Seaplanes in Suffolk

Having experienced travel by seaplanes in Canada and noticing that the geography, costs and legislation are roughly similar; I consider that seaplane services could be viable in East Anglia and their feasibility as transport infrastructure should be studied further. However it is a chicken and egg situation. My investigation into obtaining grant aid from the Technology Strategy Board for a feasibility study finds that I must be a capitalist with matched funding and have intellectual property to stake on the project. Sadly I have neither. Surely there is a means somehow to fund a study to prove (or disprove) the case for developing local transport infrastructure and amenities without requiring private equity? I set out my case here in the hope that someone can advise me further.

Addendum: scroll to the end to see some results of enquiries.

Like many other places, in British Columbia seaplanes are unremarkable and everyday transport.

Seaplanes provide scheduled services to everywhere there is water with sufficient surface area.

Seaplanes can operate safely in busy harbours amidst other traffic such as at Ganges Harbour on Salt Spring Island.

All you need to create a seaplane port is a dock and a sock. The runways are provided by nature.

Vancouver International Airport is connected to a several docks providing a vast seaplane network serving the west coast of the USA and Canada. King George Dock and London City Airport have even less distance between them.

Seaplanes have practically zero impact on water quality. It is less than boats with their poisonous anti-fouling paint and fuel-tainted bilge water.

This is how you take seaplanes out of the water for servicing.

 

The most popular craft are the De Havilland Beaver and Twin Otter. Worldwide demand for seaplanes has kept these planes in continuous production for nearly 50 years.

Seaplanes serve the urban centres of waterfront cities such as New York, Seattle and Vancouver, where a new city terminal is under construction. A seaplane service operating from the River Thames would reduce the demand on London Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted and the pressure to expand them.

Seaplane trials on the Thames were tried in 1949. Today there is far less river traffic to potentially interfere with each other.

A suggestion for a Suffolk route mixing business and tourism markets. For example, golfers could be carried outbound, fresh oysters could come back inbound.

Light aircraft are very competitive with other transport modes in cost, carbon emissions and convenience when speed is the passengers' priority. Seaplanes are even more so with their lower infrastructure costs.

There is substantial demand for fast and efficient business travel between London and Suffolk. Without it, the region will lose billions in investment and tax revenue to elsewhere.

There is a small population under the potential flight path. The noise of aircraft at take-off is less than a tractor.

The present transport infrastructure serving Suffolk is at capacity and prone to failure.

We can't just keep building more roads to increase their capacity.

Building more roads for more efficient transport would negate the carbon emissions saved. Seaplanes should be considered as part of a national transport strategy.

Seaplane travel would fit well with established tourism in Suffolk.

There are several potential locations in Suffolk for a seaplane port that are suitable, affordable and could generate revenue for local amenity development.

One site I would propose is presently derelict and zoned for industrial use. It could become both a seaplane port, training centre and a nature reserve. There would be a need for a national centre for seaplane development somewhere in Britain. This area was used for that in the 1930s.

It has good connections to other transport modes serving Europe and Great Britain. Services from here could connect to those from the continent.

Harwich to Ostend in under an hour

Local investment is now being made to improve rail capacity and journey times. The £5M Ipswich 'chord' will reduce the rail distance to the north without shunting by 100 miles.

Suitable infrastructure is already in place to begin trials.

Seaplanes need not be limited to light aircraft operation. Multi-mode transfer between ships, rail and seaplanes used to be the way we travelled. Modern materials and technology could produce even more efficient, quieter and safer aircraft than were built before. The US Navy successfully tested jet-engined flying boats.

Seaplanes in Britain are an infant industry ripe for investment and growth. What is holding us back? Report after report points to the UK regulatory conditions framed by agencies unfamiliar with seaplane operations.

The barriers to seaplane operations in the UK are not the natural conditions but the lack of a strategic policy commitment in government. A report on regulations by FUSETRA concluded: “The seaplane and amphibian operation in Europe is a niche market and it is out of the focus of the involved authorities…”

Further reading:

The FUSETRA program is studying the potential of seaplane transport and the ways to harmonize across Europe the different national aviation rules. Its initial reports concluded that there will be many benefits in developing a European seaplane industry.

