Killer Cucumbers et al

I've been on half-term all this week (cue jealously and hate-vibes) and it's given me a chance to really catch up with the news. My conclusion is that the world's gone mad, or maybe not mad, but sensationalism has definitely reached an all time high.

For example, the E coli "epidemic" that's supposed to have struck Europe. Bloody hell, sounds scary you may think, but hold yer horses people. Can we look at this properly for a moment? Only 18 people have actually died from this in Europe, which is of course tragic and terrible, but after doing a little bit of digging I've discovered that in developing countries 4,900 people die from it every day. Now that's a fucking statistic. That's an epidemic, and we can count ourselves lucky that we're not reaching numbers like that because we've got a decent hygiene system and we're able to throw away food that we think might be contaminated.

Lucky us, but like bird flu, swine flu and any other scaremongering diseases that have been carted our way and exaggerated by news channels, I think I'll only start to panic when those numbers start hitting multiple hundreds.

However, I do have a sickly housemate that I'm keeping my distance from... just in case. And you bloody know I scrubbed that cucumber I bought from Lidil damn hard before putting it in my sarnies! Not that I'm paranoid, but see what the news has gone and done?!

I'm sure that we're not going to be infected by killer cucumbers or toxic tomatoes thus triggering a Shaun of the Dead style break out of a new disease that reanimates our infected bodies....or are we? (And we're not using the 'Z' word)

Talking of dead bodies did anyone come across the news of the beheaded birds and the speared frog? If not, here it is http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-13626764 When I heard the news yesterday they hadn't caught the culprits, but good to see that they've brought someone to task over this now.

The first I heard of it was on 6 Music (my new love) and all I caught was, "blah, blah, dead birds....blah blah and a speared frog." Woah there pickle! A speared frog? Now that's not something I've heard on the news before. I've heard/read/seen the headlines of people impaling themselves on things they really shouldn't, and even sad cases of people attacking swans and birds, but I've gotta say, hearing about a speared frog was certainly an oddity, a first, and got my attention.

Long and short of it is what went on in that aviary was the animal kingdoms equivalent of a bad day in Baghdad - or Afghanistan, or Libya, or Syria. Take you're pick, there's so many places in turmoil at the moment, but you get the gist of what I'm trying to compare it to.

So they rolled off all the stats about the 18 birds that had their heads chopped off, the pond full or carp that were poisoned and that it's caused around £10k of damage...then right at the end of it was the news of the one frog that was "savagely speared". Like that frog, that one lonely little hopper, really was in the wrong place at wrong time - a civilian casualty if you will. I chuckled a little bit though, I didn't mean to, I'm not sick in the head, but when you hear a BBC news correspondent deliver the news that "there was one savagely speared frog" in the same serious, slightly saddened tone as she would if reporting the death of the Queen or something then you can't help but chuckle.

With stories like this out and about it's no wonder I want to be a journalist!

RoseC
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