As I scoffed toast a friend of mine was posting to Facebook
about the current situation in Sudan. Thousands
of people were killed yesterday, the atrocities are horrible… why was there no
mention of this in the news?
I listen to BBC Radio Four news on my
drive to work and my drive home (on the days I work) – it’s probably
about two hours a day, There are those
who accuse them of bias… both my seriously left wing and right wing friends
hate the BBC so I assume they must be somewhere in the middle. They seem to
cover the same sorts of things from one day to the next, which is pretty much
the same sort of things that every other news outlet is covering… And there’s a
lot that doesn’t get mentioned.
I find myself wondering just who decides
what is newsworthy and what slant to put on it. Take the Prince Andrew debacle
for example. Everyone wants him hoiked out of his rent-free mansion. A week or
so ago there was an interview with a representative of the agency who agreed
the arrangement for his lease. At the time they felt it was a good deal for
them. Now they’ve changed their minds pretty much because that’s what the media
feel. I suspect the Gaza war gets mentioned because this causes allegations of
antisemitism which is a subject dear to many people’s hearts, and that makes
for heated interviews and is entertaining.
There’s forty-five wars going
on
right now. I doubt the average person listening to any UK news agency has heard
of more than two or three of them.
I Munzed, started having a go at Wordle, but got stuck
after two goes so as “er indoors TM” gave the dogs
their scran I got dressed.
I took the dogs up to the woods. As we drove there was a
rather interesting program about bird migrations. How do they know where to go?
Why do they go? Why don’t all birds go? Why do older and younger birds go at
different times? The answer to all the questions was “don’t really know”
but there were several interesting theories. The people being interviewed had
been working on these questions for years. I would be crap at being a full-time
academic. I would soon lose interest and start wondering about something else.
We got to the woods where autumn has seriously hit the
place with a vengeance. With fallen leaves everywhere it was very hard to see
what was footpath and what wasn’t.
We walked a different route to any of our usual ones; I had
reports of one of my geocaches to the south of the woods being missing. We got
to where it was, and I could see it from five yards away. I hid it like it was
supposed to be hidden, and we carried on with our walk. We waded in swamps, we
chased squirrels, joggers and a buzzard, we bothered normal people and rolled
in horse poo. A great time was had by all.
We were at the woods rather later than usual today, and the
place was really busy. We must have met half a dozen other groups. Usually
seeing two is a lot.
As we drove home the war in Sudan was the headline news at
mid day…
We got home where the dogs had a bath. Treacle had been in
the swamps. Morgan had been rolling in horse poo. And Bailey got a scrub just
in case.
I then sat in front of the telly and watched some episodes
of “Four In A Bed”. Four Bed & Breakfast establishments went into
competition… the first was rather eco-friendly but pleasant enough. The second
was run by a chap with a rather nasty assistant manager who tried to underpay
everyone. The third was run by a chap who spent all his time on the golf
course, trusting his business to inexperienced schoolgirl cleaners, and the
fourth run by some new-age hippy who regularly had conversations with the rooms
in her B&B (the actual rooms!). The first lot won for the simple
reason that by going first they hadn’t had any chance to fall out with everyone
else.
I then passed judgement on a trainee’s homework then wrote up a little CPD as I do.
It’s amazing how long it took to just get all my useful links into one list… and then I
managed to trash that list by mistake and had to re-write it all from scratch.
It only took an hour or so to find all the links I needed. I saved all the
information this time though; as I might have mentioned before, backups are
what you do after you've lost all your data.
“er indoors TM” boiled up a
rather good bit of dinner. Back in the day I used to be rather disparaging
about anything which might be described as “healthy”. Back in the day I
was over three stones heavier and with blood pressure through the roof. And not
knowing what I was missing; it was very tasty. We washed it down with a bottle
of Liebfraumilch. At three quid a bottle it wasn’t too shabby at all. And I
followed it up with port and cheesy biccies.
As we scoffed and swussed we watched last night’s episode
of “Celebrity Traitors” which was rather good. I won’t give spoilers,
but it strikes me that it must be very different to play the game than it is to
watch it.
Today has been a rather good day off… even if I did spend
an hour marking a trainee’s essay.
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