We PRs cannot avoid philosophical matters because, as Martin Sandbu says in his new book Just Business – Arguments in Business Ethics, decisions made by business have consequences for other people. Read on ›

Public relations professionals don’t really do philosophy: we’re in the people business, and sound-bites suit us better than Immanuel Kant’s Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785). As for our clients, well, we’re bound to note their lust for the latest guru-speak getting lift-off from an airport bookshop. Read on ›

This essay first appeared late last year in A Sorry State: Self-denigration in British Culture, edited by Peter Whittle with a foreword by the historian Michael Burleigh. I’m very grateful to Peter Whittle for allowing me to share it with you here. Read on ›

In 2006 I exposed the myth-making of an important, Swiss state-funded, UN sponsored website Chernobyl.info. As part of my work for the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster I’ve revisited the issue and discovered things have got worse. Read on ›

Horizon, the BBC’s science flagship has – rather belatedly – reported research which suggests that low-level radiation is not a risk to humans. This should reassure people worried about the “victims” of Chernobyl and the danger posed by the rest of the nuclear power industry. Read on ›

Dateline 1995: As the world prepared for the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the world’s media began a memorial feast of disaster stories. Here I review three classic examples. Read on ›

Present energy technologies all pose long-term “problems”. These are called “inter-generational” risks. So let’s not kid ourselves: whether it’s climate change or radioactive waste, decisions we take now will effect our grandchildren, and their grandchildren. Read on ›

Veteran journalist Martin Bell’s account of the TMI accident of 1979 relied on his own memories of the event and on archive material and fresh interviewing, but Bell has ignored a mass of evidence, which would tell a very different tale to the one broadcast on 17 June, 2006, in BBC Radio 4’s Archive Hour. Read on ›

This essay exposes a few misconceptions and speculates that 50 years of living with nuclear power may be producing a greater respect for it, and less awe. Read on ›