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The News- whether you get yours from The Sun, the Mail Online, The Telegraph or O.K magazine, everybody’s getting some- but what is it exactly that you’re getting?

We’re good at questioning where our food comes from; is it organically farmed? Were people nice to the pigs in my hamburger, did my tomatoes have a happy life? Should the same line of questioning be applied to your daily news source?

‘Truth’ is a flexible concept in the hands of those with a motive and a profit margin, so learning to challenge what you read rather than take it in 20p portions is a skill worthy of learning.

Ask questions every day. Then ask some more.

Lastest 'Newsbites'

'God Bless America' 12/09/12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlZpWdylRv0&feature=g-upl

"Cheryl Cole and the Paralympics" 31/08/12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esuU-T549io&feature=context-gau

Prince Harry and Vegas 28/09/12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1GCUmiHkX4&feature=context-gau

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Stick It Where The Sun Don't Shine..

Bitesize Philosophy Lesson Five:

 Everybody has a motive.

Stick it where The Sun don’t shine…

So today’s ever-insightful edition of The Sun has the nation’s favourite bad-boy prince butt-naked, clutching his bollocks under the enticing caption of ‘Pics of naked Harry you’ve already seen on the internet.’

Uh, great exclusive there then guys, plus the story is a few days old. So what is the deal with print VS the internet? And why is everyone getting their knickers in a twist?

The Sun say it’s a matter of public interest to have those images printed, because it highlights issues to do with Harry's security and his royal and military image. That, and of course the bigger debate of freedom of press, a term that’s getting thrown around a lot with the Leveson enquiry, which is looking into media ethics. (Or rather whether anybody has any.)

The Sun’s argument is that though a picture can be freely floating around the internet quite happily, regulations and laws means the same image can’t be printed and this, as they put it, is “ludicrous.” (Big word, well done.)

That to me sounds like our Harry is a bit of a scapegoat here, not the type of goat anyone wants to be especially when you’ve got no clothes on in a Las Vegas hotel.

On The Sun’s website there a nice little video speech where the managing editor opens by stating “The Sun is a responsible paper.” An interesting choice of words for a tabloid whose primary concerns are generally whose on page three, and which footballer’s had a piece of it.

“We’re not against him letting his hair down once in a while.” He says of Harry. Wow, that’s kind of you Mr managing editor, and good to know, because I’m sure Harry would think twice about a vacation if The Sun in its wealth and wisdom were unhappy about him getting a tan.

“This is about our readers getting involved in the discussion about the man who is third in line to throne.” Is it? Is it really? I think there’s alot of things wrong about that sentence, but it does pose the interesting line of discussion about what is public interest. Yes he’s a member of the royal family, but does knowing or not knowing what he did this summer really affect my life as a member of the public? Did we not know he had butt cheeks or something? What is public interest and what is the public enjoying gossip and scandal has become a rather blurry line in this celebrity-obsessed culture, and it’s probably a good idea to remember that this is a boy whose mother died while being chased by a hungry herd of paparazzi looking for their next juicy story. 

The Huffington Post reported how “UK readers were treated to the odd sight of Sun employees posing naked on the front page in place of the real pictures on Thursday. (Editors were criticized for using a 21-year-old female intern in the picture.)”

Bloody hell, and this bald-headed editor is trying to convince us that this responsible paper is fighting a battle that’s to do with press integrity and matters of public interest?? (It also made me realise that actually, maybe I had it easy in my time as a newspaper intern, my clothes as a rule, stayed on...)

Newspapers love throwing around the term ‘it’s in the public interest’ -a loose and lucrative expression that acts as a ‘get out of jail free’ card, or Charlie Sheens ninth life. Wake up- it’s not about your interest, or what best for you, a good and upstanding member of the public. It’s not in the public’s interest- it’s in their interest. They’re a business and they’re in the industry of selling newspapers.

Maybe that’s the difference between print and internet; I can look at Harry’s lovely buttocks for free online, but I’d have to pay 20p to take them home with me from the newsagents. A nice bit of controversy means The Sun gets #hashtagged a few more times, blogs are written, comments are made, hell, here I am talking about the company right now; so the country becomes a walking talking advert for the nations shoddiest tabloid. (A part of, lets not forget, the disgraced Murdoch media empire.)