A University of Glasgow presentation outlining the enormous potential for seaplanes.(pdf)

In 2007 Mott Macdonald transport consultants looked into what are now operational routes in Scotland. 

I wrote to Suffolk County Council to suggest they commission a seaplane feasibility study and got this reply by email.

I also gave this presentation in person (very quickly) to my MP and followed it up with an email. Rather than encourage or endorse this idea, she replied to my question about research grants by passing it to the Department for Transport. Their reply is that the private sector should be the ones to do this and it should not be supported by the taxpayer. The reply says look for advice at http://www.dft.gov.uk/topics/science-research/external

I also wrote to the UK's research councils for advice. On the 7th September I got the reply:

...Unfortunately the field that you describe is not an area within which the Economic and Social Research Council is active. You may wish to approach the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (www.epsrc.ac.uk), who may be able to be of assistance.

I tried them too with the same letter:

>I would be grateful if someone could give me any advice on how I can influence the research priorities of the government or the appropriate research councils to consider investment in amphibious aircraft technology and infrastructure in the UK.

They replied:

>EPSRC does indeed support research and PhD Training into advanced engineering which underpins some of the areas you describe in your e-mail.
 However, EPSRC is not a policy organisation or lobby group in a position to influence government policy in this area directly.
 Some of the research groups we support may be able to advise on how to raise funding for developing the infrastructure you describe. You can find more information about relevant EPSRC-funded groups on our website www.epsrc.ac.uk (see Grants on the Web option http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/).

An open letter to Lord Sebastian Coe: litterbug

Lord Coe
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW

Dear Lord Coe,

Many organisations such as the RSCPA and the Marine Conservation Society are working to prevent the deliberate release of helium mylar and latex balloons so that they do not cause slow painful deaths for wildlife and domestic animals.

Very often balloon releases accompany fundraising for good causes or are launched in memory of someone who has died. I commemorated my late sister after she died in an accident this way, so I fully understand the feelings of those that do this. So I am reluctant to contact organisers of memorial releases to tell them their actions are are compounding their tragedy but each memorial release only gives further credibility to the misguided but widely held belief that balloon releases are harmless.

A good deal of PR goes into claims that a latex balloon will burst into small pieces and then degrade in the environment "as fast as an oak leaf" though this research was originally published by the Latex Rubber Institute of Malaysia and that headline rate actually takes years in the cold salt water off Britain, enough time for a seabird or turtle to swallow a balloon. Not all released balloons burst nor break into small fragments. My local paper delights in reporting that balloons launched from East Anglia turn up deflated but intact in Scandinavian forests. Also, the strings tied to them are a separate and even more lethal hazard.

Fundraising balloons have killed cattle and resulted in hefty compensation claims from those responsible. The National Farmers Union have previously campaigned against balloon releases, stating: "When the balloons land in grass fields they might be eaten by grazing livestock or contaminate hay, again with the risk of being swallowed by livestock when they eat the hay. Balloons are just another form of litter, making the countryside look untidy."

The amount of balloon litter found on beaches has been increasing year on year. The Policy Paper on Balloon Litter by Keep Wales Tidy is perhaps the most detailed analysis of the subject and it refutes the arguments of the balloon industry that balloons are biodegradable.

Many fast food restaurant chains and supermarkets claim their packaging and bags are biodegradable too but none would say it is acceptable to scatter them at random in the environment, so the balloon industry's position is quite absurd.

Several states in the USA and in Australia have banned the release of any kind of helium balloons. One commentator says "balloon releases are littering. Organised balloon releases are organised littering."

Keep Scotland Tidy reckon balloon and flying lantern releases, with their potential for creating litter, could actually be interpreted as an offence under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to drop "or otherwise deposit" litter in a public place. With this in mind, it is asking Scotland’s local councils to ban balloon and flying lantern releases from premises within their control, including all school buildings, and consider entering a new condition on entertainment licenses to prevent balloon and flying lantern releases.

Some progress is being made. The RSPCA has stepped in to advise event organisers about these dangers when they've had enough time. But last week, 22 nursery schools - which should be mindful of the impression this makes on young people - released balloons for wounded soldiers.

