I'm having a newspaper crisis at the moment. One of the advantages of being a self-employed slacker is that you can set aside a certain amount of time each morning, at a civilised hour, to have a really thorough read of a daily paper. This is enjoyable and informative, and, because I work in a field that requires which a certain understanding of the old zeitgeist, useful.

If you're not too keen on the geist of the zeit you're living in - as, you may have guessed, I am not - then a paper with a certain anti-establishment tinge is must. So up until now I've been happily reading the Guardian, though as I've pointed out in the past, I would strongly deny being a Guardian reader, insofar as that is a distinct group.

The problem with the Guardian is that while its heart is in the right place and its reportage among the best in the world, most of its opinion writers are whining, moaning, bleating, bleeding-heart pinko pains in the arse. Open up a copy of the Guardian and put your ear to it. Go on - can't you just hear them whining? 'Oh, we're so evil for being white, straight and western, so evil!' If you strain really hard you can just make out the sound of Madeleine Bunting self-flagellating with a scourge of wholewheat spaghettini.

So I temporarily switched to the Times. There, I find politics and a world view that are much more to my liking: moderate, reasoned, pragmatic, liberal in the proper sense of the word, and, above all, with a distinct libertarian streak. It is the home of the sublime Matthew Parris. The problem with the Times is that, with the exception of the business section, the news tends towards what I call the Telegraph-trashy style.

So what do I do? The obvious answer is to read the news from the Guardian and the comment from the Times. The convenient way to do that would be via RSS. But that's not as satisfying as picking up a paper and reading it from cover to cover with a cup of tea.

tags: Guardian, Times