 Always, always be aware of motive, because in business, everybody has one, and in journalism there’s a fine line.

The internet has changed the world of newspapers and journalism not only because of its immediacy but because of its lack of editing. (And I’m not just talking about the Daily Mail Online’s atrocious typing errors.) Twitter is an un-edited mouthpiece for politicians, celebrities and world leaders, (even Ghandi’s got a twitter account.) There are millions of blogs, social networking sites and online news sites; the internet just doesn’t have a filter in the way a printing office does. The more interesting question to ask is does this make it more or less valuable as a medium for news and truth? Uncensored, un-edited, a wealth of opinions and angles, maybe there’s more opportunity to form your own opinion here rather than in a newspaper; reading a story worded for a certain market.

There are different stigmas and stereotypes attached to different newspapers- a tabloid reader compared to a reader of The Guardian for example, but the notable argument is not who but why: because it’s a market. It’s an industry making money, so different papers are produced in different styles; certain stories are highlighted compared to others, different political angles taken, all to reach these different demographics and produce a profit.

I’m not quite sure what it says about us as a nation if The Sun really is, as they claim, ‘the nation’s favourite newspaper. Yes its easy to read, lots of pictures, not too many words, it’s cheap and has the valuable opinions of topless young ladies in there, but why do we need news to be dumbed down for us? Put it this way, if someone labelled me as a Sun reader, I’d be offended.

 With the internet, more and more people can have it straight from the horse’s mouth, not a day later with a cheesy headline in a bold font. So are we going to grow out of The Sun? Maybe they’re just grasping at straws printing Royal rear-ends?

Of course the best line on the subject came from Good old Boris, who never fails to deliver:

"The real scandal would be if you went all the way to Las Vegas and you didn't misbehave in some trivial way," he told the BBC.

Yes Boris. Yes indeed.

Recess- France: Nurses, Nights and Nibbles intermittent

Recess-
France: Nurses, Nights and Nibbles intermittent.

So I was in rural France, a land large and green where people still take wicker baskets to market and you get your eggs from chickens in the garden not from a shelf in Tesco. Where my family have created a small corner of happiness in a beautiful French farm house with sheep and chickens and the odd cat (although Keith the donkey has sadly moved on.)

I quickly decide this suits me well, where the most pressing concern is what book to read next and where no one has heard of graduate options or an overdraft. Such foreign concepts are substituted with good food, conversation and a hammock under the pear trees that I intent to retire to.

I do however, manage to sustain an injury which leads to two interesting discoveries; firstly, French health care makes the NHS look like a half-arsed attempt at first aid, and secondly, iodine bloody hurts when poured into an open wound.
The second of these discoveries is played out suspiciously like that scene from ‘Fight Club’ where Brad Pitt pours some corrosive ingredient onto Edward Norton’s arm, teaching him some valuable lesson about the nature of his true self as he writhes about in agony. I have no such epiphany, or Brad Pitt. Instead I have the notorious Nurse Rachett, a burly and solid-looking French women with a large mole on her face, who doesn’t so much as flinch as my whole body trembles as iodine is poured into the hole in my side and I nearly bite my tongue off.

Now the NHS aren’t exactly famous for being forthcoming with their medical care, but the word I would perhaps use for the French system would be overzealous. They’re at me with a scalpel and local anaesthetic before I can say petit poi, performing a minor surgery in the middle of the doctor’s office; I’m used to my GP using his computer to treat me rather than any of the tools in his office. So I don’t quite have time to decide whether I’m impressed or alarmed.

Nurse Rachett is then sent forth, trotting on down to the farm house armed with bandages and disinfectant happily holding me me down muttering at me in French.
          “Every day? You have to change the dressing every day??”  
Dressing as a verb implies material on top of the skin, layered careful for an aesthetic finish. No such luck. I experience the ‘packing of a wound’ which involves ‘mesh’ being stuffed into the whole in my side soaked in iodine, after it has been irrigated with the stuff (not the word you want to hear considering iodine feels like vinegar on open flesh.) I fob her off a bit and manage to get her to come every other day, which she thinks is quite amusing, but I don’t know how to say ‘don’t laugh at me’ in French, so I then convince my aunt to take over packing duties, ushering the she-devil back down the lane into her Renault Clio.

