I keep repeating that this site is non-political. And so it is.

You can hear a “but” coming, though, can’t you? Well, you’re wrong, it’s a “however”.

However, Syntagma has 90 American readers for every Brit, so, conscious as we are that politics is big news in the States right now, we have a small announcement to make:

Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, is coming to visit you this week.

Ignoring the deafening silence, I just want to bring you up to date on Broonie’s progress. Frankly it’s a regression of unparalleled proportions.

Leaving aside my own psychological assessment of him when he first came to office last year, yesterday we were treated to the most devastating political assassination by a journalist that I’ve ever read.

Even if you’re not interested in politics, read it as a master class in the art of personal destruction, much as you might tackle Machiavelli’s The Prince.

It’s all the more calamitous for Brown because the first half gives him his due, albeit in back-handed fashion. It’s what comes next that hits home. Matthew Parris, a journalist at The Times (London) and a broadcaster of great wit, provides us with a forensic deconstruction of Gordon Brown which overflows with such penetrating psychological insight that Brown must have shrivelled up when he read it.

Already far behind in the polls and with ratings only ever matched by Neville Chamberlain, Brown is practically dead in the water politically. Now read this extraordinary coup de grace.

Here it is.

The cartoon is by the brilliant Peter Brooke, also of The Times. It features Gordon Brown after a painting of a gruesome nude woman by Lucien Freud which sold for countless millions recently.

Today, for some reason, I’ve been reviewing how I consume news and commentary, both on- and offline. It must be the persistent wind and rain outside.

This is not going to make a long article, so I’ll get straight to the point.

I live in England where, contrary to Robert Scoble, we have a superb selection of national broadsheet newspapers, plus a dubious pot of red-top tabloids that entertain us from time to time with their wild excesses — though none quite as bad as some in the U.S.

I find I tend to consume hard news — like “Obama wins primary”, “Brown reneges on solemn promise” — on TV rolling news programs, principally the BBC’s News 24. Never for more than 20 minutes, though, because nothing is more life dehancing than watching the same clips over and over — unless they’re about you, of course.

Tech news is best read online. Techmeme, TechCrunch (and the other Crunches) and Robert Scoble put the print press in the shade. It’s very much a case of deja vu if I glance at the technology pages in The Times or the Guardian. In fact I think they source a lot of their material from the tech blogosphere too.

Here at Syntagma Towers we only buy the print version of The Daily Mail because it loses a lot of its visual value online. It’s more of a magazine these days, so you need to have it in your hands for maximum impact.

I read the American press online, which means The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. It’s so much simpler than buying late print versions flown over.

I also consume the British broadsheets in pixel form. Unmissable commentary in large blocks of text does not require a paper version in an age of big screen monitors.

The Telegraph is the first port of call, with its brilliant array of journalists : American Janet Daley (who, annoyingly, is rarely wrong about anything) ; International Business Editor, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, whose commentary on the credit crunch is required reading — oh, and I knew some of his relatives in Oxford. Charles Moore can be relied upon to throw fresh light on any subject, and Jeff Randall is a one-stop-shop for untangling what’s going on in the business and political firmaments. Add Matthew d’Ancona’s take on politics and the paper really is de rigueur for anyone interested in the world we think we live in. Not forgetting Simon Heffer, of course. That’s quite a galaxy of stars.

The Times (London) ditto. Anatole Kaletsky’s macroeconomic pieces are perfectly read online, as are Matthew Parris’s musings on politics and everything that moves.

So, a newspaper nut like me only reads one paper in its native print version. What does that say about the future of print?

Keep the aspidistra flying folks.

Face it, we’ve all come under the cosh in the blogosphere at some time or other. It’s a bit tedious, isn’t it? DoshBlogging is a much better option — and it pays better too.

The Times (London) has a cluster of pieces today under the heading, Blogging for Dosh – the print version is much more comprehensive, so buy a copy if you can.

Apart from the now-mandatory two or three paragraphs on Darren Rowse, Mr Problogger, it looks at other moneymaking phenomena online, such as Perez Hilton, Julie Powell and Clotilde Dusoulier.

Tom Whitwell, whose blog, musicthing.co.uk, makes a bob or two, gives us “Ten ways to get rich blogging”. The best one for me is, “Keep your costs down”. He cites Perez Hilton, whose office is a coffee shop he inhabits all day for the price of a few lattes. Now that’s smart.

But read it yourself.

On Saturdays, I permit myself a small insult as reward for all the hard work during the week. Here’s today’s juicy snippet.

A U.S Congressman is reported to have said of another :

“Like a rotten mackerel in the moonlight, he shines and stinks.”

Thanks to Matthew Parris in today’s Times (London) for that great one-liner.

The question then arises, who does that remind you of over here in Britain? Answers on a postcard, please, to : 10 Downing Street, London, SW1.