So far the response by various authorities to my complaints about balloon releases has been ostrich-like. After I complained to the police about a release in North Yorkshire, on the basis that it was indistinguishable from littering, I was referred to Scarborough Borough Council as they are the "enforcing authority" for littering. Subsequently Harry Briggs, Recycling And Waste Enforcement Manager for Scarborough Borough Council, suggested I write to the newspapers to complain.

Perhaps these authorities fear a media backlash. A former member of a county council recounted to me their experience of a campaign started by the local press piling scorn on them for being a "spoilsport" when they proposed to legislate a ban of balloon releases.

With millions of balloons sold every year, education and codes of practice alone won't prevent the needless deaths and the continued pollution of both our environment and attitudes to conservation, especially when organisations such as LOCOG release balloons at events in the build up to the London 2012 Olympic Games.

I think that until there is a judicial ruling that a balloon release is not littering or in any way harmful, and therefore legal, the reporting to authorities of deliberate releases as crime of littering or fly-tipping is the only way to ensure the authorities will focus on this problem.

Therefore I have reported you to the Metropolitan Police for your wilful act of littering that was witnessed by 40,000 spectators in the vicinity of E20 2ST at around 9 pm on May 5th 2012. The Metropolitan Police's confirmation number is MPS CR03-00049452.

However, you will no doubt be pleased to know the Metropolitan Police responded that: "This should be directed to the Mayor of London, or the event organisers. (as) No offences to report."

So, we are stymied. It is difficult to discourage those who release balloons directly while the authorities ignore the law or choose not to enforce it. But I feel we cannot do nothing and see birds, turtles, basking sharks and cattle killed by ingesting ballons and their strings and have our landscape and young people's attitudes to conservation polluted by the actions of others.

So, with all due respect sir, could you not, in your position, ensure that London's Olympic games will honour their pledge to be the most environmental games ever and take no part - and even actively discourage - further balloon releases.

Yours sincerely,

Nat Bocking

Thinking of organising a balloon release? Please read this.

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Halesworth: Mary Portas Pilot

A few random suggestions for Halesworth in the Mary Portas Pilot Town application.


Open a Chamber of Commerce/Tourist Information in a booth or empty storefront in the Thoroughfare or at the train station that could sell tickets for travel and events; even if just for Saturdays in summer months. Serve coffee to people waiting for trains and taxis.


This might also encourage more taxi drivers to wait at Halesworth Station rather than Darsham and encourage taxi drivers to 'steer' people to Halesworth when meeting trains.


Operate a family-friendly cycle hire near the Thoroughfare or train station. Some local people are interested in doing this but lack the capital. It would be a tourism magnet and every hire would get a local shopping/dining/activity guide.


Provide free parking for 1 hour but increase charges for parking over two hours as people are known to drive to Halesworth to take the 588 bus to Norwich. This clogs the town car parks with little benefit to trade except increasing WDC revenue.


Adopt a "Day Two" strategy that sponsors at least one late bus from Southwold back to Halesworth so visitors can day-visit Southwold by train and surrounding area and eat and drink without driving but will stay in Halesworth. Next day they'll look around Halesworth. Those that think this will detract from Southwold trade just don't get it.  It will increase business for both without the downside of more cars.


The shops and restaurants if equipped could give free cups of tea or coffee to shoppers presenting a valid bus ticket for 520, 588, 511 etc.  (it could be limited to a number per day per establishment).


The 511 Hoppa bus could hand out shopping leaflets and coupons.


Involve everyone to practise more joined-up thinking: cluster events around other events to get a 'buzz' going such as have the Thoroughfare shops stay open later for Lions Carnival or Gig in the Park or High Tide.


Open later into evenings and on Sunday during Latitude/High Tide etc. weekends and run/support a shuttle bus to Henham for Latitude and Wings and Wheels, Henham Steam Rally etc. so people can visit by train.


Encourage more 'backpacker' price accommodation to open up nearby. Blyford Church would be a good location. 


Incidentally, some research into the design of music and movie production and circus trailers and tenting and temporary buildings suggests there are ways to convert large buildings for other uses without harming the fabric which can be removed later without trace.


