Japanese fall-out........or not?

My friend Douggie, the designer of the ‘Canute’ tidal power generator and possessed of an enquiring mind, is curious about reports of panic buying on the west coast of the US because of the prospect of radio-active fall-out arriving from the nuclear disaster in Japan, carried by the jet-stream. As the jet stream was there in 1945 also, he asks why was there no fall-out from Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the nuclear detritus was vastly greater? Ditto the many nuclear test explosions carried out in the Pacific in the ‘50s and ’60s? Or has the whole thing been yet another example of the breathless and semi-hysterical reporting style that is the current fashion?

The Japan coverage has also been notable for its non-reporting. There has been no looting. Well, fancy that! There has been no panic. Bless my soul! The people have been getting stuck-in to put things right. Would you believe it! Unfair to journos!

Outside The Economist it is getting increasingly difficult to get serious news coverage and comment. The print version of the Telegraph now looks like a tabloid with banner headlines and the rest. TV news is endlessly repetitive. Sometimes the various channels run the same story for four hours. Vast amounts of space are given over to stuff about selebs and other garbage. I suspect that one reason for this is that TV now has to provide 24 hours news coverage (why?) so it has a great deal of time and space to fill. Another reason may be that internet news has sharpened competition enormously.

We now watch Al Jazeera. AA Gill, the Sunday Times TV critic rates it as the best news channel with excellent coverage and quality reporting. I started to watch it last year because it was the only news service that reported the trouble in Thailand in any depth or detail – important to us because we were about to depart for Chiang Mai. It is not the PR department of Al Qaeda as Dubya seemed to believe.

Going green.

ActionAid and other campaign groups are claiming that, due to deforestation, emissions associated with the EU’s biofuel targets could be up to six times higher than fossil fuel equivalents, and will also create huge social upheaval with communities losing their land, homes and jobs.