London Times on Affordability

The Sunday Times of London covered the Odyssey again, this time from the angle of affordability.

This is True reader Randolph in Canada must’ve received quite the shock when he went to skim through the news and was confronted with a large photo of me and Kit looking back at him. While the story went to print in the Sunday Times (on 11 January), it came out online a few days before that.

It was written by the paper’s very pleasant Senior Money Reporter, Megan Harwood-Baynes, so I knew how to give her the quotes she needed for her beat, such as “‘I’m not coming off this ship alive,’ said Randy Cassingham.” She continued that “Several digital nomads work on the ship, including Randy, who runs a news commentary website that helps to cover the couple’s monthly costs. He has a pension, but has not needed to spend it yet.”

It’s a bit eye-rolling that the Times, unlike most large newspapers in this day and age, Just Won’t Link out to a source’s web site so interested readers can find them. At least one Times reader was intrigued enough that he searched and found the True site and subscribed. How many more would have checked it out if there was a link? Lots. And that’s after I helped her find several other Residents to interview.

The quotes continued, wrapped around a second photo of us:

“Living here is not truly a huge expense. It almost certainly costs less to live here than a flat in London,” he said. “We don’t have a car to pay for. We don’t have a mortgage, property taxes, maintenance, or insurance. We don’t have to shop for groceries. No bills for utilities or internet. We have a predictable monthly expense to be here, another for health insurance, and toiletries and my phone. A little bit if we choose to go on side trips in the countries we go to. So many other expenses are simply gone.”

Links

I’m more generous than the Times’ editor: to read their story, please try first at their site, so it gets clicks to show interest: London Times. If you’re paywalled out, I found it is also available through a free archive.

I’ll also be more generous than U.K.’s LADbible, where the self-proclaimed “NCTJ Gold Standard journalist” James Moorhouse rewrote the Times’ story to feature only Kit and me (no crime there), yet not only also didn’t link to True (rude), but took the time to find this site to steal a copyrighted photo to illustrate it, which is a crime under U.K. law, according to my contact at the Times. The LADs should know better, as well as (as an online publishing site) providing links, as they would want one back.

What could be worse? This: They clipped a tiny bit of a photo of us on CBS News (also grabbed from this site), and labeled that as the credited “featured image” rather than the giant photo of us they put at the top of the page. See below for more on this.

Meanwhile, despite those egregious ethical lapses, I know some of you want to see it anyway, and the right thing to do is provide the link: Couple sold all possessions to live on cruise full time because ‘it’s cheaper than London’.

And that’s how it’s done, LADjerks! 🙂

Related: A list of all known media coverage of Kit/me/this site is on the Media Coverage page.

Addendum: Theft of Intellectual Property

So about that theft of my photo. Here, the day after publishing the page above, seeing that I have already provided LADbible >300 clicks, and finding I’m still bothered by the ethics of the reporter’s theft, I asked ChatGPT what this “gold standard” business is about (I’m not particularly familiar with journalism training in the U.K.), and whether a journalist with such an accreditation could be frowned upon for such an infraction, describing what happened here.

Why? Because I’m going to complain to LADbible about this, and will point the LADbible editor to this page.

Here’s ChatGPT’s response (excerpted but otherwise verbatim, including all emphasis).

In British journalism, “a gold standard NCTJ qualification” means the journalist has completed the most respected, industry-endorsed professional training pathway run by the National Council for the Training of Journalists.

Concretely, it usually refers to passing the full NCTJ Diploma in Journalism with strong results, often including key specialist modules. Newsrooms use the phrase as shorthand for “properly trained to UK newsroom standards.”

As for lifting a photo from a source’s web site, a journalist holding a “gold standard” NCTJ qualification is explicitly trained not to do that.

Why this matters under UK journalism standards

Under training set by the National Council for the Training of Journalists, journalists are drilled on two relevant areas:

1. Copyright law
UK copyright is strict. As a rule:

• Photos are protected works
• Taking an image from a copyrighted website and republishing it without permission is infringement
• There is no general “journalistic exemption”

The only plausible defenses are narrow and risky:

• Fair dealing for reporting current events — but images are rarely covered, especially when:
  • The photo is not incidental
  • The rights holder is the subject
  • Permission could reasonably have been sought
  • The image is reused as illustration rather than evidence

NCTJ media-law training explicitly warns journalists not to assume fair dealing applies to photos.

2. Professional ethics
Even where the law is arguable, ethics are clearer:

• Using someone’s copyrighted image without permission or credit is considered bad practice
• Editors expect reporters to:
  • Request permission
  • License stock imagery
  • Use agency photos
  • Or clearly justify why an image is legally defensible

An NCTJ-trained journalist who does this casually would expect pushback from a competent editor.

How this would look inside a newsroom

If this happened at a reputable UK outlet, typical internal reactions would be:

• “Did you clear the image rights?”
• “Why didn’t you ask — it’s the subject’s own site.”
• “Take it down until we sort permissions.”

If the journalist did it knowingly, that would reflect poor judgment.
If they did it unknowingly, it would reflect failure to apply core training.

The bottom line

Yes — a certified UK journalist absolutely should know better.

What happened to you is not:

• Normal practice
• Defensible by training standards
• Something the NCTJ would endorse

Whether it rises to actionable infringement depends on details (jurisdiction, usage, publication, takedown response), but from a professional standpoint alone, it’s a lapse.

I followed up, asking if “fair dealing” is akin to “fair use” in US copyright law, since my knowledge is much more about US law.

Short answer: no — UK fair dealing is not the equivalent of US fair use. They are related ideas, but fair dealing is far narrower and more rigid.

The core difference

UK: Fair dealing

• Purpose-based and closed
• Use is only allowed for specific, enumerated purposes
• If your use doesn’t fit one of those purposes, it fails immediately — no balancing test

US: Fair use

• Open-ended and flexible
• Any purpose may qualify
• Courts apply a four-factor balancing test to decide case by case

This makes US fair use far broader and more forgiving than UK fair dealing.

What UK “fair dealing” actually allows

Under UK law, fair dealing is limited to uses such as:

• Reporting current events
• Criticism or review
• Quotation
• Parody, caricature, or pastiche
• Research or private study (non-commercial)

And even then:

• The use must be genuinely necessary
• Only the minimum required may be used
• The use must be fair to the rights holder
• Acknowledgement is usually required

Crucially for your situation:

• Images are rarely protected by fair dealing, especially when reused illustratively.

NCTJ media-law training explicitly cautions journalists that photos are the most dangerous category for fair-dealing assumptions.

Bottom line

• Fair dealing ≠ fair use
• UK fair dealing is narrow, specific, and conservative
• Reusing a subject’s website photo without permission is professionally risky and often legally indefensible in the UK
• An NCTJ-trained journalist should know this

For the record, The Sunday Times of London had explicit permission to use the photos they used in their story. Their reporter politely requested photos, and didn’t simply take them without permission. Appropriate credit was given. And that is why I will complain, in part because the reporter proudly asserts his credibility with this block at the end of the article he illustrated with my property:

I will publish their response in this space. If I don’t get one, I’ll be taking stronger action.

• About the Author
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Randy Cassingham

Randy is the co-founder of Residential Cruising, and is best known as the founder of the oldest entertainment feature on the Internet, This is True. He and his wife, Kit, live full-time on the Residential Cruising ship Villa Vie Odyssey, where they are “Digital Nomads” — continuing their work while living aboard the ship.

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