                                                         *** 
The thing about the noise here is that there is none. I step out in to my Grandma’s garden that first afternoon looking down at her mini sheep grazing in the grass at the bottom and there is this odd moment when I think I might have gone deaf. I can’t hear anything. Nothing. There’s no soft roar of cars on tarmac somewhere, the familiar constant hum of an aeroplane above, sirens screeching or neighbours yakking. The silence is so absolute it’s as if the mute button has been hit and its almost unsettling until the wind glides through the trees and the sheep spot me and ‘baah’ indignantly.
If its noise you need then a little car trip in order. In the gorgeous French port of La Rochelle we rent bikes and beach walk about, stopping intermittently for coffee and croissants, discovering that Fort Boyard (who doesn’t remember Melinda Messenger on that British Sunday TV pastime) is just off the coast here. The other thing I learn is that the French eat all the time.
           “I just want a sandwich,” I sigh exasperatedly, and the woman in the restaurant looks at me with an equal sigh, asking why can’t we just have a full three-course meal like everybody else in the city.
          You could always opt for ice-cream, which is a meal in itself around here; insane portions of brightly coloured and vividly rich flavours, none of this one-scoop nonsense, but layer upon layer of creamy icecream that melts as soon as the cone is in your hand, so the whole experience is a kind of insane desperate happiness where you don’t even care anymore that you have dessert all around your face, slowly dripping from your hands up to almost your elbows.
One scoop would be enough for even the most optimistic child but my grandmother has a secret talent whereby despite her tiny frame, there is no amount of ice-cream in the world that can leave her full.


She has rather a sweet tooth, in the supermarket a few days previously I saw her with her hands full coming out of the cake isle and I mistakenly said “Well let’s not go mad shall we?”
          “No lets do go mad, because these are important.” she corrects me, putting five packets of biscuits into the trolly.

The other thing my grandmother believes in passionately is the piano. Back at her house we play for a solid afternoon together, her ever patient mind excusing my inability to read music (despite all the lessons she paid for me) and it seems so funny to me that this extraordinary women who will swear blind she is useless at everyday tasks, can sit at the piano and play Chopin, Bach and Mozart with the ease and grace of the men themselves.
It’s not always merely modestly that blinds us to our own greatness, maybe it’s the human condition that sees us naturally focus on the things we can’t do, the things we don’t have. Either way it never fails to amazes me how she’s almost surprised to remember she speaks French, plays piano, got herself through medical school, loved, lost and travelled round India at the age of sixty-five. Perhaps that’s what grandchildren are for. I am in awe of her.

The neighbours, although not on par with my grandmother, are definitely also an interesting bunch. There’s the abandoned ranch next door where you can learn to ride like a cowboy whatever that means, and stories of Jon Jon and the local woman that everyone seems to happily share. (I still haven’t quite worked out whos wife she is.) Some of these people have never left the French borders, and when I come across Jon Batiste’s fishing lake with one solitary mouldy chair on the end of a jetty, I just wander on through, forgetting the French attitude to trespassing. I wonder if I will be shot, but return the next day to see a large chain obstructing the gate instead.

It’s not until you leave the clutches of the city that you can look up and see lights of a different kind; the stars. My god the stars. There aren’t even street lights here so when the night takes hold the sky is impossibly full of streams of lights, the mist of the milky way as clear as if you painted it on yourself.

Watching the end of something never looks quite as beautiful as when you’re looking at a shooting star. I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever stood still enough to see one, and out on the terrace sitting in a flimsy plastic chair I see my first one, and marvel at something so beautiful and so dead.

Stars tend to have one of two effects.
Either its along the lines of “Dude they’re so beautiful, anything is possible because the universe is infinite man.”
Or, “Bloody hell, im rather insignificant.”

You can either feel very big, or very small staring up in the dark and as I tilt my head back I remember a quote: