Freedom of the press

The BBC recently reported the Sun's take on its decision to print the photo of Prince Harry naked:

In Friday's Sun, under the headline "Heir it is", the paper says: "Pic of naked Harry you've already seen on the internet".

David Dinsmore, managing editor of the Sun, said the paper had thought "long and hard" about publication and added: "For us this is about the freedom of the press.

"This is about the ludicrous situation where a picture can be seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world on the internet but can't be seen in the nation's favourite paper read by eight million people every day.

"This is about our readers getting involved in the discussion with the man who is third in line to the throne - it's as simple as that."

In an editorial, the newspaper said the pictures represented a crucial test of Britain's free press.

A number of questions sprung to my mind:

• Why did the paper think "long and hard" about going to the trouble of printing a picture available to "hundreds of millions of people ... on the internet"? Surely that is a number even greater than the circulation of the Sun so presumably the Sun's buyers have already seen the photos?
• Why did the paper not simply supply a link to the internet photo or suggest a few search terms instead thus avoiding the "long and hard" thinking?
• What kind of 'discussion' does Mr Dinsmore expect to result from the publication of the photos? How would this discussion have differed if they had not printed the photos?
• His comment seems to imply that this 'discussion' will be "with the man who is third in line to the throne" - are we to understand that Prince Harry will be personally involved in this 'discussion' with the readers of the Sun?
• Why is this a crucial test of Britain's 'free press', rather than, say, a discussion about why the mainstream news media are in the hands of a very few, very rich companies who have a very particular view of what's important and what's not in the world and why, for example, we in the West are the good guys no matter what violence we do to the lives of people in other (usually Middle Eastern) countries where they are of course wicked terrorists waiting to destroy the fragile world peace we are so determined to spread around the globe?

For anyone interested in analysing the performance of our 'free press' they may like to have a look at Medialens and make up your own mind.

Reports of Peak Oil's death are greatly exaggerated

I gave about 6 or 7 talks about Peak Oil when I lived in Brighton to alert people to something I felt, and still feel, is critically important for us to address. Oil powers a huge proportion of what makes our current minority world lifestyle possible and so examining how much we have, may have and how much it will cost seem worthwhile areas of investigation to me. Sadly, discussion of it in the mainstream media is almost zero (unless faces with a price spike or embargo) and so we lumber on towards a crisis. As usual.

If Peak Oil means absolutely nothing to you (which is very likely) then you can read a good overview here - his site's not been updated since 2009 but nothing of material significance has changed since then to alter its essential message. There are many other sites where you can find up to date information. A recent column in the Daily Telegraph this July put it well:

While there's lots of hype about tar sands and shale fuels, these new technologies often expend more energy than they create, while causing horrendous environmental and water-supply problems. Conventionally-produced crude will remain absolutely critical, and demand for it will spiral, until mankind bans the internal combustion engine, outlaws ammonium-based fertilisers, dismantles the global pharmaceutical industry and learns to live without plastic. I can't see that happening anytime soon.

Me neither!

Here's a short video by Richard Heinberg from the Post Carbon Institute about why Peak Oil has not gone away, even if George Monbiot seem to think so.

It's worth a watch.