New Statesman comp ending
 

In Deep Drills, Sylvia, quoting the New Statesman posts this news about their weekly humor competition:

Has the comp taken breaks before? (Someone here must know. Bill?) How concerned should we be that this is the final end of more than 85 years or comps?

This is lousy news. The comps have a splendid history, much of which is related in Bill Greenwell's blog: https://nscompsandpoets.wordpress.com/

It appears they don't have the space. They need more room for those articles nobody really reads. What is the circulation now?

I just looked it up. Actually it's quite good at 33,000 and rising. (The Spectator is 71,000 and also rising.) So they have no excuse. Perhaps the comp is not sufficiently on message. Lefties don't want anyone rocking the leaky boat.

It's about money, John: what is anything ever about but that?

You mean the money for the prizes, Adrian? That's a bit pathetic but most (though not all)lefties are bloody tightwads, in my experience. The poet Kit Wright (not a leftie) always said getting a pint out of Roger McGough was like blood from a stone.

Actually Roger bought me a Becks once. At the BBC!

This is a bitter pill to swallow. The Lit Rev is gone already, the Oldie has cut its space, and the WaPo is frankly not quite the same as the British weekend comps. What on earth are they going to fill the space with? Another article? Why? Is £120 a week for prizes really too steep?

I am definitely going to write to the magazine editor about this. Surely the more of us point out the comp. is one of the best things about the Staggers the better?

To whom should we address the correspondence, d'you think? I feel it's not fair to bombard poor Vicky, who once replied, when I said I didn't wish to complain, "Why not? Everyone else does".

We need a plan.

You're quite right, definitely not Vicky. I was thinking of the editor of the magazine as a whole.

Amusing to note that the person featured in the NS Subscriber of the Week column this week cites the NS comp as one of the items to which she likes to turn first in the magazine.

Vicky has long championed the competition, as well as adjudicating it: complain to the Editor, Jason Cowley.

But most of us don't buy the thing. Does anyone else except Sylvia?