipping away at the top five have included our Q&A with with Exeter band Sound of the Sirens, news about swimming for free in the region, and Sam Morris from Exeter No2ID told us why it was important to say no to ID cards.

But we’ve left our fifth Biggest and Best story spot open for you to decide.

What’s been YOUR top PRSD story of the year? Comments below, please.

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