Paper Monitor
12:32 UK time, Monday, 5 November 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Few papers could ask "Why olives are the thin end of the wedge" and their readers let them get away with it.
To your average Guardianista though news that farmers' markets are in an ethical bind about whether or not to sell olives is about as audience-tailored a Madeleine splash in the Express... of which there's another today.
The crux of the issue is this: if farmers' markets are all about being a showcase for locally-produced produce with not a whiff of air miles to detract from their desirability, then where does that leave olives? As one stallholder comments: "I like the olive people but you can't pretend that olives are local, can you?"
Paper Monitor duly thanks the Guardian for highlighting this hitherto overlooked eco-dilemma and wonders whether the Tuscan backlash starts here.
By tomorrow, the olives debate will surely move on to the Guardian's letters page, before eliciting a pronouncement from in-house ethical agony uncle Leo Hickman. Where will it end? With an "In praise of… Kalamata"?
Speaking of which, today's "In praise of…" (for non-Guardian readers, it's a daily strand on the paper's comment and opinion pages) extols the virtues of Harris tweed. Given that the rest of the press are preoccupied with a story about the Queen being named a glamour icon by vogue, Paper Monitor detects a chink in the paper's avowed republican tendencies.
The 
