The Periscope Post

The Times Second Estate

Prince Charles has come under fire for his “charitable entrepreneurship.” In 2007 he bought Dumfries House for the nation for £43 million, with a £20 million loan. He hoped to build a community on the adjoining land and breath life into a depressed part of Scotland, as well as open a national treasure for visitors to enjoy. But the loan payments have got out of hand. The Times worried that the Prince’s business model is flawed. The paper also questioned the ability of the Prince’s advisors. “It is not obvious that it is desirable that the Prince of Wales should be a property developer at all,” the paper said, “Clarence House would be prudent to reflect on the wisdom of this business model.” The Times reminded us, “Prince Charles has made the noble choice that a life of official functions, which he fulfils with complete grace, is not enough. He is a man of unimpeachable integrity in public life, motivated by service to ensure social progress.” However, “In pursuit of this aim he has often been bold. In this instance it is likely that he has also been unwise.”

The Guardian MPs’ privileges: Police, press, parliament

Some MP privileges date back to the 1689 Bill of Rights. Others, including those that ban the interception of MPs’ communications, have been around for over 40 years. The Guardian were therefore outraged by breaches of these rights, particularly by the allegations that News of the World journalists had illegally tapped MPs’ phone lines. The paper deemed it “understandable” that MPs wanted to debate the topic and its greater “implications”. “[I]t is an extremely grave thing,” the paper said, “for anyone to interfere with the ability of MPs to go about their lawful affairs without being illegally monitored.” The Guardian had three questions for those conducting the investigation against the News of the World: “What evidence does Scotland Yard already have? Why did the police curtail their investigations in spite of clear evidence of the involvement of others at the NoW? And why were they so slow to inform the possible victims of intrusion – including MPs, military and other public figures?” “The questions,” they said, “won’t go away.”

The Independent Morbid legal rigidity

Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, has backed the introduction of the American concept of first- and second-degree murder into British law. The Independent dubbed this “welcome news”. The paper argued that recent Labour governments had taken the phrase “tough on crime” too far. “[A}s a result the discretion that judges had long enjoyed to discriminate between cold-blooded, premeditated murder, murder caused when the intention was only to warn or to wound, and murder committed in the heat of passion … was abolished.” This, said the paper, pleased the right-wing press, but turned the role of the judge into that of “a robot”. “The end result of murder is always a dead body, which is lamentable, but there are many different ways in which that outcome can be arrived at. A recognition of that fact should again become fundamental to British justice, as it was in the past.”

The Telegraph Deepwater Lessons

BP’s internal investigation into the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico has uncovered that there were eight separate occasions on which safety systems broke down. “The seriousness of the event cannot be doubted,” intoned the Independent, “but there have been times when the reaction has been excessive.” The paper called the “grilling” of BP’s chief executive by US Congress “more a kangaroo court than an attempt to find out what happened.” They also told us, “the impact on the environment has been less disastrous than expected, and BP may end up paying far more in compensation than it should.” The Indie suggested we focus on what can be learnt from the event, “The real lesson is that there will always be accidents in such a dangerous occupation; but it is unacceptable that they should occur when systems are supposedly in place to prevent them.”