Hold a winter and summer cycling jumble sale in the Rifle Hall (perhaps on the w/e of the Dunwich Dynamo). There is definitely a gap in the market for this.


Ensure every interesting building and place in Halesworth gets listed on every possible film location register. The views of the church, Market Place and Chediston Street could be excellent locations and could be easily transformed into the 1700's - 1800's period. Such publicity would greatly help the town. Eastern Screen didn't have much on Halesworth on its books and were quite useless anyway.


Give out window stickers with bold, catchy slogans and encourage them to go viral. 


Hold the 'Alesworth Beer Festival. Once there were 40 pubs on Chediston Street.


Promote the business-positive attitude of the TC: 


It's Halesworth, not Jobsworth. 


A small town, big for business.


Sell Halesworth T-Shirts and souvenirs, even go as far as post-modern ironic tat.


Promote the local architecture. Old and new. Heveningham Hall. Sliding House, Balancing Barn etc.


Promote Halesworth for a week at Liverpool Street Station. Set up a market of local produce and displays of local shops and services.


Spread rumours that Brad Pitt was seen house-hunting in Halesworth...


Draw up an alphabetical list of every product available in Halesworth while thinking how to fill the gaps. Highlight the exotic, the expensive, the cheap and the unusual. Create a shopping treasure hunt with a substantial prize.


Someone once had a plan for 'The Fine Art Town' branding for Halesworth. It can claim it has as many galleries as Cork Street!


Grant honourary Halesworth 'local' status to anyone who settled in Suffolk after 874.


Follow the application on twitter @HwthPortasPilot

Shanghai Wonton Camels

Travelling around the web for something else, as you do, I came across this first image of a Shanghai wonton vendor by the noted German sinologist Ernst Boerschmann. He worked for fifty years documenting China from 1907 onwards. Then by chance a few days later I found the second image by another photographer and I was struck by the similarity of these street vendors' carts.

These look like wonderful examples of peasant craftsmanship and very practical solutions to a whole host of design challenges. The weight of the lighter ingredients and utensils is shifted further back to counterbalance the heavier water and stove on the front. They have to be light but very strong obviously but they also have to be compact, as the pedlar did not ply on the main thoroughfares but in the back alleys in the crowded residential districts where most of the people live. They remind me too of the backstage prop carts and road boxes I used to make (and obsessed about finding the perfect design for). With 'street food' becoming its own cuisine hipster scene, I wouldn't doubt something like this might be revived, unless it never went away.

Do any of these carts still exist? Was there a workshop in Shanghai making them and a Mister Big who controlled them like the New York hot dog vendors?

A bit of clever searching with Tin Eye turned up that these carts seem to be called whatever is the Chinese word for 'Camel'. With the help of Google translations, I found a description of them which I paraphrase here:

In the front, like a camel's head, is a wooden cover for a wok over a wood-burning stove. The camel had a bamboo clapper or gong on one leg that the pedlar would beat to get attention. On the 'bridge' was a shelf for bottles and jars of soy sauce, lard, chili oil, spicy paste, fine salt, green onion, garlic leaves, ginger, tofu, pepper, MSG and other ingredients. The shelves would be stacked with blue china bowls and spoons, covered with a gauze to stop the dust. The 'camel' rested on its owner's right shoulder. The back of the camel had small drawers and on the top was cutting board. In the drawers were minced meats, wonton skins and wrapped wontons. Below this was the fuel for the stove. When the camel was put down on the pitch, the peddler would fill the pan full of water and light the fire. While waiting for the water to boil, they would pack small wontons on the chopping block, according to customer's taste. Camels were made with more than 200 pieces of mahogany and each component was put together with traditional mortise and tenon joints.

The cultural influence of the humble noodle is enormous, they are one of the world's universal foods. Funnily enough, the noodle seller also shows up in texts on business management as case studies of the constraints on the solo entrepreneur. Did one of these here though found a billion-dollar ramen empire? UK noodle bar Wagamama was sold off by its founders in 2011 for £250M, not a bad result from starting with one location in 1992.

A little further digging uncovered a history of the Shanghai street pedlar (including the third image) and their many dishes. I am hungry for some Dan Dan Mein right now.

