Do you think the camp should have 2 sets of guidelines – one for ‘sympathetic and open’ journos and one for hostile journos? Or that we should be happy to have Sun journos photographing us on the compost loos, because its a free for all? Please feel free to expand on how you think it could work better.

“If they prefer I suppose we could all just bugger off en masse and leave them at the mercy of the MET?”

Seriously Guy – are you suggesting that your presence has protected us from the Met in the past? IIRC the Met were targetting you lot at Kingsnorth as well.

As for camp representatives, we are constantly told that there are none. But this is clearly bullshit, and it raises serious questions about accountability. You write in the style of a Climate Camp PR, hence my assumption that you are one.

You seem to be addressing me as if I were a representative of the camp. I want to make clear that I am not. My understanding, though, is that the lack of consultation was due not due to “expediency” but out of necessity – the camp could not happen if its location was known to the police beforehand.

I made clear above that the campers request for some ‘media free zones’ was not standing on the basis of legal rights, but common sense and a reasonableness to respect their desire for some privacy. Whether the campers are “entitled” to “impose” such rules is beside the point. It is about basic human courtesy.

I’ve also spoken with locals who support, or at least do not object to the presence of Climate Camp on Blackheath. But those same sympathetic souls, some of whom attended Saturday’s public meeting in Greenwich, have serious doubts about your strategy. My notebook is littered with such transcribed comments as “back-slapping”, “feel-good”, “somewhat disengaged from reality” and “unrepresentative”.

Just because these sympathetic locals took part in the finger-jiggling straw poll conducted at the Greenwich meeting (in which, by the way, they were outnumbered by camp participants), does not mean that their support is uncritical. That is despite the attempts of Climate Camp’s PR spinners to portray everything as being hunky dory.

Why have your public outreach efforts all but ignored Lewisham borough? After all, the section of Blackheath you have occupied is in Lewisham, not Greenwich. Residents of the latter were always going to be more supportive of Climate Camp, but surely you should be reaching out to the working class people of Lewisham too.

In the very public space that is Blackheath, there can be no grounds for the appropriation of the commons, and establishment of “media free zones”. You are not entitled to impose such rules, so your point doesn’t stand. Climate Camp’s rules are null and void.

I don’t know why you were asked to leave the media tent. However I wouldn’t presume that it is because you might overhear radio conversations. If you had your own CB radio, you could listen to these, so it wouldn’t gain much to move you away from people with radios.

Blackheath was chosen for the site of climate camp without consultation with locals, it is true. Ideally, there would have been some prior conversation. But I expect you can understand this was impractical given that the location of the camp must remain secret before the event. Given the oppression from police in previous years, concealing the location was a practical necessity.

In spite of this, the vast majority of locals spoken to by campers have been very supportive. One commented that the land is not used enough, and should be used for more events like it. A local group who play football on Blackheath each weekend have challenged the campers to a friendly game. Many others have actually joined in and pitched their tents in the camp. Out of dozens of locals I have spoken to, you are the only one who has had an objection. I suspect this may be motivated by your treatment as a journalist, rather than as a local resident.

My original point was that it is perfectly reasonable for campers to ask photojournalists to respect ‘media free zones’ used for relaxation and socialising away from public scrutiny. I think that point stands.

“Any reasonable person would respect other people’s rights to privacy in these cases.”

Jonathan can correct me if I’m wrong, but I doubt he is demanding the right to photograph a climate camper sitting on the throne.

In any case, the camp media policy is about a lot more than respecting the privacy of those socialising or voiding their bowels. On Thursday I was ushered away from the communications tent, into which I had been escorted by a camp welcome team member who was trying to find a press spokesman who could answer my questions. I presume that my presence was not welcome as I might possibly overhear some sensitive information being transmitted over the airwaves.

Bollocks to that. Blackheath is ancient common land, and Climate Camp has squatted this community resource without warning, let alone consultation. As a journalist I will under no circumstances agree to Climate Camp’s media “code of conduct”. And as a resident of Blackheath Village I object to the camp taking over a section of the heath without prior consent from the community.

The climate campers are not arguing that they have a legal right not to be photographed. So whether the land is commons has no relevance.

The camp is in some sense a public protest, and so to some extent it is reasonable to take photographs of it. But in some sense it is a place where people are living, eating, using compost toilets and doing all the other things that humans do together. I think that it is perfectly reasonable and understandable that the campers ask that some areas not be the subject of photojournalism.

Any reasonable person would respect other people’s rights to privacy in these cases.

The camp has various ‘no media zones’. These are tents where people can relax and socialise away from the media lens. Refusing to comply with the campers’ wish not to be photographed isn’t a breach of their rights, but is unreasonable and shows a lack of basic common sense.