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Thames Whale Post-mortem


A (not always in good taste) spoof of the BBC News webpage.

In the latest twist to what was already a fairly ridiculous situation, the results of the post-mortem carried out on the whale spotted in the Thames last firday, tell us that the animal died of...erm... dehydration!

For some reason I can not begin to fathom, the tidbit of worthless news took the imaginations to the extent that hundreds of people gathered to watch the animal being dragged back to the sea. Bloggers, some of them, usually dealing with specific (and totally unrelated) themes blogged about it and I watched, amased as the whale story cropped up in the most unlikely locations of me feed gatherer. The Evening Standard (not exactly renowned for the high standard of its journalism, I have to admit) even published "picture souvenirs" of the event. I, myself find myself blogging about it now.

Call my cynical and cold-hearted (which Slightly would probably (rightly) say I am) but as I said, I don't get what the fuss is all about. There are hundreds if not thousands of whales that get killed every year. Even though this is a protected species, Japan actually hunts them, going against international treaties. No public outcry there, no multitudes demonstrationg. No multitudes either rushing to protest against the ENTIRE SPECIES that get wiped off the face of the planet each year.

It is a sad comment on our media driven society that a story picked up by journalists on a slow day for news should be given such a prominent place while so many other more worthwhile stories don't see the light of day.

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Comments

  1. TM1/25/2006 12:06 pm

    cynical, cold hearted, weird, creepy, odd, "going to turn into a bitter old queen" (did i say turn into), miserable, pathetic, strange looking, random, erm, probably a few more I could add.

    WHY CAN'T YOU JUST GO "AWWWWWW" AT THE WHALE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE?

    ReplyDelete
  2. zefrog1/25/2006 12:16 pm

    Cause I am not like everyone else: am VERY special (as you know)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Howard1/25/2006 1:09 pm

    I went, "mmm, whale!" and looked forward to the pie. But isn't this all a bit of not in my backyard thinking?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous1/25/2006 1:28 pm

    Huge public outcry at Japanese evil doings for 'scientific purposes' in this half of the world. massive news at the moment. Makes the daily news every day for past few weeks

    ReplyDelete
  5. Career Break Guru1/26/2006 4:02 pm

    No, the spoof wasn't always in good taste, but I did make the point that it was getting just a little bit too much media attention.

    Just done a spoof in a similar vein about the Lib Dems (again). It's almost too easy...

    (On my blog if you're interested.)

    ReplyDelete

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