Where does the news come from Daddy?

In light of the Leveson enquiry, I have dug out of my files something I wrote in September 2002 that I offered unsuccessfully as a comment piece to dozens of magazines and newspapers.


Where does the news come from Daddy?  


By Nat Bocking  


Pick up a magazine or a newspaper today to answer a five year old's query and you may wonder how do they obtain their stories?  


Peter Preston voiced his concern in the Guardian [Comment and Analysis 2.09.02 p15] that too many news stories come from unattributed sources. His worry was that powerful interests, whether governments or intelligence agencies, might be shaping public opinion without accountability.


Like my eggs at breakfast, I like to know how the news gets to my plate. Is it battery or free range? How a news story was acquired is a facet of its worth and credibility. 


I don't ask for the name of every mole in the House of Commons, just for a clearer indication on the provenance of the stories the media publish.  


Every story must have the 5 Ws: who, what, when, where, why, or so said Clark Gable's hard boiled newspaperman in 'Teacher's Pet'. In these days of spin doctors and sound-bites, there should be more HOW in accounting for the sources and giving bylines reflecting the true authors of the story.


I have several years experience in tabloid celebrity journalism where stories with quotes attributed to "an onlooker" and "a close friend" are rampant. 


After being a staff photographer (who can also use a pen) at several news agencies, I have become used to seeing my stories published with other journalists' bylines or subsumed by the agency's credit or with none at all. All of this weakens the story's provenance and the publisher's accountability for it.


It was the story in the Guardian [31.08.2] about the discovery of a gun in an aircraft passenger's luggage in Stockholm that got me and Mr Preston thinking along the same lines. 


That story has four bylines and lots of quotes, including some from "security sources". Quotes must always have an attribution, even if it's only "a senior government official." 


In which case, I want to know how unnamed sources come to speak to a reporter and why must they be unnamed? Was it a reluctant doorstep challenge or a meeting arranged by a press officer conditional on unattribution? Was it perhaps a whispered conversation in the murky depths of a Washington garage?  


Another quite normal practice worries me. Seeing Jacky Rowland's story of facing Slobodan Milosevic at his trial on 'Newsnight' one evening and then in the Guardian the next day made me wonder if a cross-media package deal had been done. I expected a book and an appearance on Woman's Hour to follow. Naturally the 'box office' return - the measurement of consumers' interest - on stories must influence the choice of stories to report.


As a news photographer, my customers seem only prepared to pay worthwhile sums for photos of celebrities so this amounts to a form of censorship. I wish the media barons paid for photos of politicians as much as they do for well endowed pop stars, then I'd spend more time in Westminster instead of Soho. The expenses scandal would have surely been uncovered sooner.


The truth is that celebrities are a cheap source of raw news material who need the media as much as we need them. Politicians need celebrities too, bread and circuses comes to mind. Those who should be given the closest scrutiny don't crave exposure and have some means of the state to prevent it. Celebrities can't invoke 'D' notices or claim 'security' as a catch-all smokescreen.  


In the past decade or so, all forms of news media have reduced their manpower and now assign fewer correspondents overseas than before. [Channel 4 News stays at home to save cash. Media Guardian 2.9.02] The only growth sector has been local news agencies and online media. The quantity of stories filed by freelancers and agencies under newspapers' mastheads has increased year on year. 


It is a reality that the information age has enabled a trading floor where news stories can be bought and sold instantly as a commodity across several media platforms. Perhaps the reader should know what side of the bargain the publisher was on. Doesn't it make a difference between a newspaper approaching the subject of story or having it pitched it to them?  Readers would do well to tune their antennae for stories that might have been dressed up and had facts twisted to make them more attractive to buyers. I know, I've seen it done.  


A speciality of an erstwhile employer was transcribing anything a celebrity said on television chat-shows and radio in the UK and selling it overseas, often spun into a 'confession' story. There are many news agencies overseas selling the same thing to the UK. I notice that, across all newspapers and magazines, as more content is bought off the peg, paradoxically the less it is acknowledged as agency or freelance material. 


