File under: things I do not need to be reading ahead of December’s, erm, flight to Harare.
EDIT: Phew, it was only a drill!
Whoever he may be, “man” has had a busy day…
Either that, or the BBC News website needs some variation in its headlines.
Gunman-on-the-loose Raoul Moat has said that “The public need not fear me but the police should as I won’t stop till I’m dead.”
In unrelated news, Northumbria Police have announced that today is dress-down Wednesday.
It’s not often that we get these kinds of events in Britain, but for the second time in a month we have a gunman on the loose. At the start of June, Derrick Bird went on a seemingly random shooting rampage, which saw 12 people killed before he turned his gun on himself.
Now, Raoul Moat, an ex-bouncer from Newcastle, is on the loose. His shootings have been more targetted thus far, killing an ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, and severely injuring her. He then somewhat randomly shot a policeman (who has survived), and today saw the release of a letter he sent to the police, stating that the public were not in danger, only police officers.
The BBC is covering the search for him, and for the last 20 minutes or so has been concentrating on this abandoned farmhouse, which was stormed by a large number of officers. By the looks of things, they haven’t found anything, but for me it was probably the first time I’d watched something like this.
I know that in the US there is more live coverage of police operations, be it at school shootings, on highway pursuits and whatnot, but it is so rare to see it here. It is addictive, and I’m not sure it’s because I want to see the situation resolved successfully or unsuccessfully.
We’ll see how it plays out.
EDIT: It looks like the BBC has been asked to stop showing live coverage of this area (now identified as Pike House).
If you include Metro, Britain has 11 daily national newspapers. Of those, eight had a large picture of the woman in the US/Russian spying arrests story on today’s front page. Photos of the other arrestees came there none.
She was variously captioned “Femme fatale”, “The redhead under the bed”, “The beauty who spied”, “Red menace”, and “The spy worthy of a Bond film”, as yet again the British newspaper industry showed that whilst a spy story is always interesting, a spy story with a photogenic woman involved is most definitely worthy of a front page splash.
For me, I thought it was a really good story anyway, with the details of the spies’ activities and attempts to keep things secret somewhat laughable. It’s as if their methods were based on crappy 60s TV shows, or a bad James Bond film (possibly an oxymoron there). It’s a solid story, yet the addition of a pretty woman has increased its interest to news editors. Are we, the readers, that shallow?
The three newspapers which didn’t use a large photo of her on the front page were the Sun, Daily Star and the FT. The latter two didn’t mention it at all, although the Sun did put a small photo of her on the front page, with the caption “Sexy spy”. As you could’ve expected, the Sun and Star’s websites have gone overboard on her.
Interestingly, the Star’s article has a video showing her Facebook profile, which seems to be where all of the other photos have come from. It’s quickly becoming the norm for photos taken from Facebook to be illustrating news stories, which perhaps should serve as a reminder to crank up those privacy settings.
Sunday Mirror journalist arrested over fan intrusion into England dressing room
A journalist for the Sunday Mirror named Simon Wright has been arrested by South African authorities investigating how an England fan was able to get into the England football team’s dressing room shortly after their match against Algeria. The South African police have said they “had reason to believe the incident was orchestrated” by Mr Wright, which the Sunday Mirror has denied. Would a journalist do this kind of thing to get a story? Just to make things clear, guess which newspaper and journalist got the EXCLUSIVE interview with the intruder afterwards? That would be Simon Wright for the Sunday Mirror. I smell something more than a little fishy here…
Inside the English Defence League
The Guardian has spent four months covertly filming demonstrations by the English Defence League, a relatively new far-right Islamophobic organisation that takes to the streets to protest against Muslims in England. This report is worth watching because it’s disturbing that there are so many people in this country who are still resolutely racist. The BNP didn’t perform as well as expected in this year’s election, thankfully, but it seems that many are now moving even further to the right and preferring street protests and violence to the ballot box. They’re deliberately provocative, and horribly, horribly racist. With an ever-increasing fanbase and membership, and with more protests planned this summer (including in towns with larger than average Muslim populations, in attempts to spark retaliation, you have to feel), this won’t be the last we hear of the EDL.
The BBC’s definition of “Breaking News” is becoming all the more nonsensical by the day. This is currently the lead item on the scrolling headline at the top of the BBC News website…
There it is then: a new Prime Minister.
Imagine if he was actually in there killing her. What if he was a massive psychopath and that was his lifelong dream!
The girlfriend, on David Cameron still being in Buckingham Palace with the Queen after 20 (twenty!) minutes.
Is regicide on the cards?
