it's the Long Emergency... gently coming into view.. spreading everywhere soon...

The global oil predicament, climate change, and other shocks to the system, with implications for how we will live in the decades ahead.
James Howard Kunstler The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

Greeks turn to the forests for fuel as winter nears | World news | The Guardian: "Greeks turn to the forests for fuel as winter nears
As austerity tightens its grip, many of the middle class find themselves in a desperate struggle to make ends meet"

Climate change is happening now – a carbon price must followThe extreme weather events of 2012 are what we have been warning of for 25 years, but the answer is plain to see - James Hansen

We live in interesting (Media) times...

It's a very tough line between "press freedom" (see how some of the daft tabloids like to define "public interest") and ensuring powerful publications are held to account when they do "bad things" (it's sad their readers apparently don't boycott them - whatever they do).

There will be lots of arguing about "statutory underpinning" so that any regulator will have some teeth (e.g. currently Desmond's papers walked away from the PCC - showing how easy it is to just ignore it).

However.. today's piece by Emily Bell provides great context:

"Lord Justice Leveson more than once referred to the internet as "the elephant in the room". Leveson is in fact more like the tea hut in the elephant sanctuary by that measure. The scope of the work puts him in self-imposed isolation from what is happening in the wider world of information." 

http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/28/leveson-irrelevant-21st-century-journalism