There are some sources, such as Reuters or PA, with reputations for accuracy to protect who make their byline a condition of supply but there are also thousands of cash-strapped news agencies and freelancers out there who are prepared to lose their byline if it makes a sale. Why do the publishers remove bylines? Well, it looks bad if some days most of the paper comes from freelancers and agencies.


As a entertainment news photographer, the sort behind the ropes on the red carpet, I hear and see a lot more than I can actually photograph. When I was employed by another news agency, passing on 'wicked whispers' and such tittle-tattle kept my employer happy (or so I thought) while they were paying me a salary to bring in the story they could splash all over the world. I am quite proud of my extensive cuttings file but without my byline on them, I can't claim authorship and you can't hold me to account for them.I can claim nodding acquaintance with several gossip columnists but they have no idea I was the source of many stories with their byline.


I always make sure that with my photos or stories come the facts of how I came by them, a sort of witness statement if you will yet I can count on one finger the times I have been asked to provide any evidence to corroborate a story. The biggest concern anybody had is that I wasn't on private property when I took the photos. "Don't forget" my editors told me, "the PCC is only a voluntary code" as I was despatched to Eton for two weeks undercover to get anything of the royal princes attending school. I was grateful to the Thames Valley Police for encouraging my employer to reconsider my assignment.


The first I know if my photos or stories might be splashed somewhere is when a journalist calls me to supply the "an onlooker said" quotes. There is always the danger that, as these quotes are unattributed, that either the seller will provide the buyer with what they want to hear or the buyer will put words in the mouth of the witness to serve both their interests.


Before becoming a news photographer, I had twenty five years in the film industry that enabled me to spot a celebrity at a thousand yards and that led to my mid-life career change. When I was new at the job, I was shocked by the rampant distortion of facts in the story's progress from pen to page. My fellow agency journalists, usually young and fresh to London from a local paper, were always under pressure to find something sensational to interest their editors. The agency editors were looking for the angles to sell it to the tabloids. News productivity was charted against salary. If your stories didn't sell for more than your wages, you were gone by the end of the month. When a story went to a tabloid or magazine, more often than not they would juice it up a little further. I'm not claiming anyone made stories up, just stretched the truth past what is fair. Once published, a story would be referred to whenever another development arose. Each time it was a lash on the spinning top of myth manufacture.


When Julia Roberts wooed Hugh Grant in 'Notting Hill', part of her character's angst was that her reputation lived forever in newspaper press cuttings and any indiscretions would forever be trotted out whenever somebody wanted to say something about her. I bet she had no trouble finding her motivation for that scene. So many stories have become 'facts' by virtue of endless repetition. I don't see any proof in the photos accompanying the stories that a Duchess gave an oral pedicure to a commoner or a 'Doctor Who' actor was the lover of a Welsh actress. 


Early on in my new career, I happened upon pop singer Robbie Williams sitting in Tom's coffee shop in Notting Hill. After snatching a frame and plucking up my courage, I naively asked if I could take his photo. "F**k off" was his direct answer. I asked if there was a compromise I could make with him but he wouldn't have it. He made a passionate plea that he be left alone and that he wasn't public property. I have no idea why he then went on to confide in me that he was feeling miserable because his dogs had crapped all over his new carpets and he had a case of eczema. By the time my report of that encounter got into the newspaper, the headline was "Robbie cracks under pressure", his outburst and skin condition being added to a long list of his troubles over the previous two years.


If it ever did go too far and a lawyer's letter cost a newspaper money on legal fees, the sanctions were hardly punitive. The tabloids might put our agency in purdah for a few days, but as the monster has to be fed daily, eventually they would call us just before their deadline, asking if we had anything they could use to fill a space and it would be back to business as usual.


One reassurance I would hear from my editors if I expressed any moral doubts was that readers of celebrity gossip take it with a pinch of salt anyway. Should cynicism of the media be encouraged in society? Will my five year old child, already a voracious reader, grow up believing nothing?  I single out newspapers and magazines for vigilance because of the semiotics of text. Unlike sound or visual recording, type on a page does not convey information on time or place of recording or the tone of voice or body language of the subject and so we must rely on the writer to convey this. 


