Raw deal

Avid and regular readers of the leading UK Sunday newspapers have been getting a raw deal for months.

Those who read The Observer are likely to come by it by Mondays at the earliest, if they manage to get hold of it at all.

Regular readers of The Mail on Sunday have to learn to give it a miss, at least twice or thrice monthly.

Readers of the Culture and Style supplements of the London Sunday Times often have to make do without.

While this week even the Sunday Telegraph readers had to forget all about the cultural review section of their favourite newspaper.

Newspaper vendors invariably come up with the pretext that according to the newspapers' agents in Malta these are short-shipped (or to be more precise, irregularly airfreighted) from the UK.

Bearing in mind that such readers are still expected to pay the full official price of these newspapers - when they do find them on sale - one cannot but reach the conclusion that readers of the UK Sunday newspapers are not only being given a raw deal.

They are being literally ripped off.