Letter from the editor: A sense of perspective

“If people want to read lots of gushing rubbish,” writes i reader Anne Loader, “there are plenty of sources for this”. She was not talking about this column, but was responding to my invitation for you to tell us how much (or how little) coverage you’d like on the forthcoming royal wedding.

“The wedding is, however, a newsworthy event,” she went on, “so just cover it as you would something that was equally newsworthy. Stick to the facts.” Her missive was indicative of the mood of the i nation. A poll on our Facebook page (always worth a visit, by the way) was enthusiastically embraced, and, by a margin of two to one, you said you didn’t want any coverage of the future Mr and Mrs Windsor of Anglesey.

I think we can all agree that it would be perverse not to mention the wedding at all. But we get the point: there is a good deal of disaffection around.

Christian Murphy spoke for many. “I find it distasteful and borderline offensive,” he wrote, “that the Royals have chosen this time to throw a wedding that will cost tens of millions of pounds. Mr Cameron thinks the nation will join in the celebration of the nuptials, but I will be too busy restructuring my finances to get in the party mood.”

Dorien Thomas believes it’s a “non-event deserving of no more space than the five-clue crossword”, whereas David Templeton believes we should do “some articles re the cost to the public purse v the economic benefits”.

Thanks to the very large number of you who responded: we’ll try to use more of your comments in our @i column over the next days and weeks. We’ve taken your comments on board, and we’ll try to be neither gushing nor curmudgeonly, neither credulous nor cynical. And we’ll always keep a sense of perspective in our coverage given the events of real global significance happening elsewhere. Welcome to the week. Who knows what it will bring?