irony

i love the newspaper industry. mostly i avoid the red tops as i know they are not going to provide me with much in the way of news and in the cases of the sun, the daily mail and the daily express they are likely to have my head explode in a rage.

what were once referred to, as the broadsheets comprise of four newspapers.
the daily telegraph, still a broadsheet. very much a right of centre paper, with a libertarian streak.
the times, now a tabloid (or should that be a “compact”). right of centre, but written in such a poor style it is hard to care what it thinks.
the guardian, this has moved to a berliner format. left of centre. maturely written.
the independent, tabloid or compact (they decided on the compact description to avoid being called tabloids…). left of centre but trying very hard to be the angry young man or contrarians of papers.

it is the guardian and the independent that exercise my contempt at the moment.
both papers have published pieces in support of the arguments for their being an issue of climate change.
the indie giving over their front pages to questions of waste on the part of our consumer society. the indie spending time using the freedom of information act to see if they can find out about the carbon footprint of government ministers as they fly about the globe.

now i have to admit i err on the side of caution and will do my best to recycle, i will do my best not to leave lights on if i don’t need them. computers will be turned fully off, blah blah. i do this because it seems sensible to do it. it seems obvious to me that the weather has changed drastically in my lifetime and that the most likely reason for that is because of man’s intervention. i freely admit i probably will choose the articles that back this belief up.
but more importantly the people who seem to be spokesmen for the profligate abuse of carbon fuels and such like are people like jeremy clarkson, george w bush, dominic lawson, the possibility that i could be on the same side as those guys means i am a believer in climate change.

but lets return to the independent and the guardian.
good for them for bringing climate change to our attention. good for them for being such constant champions of the cause.
except they are hypocrites. each weekend the supplements of both papers will be wrapped in cellophane – ready to go into landfills. they can come with more sections than most people will read so more paper to be recycled (or more likely binned). during the week there will be at least one insert that slips out of the paper as you read it. the lovely glossy dell advert skidding across the road – quite way it can’t just be a page in the paper escapes me, but look now it is litter and more for the bin. lets not mention all the travel supplements.

oh i haven’t forgotten the indie’s interrogation of minister’s use of flights. it appears that they are not quite so open about their own carbon footprint. while johann hari is keen to tell us how he has flown to palestine to have a face to face with a freedom fighter. he seems to get about quite a lot in order to get a few a soundbites.
it is good that we are reminded that there are things that we can do in order to protect the environment.
but i am not sure it is beneficial that the papers end up becoming like parents in which they tell us to do as they say not do as they do.
never liked it when my parents did it, don’t like it when the papers do it.

the papers never see the irony of what they do.