This has been a pretty boring week for the news if you were just watching the mainstream news feeds. But that doesn’t mean that we have nothing for you this week because even if politicians and morons (those two are pretty much the same thing) are not in the public eye it doesn’t mean that they haven’t been humiliating and embarrassing themselves just as much as usual.
Political Oops of the Week
It’s never nice when a few Islamic militants have you at gun point in a hostage situation. But this situation was made much more uncomfortable this week when British Special Forces attempted to rescue two hostages, one British and one Italian, in Nigeria. The problem was that they didn’t bother to tell their Italian allies about the rescue operation.
Surely this should have all been forgotten about, though, because the point is that the hostages are alive? Oh, wait. They’re not alive. They’re not alive because when the firing started the militants killed the hostages. If everything had gone well then this political embarrassment could have been forgotten about, but the fact that Britain attempted to demonstrate the size of its figurative balls by doing it all on its own just makes it even worse.
Rightly, the Italians are upset about all of this. But Foreign Secretary William Hague just made things worse when he was quoted as saying: the short amount of time we had to act “constrained how much we were able to consult others.”
So things were that urgent that you couldn’t have given the Italians a quick phone call? Exactly how long does it take to enter a simple phone number into your mobile phone? About ten seconds, twenty seconds if you’re Eric Joyce, and maybe even thirty seconds if you’re Boris Johnson. You didn’t necessarily have to coordinate with the Italians, but you could have at least given them a heads up about it.
It’s a good thing Berlusconi isn’t there anymore because he may have just slept with all your wives in retaliation!
The Painful…
Everybody loves a news story they can relate to. This is another one of those stories as Richard Dale Fox killed his girlfriend in his California trailer home with a homemade cannon. Don’t worry, Richard, because we’ve all been there where we’ve accidently set off our homemade cannons and almost killed our loved ones, haven’t we?
His girlfriend died of shrapnel wounds as the projectile came through the window. Sadly, the authorities wouldn’t reveal exactly what the projectile was, or even how the cannon was made, but they did reveal that it was fired by using the same powder found in fireworks. Richard Fox was also taken to hospital with severe leg wounds as the cannon exploded when he fired it. This sounds very similar to the guy who tried to blow up a plane a few years ago but only succeeded in burning his own bollocks off. Maybe they are friends?
…And the Pointless
David Cameron revealed something monumental this week. Ready for it? That’s right, David Cameron likes to play the game Angry Birds in his spare time. And, yes, this was reported on BBC News. It just makes this writer wonder exactly what the point of anything is anymore.
In most cases, it would be a case of me thinking that “Hey, it doesn’t matter to have a bit of light-hearted talk sometimes.” But what was particularly irritating was the fact that this was in the middle of a Government meeting. After a bit of digging, this was actually a part of some initiative where it gets children to report the news on the BBC website next week.
What a complete and utter waste of time and money. Why is this going to be of any use whatsoever? The children are going to be reporting on news that they really don’t know anything about. Do the BBC still think that people are attracted to the prospect of having some snotty-nosed bundle of irritation reporting on the news? The people I know who visit news websites are there for one reason: they are there to get the news quickly, simply, and easily. Not to have to wade through all the childish dribble which the BBC are going to be spreading all over their website.
News should be the news, children’s channels should be for children. It really is that simple.
The so Outrageous that it’s Borderline Hilarious
Vladimir Putin is Russia’s new president, for the third time. Whether you’re a fan of Putin or not, though, you have to admit that the results of the election were a tad dubious when looking at some of Putin’s tactics this time round.
The exit poll predicted that Putin would win the election with at least a 60% majority vote, which he did, but the fact that some of his supporters were caught ferrying his supporters to vote at multiple polling stations does make it seem like it was a little rigged. And the fact that international overseers even admitted that the election favoured Putin doesn’t seem to have bothered any world leaders at all.
To date, all world leaders have acknowledged Putin’s victory, and Obama even phoned him personally from Air Force One to congratulate him. It does make one wonder exactly why nobody seems to be up in arms about this. But there’s no denying that the only reason Putin was out of the presidential office to begin with was because of the Russian constitution stipulating that you can only have two consecutive terms in office.
But, then again, when you look at the fact the Communist Party finished 2nd, you start to see exactly why a little bit of corruption has perhaps done at least some good on this occasion.
A Positive Outlook for the Week
One item on the agenda which does look like it’s coming to an end is the Rangers FC administration case. The administrator stipulated on Friday that there was a Friday deadline for all buyers to put forward their bid to buy the club. This means that it looks like we will be seeing an end to this sorry saga quite soon. What’s more, the fact that the senior players all decided to take massive pay cuts means that Ranger won’t be going anywhere, so now Scottish Football won’t be made completely meaningless and pointless next season. Although, this writer still won’t be paying any attention to it.
As for everything else, the fact that there was very little going on this week leads to speculation that next week should be awash with lots of interesting news.
So maybe next week won’t be as bleak and irritating after all…