Photographs imply veracity and some information of their provenance is naturally embedded within them. There are however many cases of distorted news photos in which analysis refutes the facts they establish.


I cannot enforce that my byline remains with my photographs but I always demand it because otherwise my photos can be used to corroborate inventions. One allegation I am confident of defending was in May 2000 when I snapped Madonna walking down Goodge Street carrying a rolled up sweater. It just happened that she passed an Oxfam shop. The picture was published in the Daily Express without my credit with the amusing story that Madonna, a multimillionaire, shops at Oxfam and had just purchased a £7 sweater there. I asked my editor, who wrote the story but isn't the name credited, how they could know this as I hadn't seen her do this. They said they had called the shop and located a customer who gave a quote about Madonna spending twenty minutes choosing the sweater. My photo, tightly cropped, purports she has been caught in the act of shopping when in fact she was stepping from the door of her car to the door of Guy Ritichie's office next door. The Oxfam shop turned the news cutting into a AO size poster and had it in their window for several months giving credibility to the story. Although I wasn't happy at seeing this done, I wasn't going to rock the boat over it. If Madonna had complained, the newspaper would blame my agency and in the mean time, they would make another story out of it. If my byline been on the photos, if anyone did care for the truth, they would have been able to contact me and I would have told my side of the story.


The newspapers that buy celebrity stories off the peg and publish them under their own staff bylines take a risk their suppliers haven't made the story up. The newspapers and agencies that make a habit of lifting stories from other sources take this risk as well. The Mail on Sunday got caught out with the untrue George Harrison "is resigned to dying" story. When the MoS fluffed up a news agency story and published it as their own 'exclusive', the rest of the world's press and television media lifted it from there. [This is gone into in detail by Martin Lewis in 'The Art of Lying' on Salon.com and check out who was behind it.] If the MoS had stated which celebrity news agency 'their' story came from, a few journalists might have remembered a prior debacle over a Russell Crowe wedding and checked a the quotes before telling their own readers. In some kind of karmic retribution, after the Harrison affair the agency went into a financial tail-spin culminating in the departure of the company's founder.


It was no secret that an agency I worked for, like many other news agencies, employed a roomful of trainees (including a young Amy Winehouse) to read newspapers, monitor television and radio and surf the internet to supply an 'entertainment newswire' to overseas subscribers. Depending on the company's cash-flow, our one, two or three reporters accompanied by me as photographer attended a couple of news events per shift and contributed perhaps 5% of the daily word output. When I wondered aloud if this sort of boiler room operation was legal, my editor there told me that unlike a photograph, nobody owns a news story. Once you have the facts from a source, you can freely sell them again as long as you rewrite them because in a text format the copyright exists in the expression of the story and not the content.  This can occasionally backfire. Someone began picking stories out of the NME's 'Cheap Thrills' page, which is a satire on pop industry news. These almost plausible chunks of humour started popping up all over the world's media and became fed back into our newsroom. One of our subscribers was the NME who hit the roof when they realised we were selling them back their own stories. 


Newspapers also need to account for how they got their stories because so many external influences shape their reporting. Don't make me wait until BBC2 commission another 'Decisive Moments' (off air since 1999) to find out how an unnamed photographer got a photo through a bus window of the recent alleged highjacker being held by an armed Stockholm policeman. Did a plane spotter with a $10,000 lens just happen to be at the airport or was the bus brought in range of the media like the 'perp walk' photo opportunity so loved by the FBI?  


So it it is becoming ever more certain that what is in the paper or magazine you read today, especially the entertainment and celebrity stories, will be from unnamed sources who supplied freelance reporters who had their words dressed up by agencies and sold to publishers who claimed it as their own. Not exactly a recipe for truth and fairness is it? 


If a magazine or a newspaper admitted that an interview with celebrity was actually given six months ago to 300 other journalists at a press conference and it has been bought from an agency because a rival has an exclusive interview with the same person tomorrow, then they might win some kudos for irony and independence from the PR machine. Sometimes the source of a story being a publicist can enhance the readers’ expectations. I am always interested in reading something if I think Max Clifford has had a hand in it. The headline "Max Mosley to be flogged by Max Clifford” would get my wallet out any time.


/ENDS