Richard D North.

Alan Rusbridger has suggested that the tax-payer ought to subsidise local newspapers. This is a very bad idea. Even my proposed National Media Trust should not do that. Read more...

The latest Ofcom report and the new Reuters Institute book in their different ways bolster the case for a National Media Trust. They don't know it, of course. Read more...

It seems obvious that expanding Heathrow Airport with a third runway is bad for climate change. But the thought does not bear inspection. Read more...

A Radio 4 show is interviewing me about modern protest, not least because the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights is nearing the end of its inquiry into policing and protest. Read more...

Serious journalism is in dire financial straits. All its business models are under threat. It's time for the literate, affluent, bossy middle class to club together and fix things. They did it for buildings and landscape. Now they can do it for the national debate. Read more...

So far as I can see almost all polite opinion is sure that Israel has behaved very badly in recent weeks in Gaza. I - rather tentatively - beg to differ. Read more...

Jarvis Cocker of Pulp seems like a good egg, if a little coddled. He was guest editor of the Today programme on New Year's Eve and agonised about climate and financial meltdown. Strikingly not-novel, his account was partly based on a trip to the Arctic made by a group of artists. How deliciously lacking in irony it all was. Read more...

Andrew Marr is so obviously nice that it seems unfair to criticise him. But Mr Marr is so infuriatingly, blandly, the decent liberal right-on that I am bound to have a go. Read more...

Hardly surprisingly the Baby Boomer media elite have been reliving their youthful rebellions and revolutions of 40 years ago. More surprisingly, many have lost their triumphalism. Sadly, too few understand the death of "institution" which characterised the Sixties. Read more...

I've been a bit of a feature at obesity and health conferences recently. You can imagine my line: Eat less, do more. Good right-wing stuff. And anyway, most young people seem pretty much like whippets to me, damn them. Seems I'm more right than wrong. Read more...