The freehold, properties and classifieds sections alone accounted for an average of 330 half-size pages from Sunday to Thursday last week. If you factor in their circulation base of 103,163 and for argument’s sake, assume that half of those people have no means of looking up these listings on the internet, you end up with a staggering 2.2 billion full-size newspaper pages each year, which we could do without.

Before you start to feel sorry for the people that have to deal with all that pointless waste paper each year, let’s do a little more math. Boise Cascade reckons that it takes 1 cubic foot of cottonwood to make approximately 738 full-size newspaper pages. If we’re to assume that Gulf News’ stock works along the same lines, that works out to 2.9 million cubic feet of wood.

Furthermore, if Murray and Harrington have done their bit correctly, that translates into 406 acres of cottonwood plantation each year, which, is roughly about the size of Monaco. While it may not seem like a lot at first, bear in mind that each cottonwood tree takes 60 to 75 years to mature.

So Gulf News, if you’re reading this, I’ll gladly fork over the same subscription fee – just stop sending me the freehold, properties and classifieds sections.