I Blame the Media...

The BBC have been raking about in the dustbins of a British political party. Is that the kind of behaviour we expect from a public service broadcaster?

Before I continue, let me say that I have no respect at all for those evil bigoted thugs. And the BNP are not much better.

What the BBC found in the fascists' dustbin is some shredded up financial documents and are presenting them as a case of hidden political donations. I might be wrong but the evidence seems very ropy to me but if recent form is anything to go by, the BBC is not going to let a little matter of no evidence get in the way of a good reputation discolouring (can you discolour the reputation of a fascist political party? - I don't know but the BBC will try).

Of course there is no such thing as bad publicity and the BNP spokesperson who I heard on the radio this morning sounded cock-a-hoop to be given 5 minutes of national airtime. He seemed to deal with all of the accusations adequately and whether the case against them is valid or not, that interview alone will undoubtedly lead to a few nutters logging on to their website today and joining up. There is no such thing as bad publicity.

http://entertainment.uk.msn.com/news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=6917911

When does 50 millimetres become 2 inches? When a news reporter is trying to make something sound small.

Over the last few days the scum have been refering to the rainall in millimetres. Whereas I generally agree with metrication, I note that 50 milimetres sounds much more impressive to the average thickie than 5 centimetres. And therefore a better story.

(It has been widely noted that the British media report high temperatures in Farenheit and low ones in Celsius)

Over the past few days, highly paid, well known faces have been hanging around Gloucestershire, standing on bridges and filing their empty reports. Apart from the occasional freeloading helicopter trip this must be an immensly boring assignment. So last night you could cut the excitement with a knife as reporters managed to build up a non-story about the possibility if the power being cut off to a million homes (or was it 10 million?).

By the morning you could hear the distress in their voices as the hoped for tragedy potential had passed. In desparation they tried to big up the non-event by saying that the water came within 2 inches of breaking through. Now I do know that 2 inches sounds a lot less to the average thickie than 50 millimeters but I don't know how much water that two inches represents. A million gallons perhaps? Or more like 5 million litres?

I note that two Daily Mirror journalists have been arrested attempting to plant a fake bomb on the London Underground.

What a shame armed police didn't take the opportunity to pump seven bullets into each of their heads.

"The bigger the hailstones are, the more severe the storm"

- BBC News 24 weather numpty talking at 23:20 this evening about the storms he'd completely failed to predict

"Keep that umbrella handy"

- His patronising sign-off after a non-commital 'forecast'.

(I'm not a woman, nor am I gay, so I'ver never in my life kept an umbrella handy)

Reports say that the floods in Sheffield may have caused up to one hundred million pounds worth of improvements.

But one group of charmless nerks are actually celebrating the destruction and human misery - television 'news' reporters. Basically, there was a bit of rain, some houses got flooded and a couple of people died who might have died anyway. But they hype it up to biblical proportions.

On a day when a senior Tory defected to Labour, Tony Blair met Arnie and Tiger Tim scored his annual 3 sets to 2 first round victory at Wimbledon, ITV news devoted 78% of their program on some puddles.

They were out in their boats and helicopters (let's not worry too much about global warming for now eh?) asking victims gormless questions like 'how did you feel when you first saw it?'. Whilst if you looked carefully into the eyes of these 'victims' you can see them totting up how much they're going to sting the insurance for.

One reporter seemed to be trying to beat the record for the most innapropriate uses of 'literally' in a single paragraph. Whilst another played a weird game of 'put-massive-stress-on-every-third-word' as shear, destruction and force became onomatopoeic.

But the highlight for them is the event that has yet to happen - the bursting of the dam. They even had an animation that showed what will happen when the dam breaks. Now Xylophone has often put his arse on the line in his blogs and as yet he has always been right (except when I thought that England might win the World Cup - what was I on?) and here's another prediction: the dam is nowhere near breaking; some forward thinking public officials have decided to take some precautions but the chances are still 100/1 against.

Unless one of the knobheads crashes his helicopter into itof course.

Kate who?

Today's media scare story is dodgy car fuel.

I can't help but be amused at the failure of any semblence of a scientific approach to these reports. To me, there are obvious questions like:

Over what period of time are these reported failures alledged to occur?

Is the number of failures really any different than in a normal week/month?

Is there any other mechanism to cause these failures other than fuel (dodgy oxygen sensors perhaps)?

Is there a particular model of car involved?

I just looked at a map on bbc.co.uk which showed all the garages alledgedly involved - they are completely scattered all over the country. Tesco and Morrison get special mentions although there is a considerable number of 'others' involved as well. There is no acknowledgement that Tesco and Morrisons just so happen to be two of the biggest fuel retailers and therefore have quite a lot of customers who may in fact have dodgy cars.

Anyway, I'm hoping to gain from this because later this evening I will have to fill up. Normally when there's a petrol scare in the media, massive queues of scaredy cat nutters form at the pumps and the prices creep up. I'm hoping thr opposite will happen now and I'll be able to pick up some bargain fuel whilst having the Tesco forecourt to myself.