grant select on all tables of schema or database

It seems like it should be a very easy problem to solve I just need one role
to have select privileges on all the tables of a particular schema or
database including any new tables that are created since they are created
programmatically daily. I've combed google and the docs to no avail. Do I
need to write pg/plsql scripts just to so something like that?? I believe on
other dbms you can just say grant all on schema.* or something to that
effect. The script i found below would be ok if tables weren't being created
constantly.

using version 8.1.4

thanks,
Gene

----
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION pgx_grant(text, text, text)
RETURNS int4 AS
$BODY$
DECLARE
priv ALIAS FOR $1;
patt ALIAS FOR $2;
user ALIAS FOR $3;
obj record;
num integer;
BEGIN
num:=0;
FOR obj IN SELECT relname FROM pg_class
WHERE relname LIKE patt || '%' AND relkind in ('r','v','S') LOOP
EXECUTE 'GRANT ' || priv || ' ON ' || obj.relname || ' TO ' || user;
num := num + 1;
END LOOP;
RETURN num;
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE 'plpgsql' VOLATILE;
ALTER FUNCTION pgx_grant(text, text, text) OWNER TO root;