A Day of Interesting Headlines

The news headlines have animated me today, there was a particularly interesting mix of stupidity, hypocrisy, crankiness and success.

First you have the story of a hero, Captain Chesley Sullenberger, who successfully pulled off a water landing when his plane lost two engines after hitting a flock of geese. I'm hoping Hollywood won't destroy the natural merit of this event by putting it in a film staring Nicolas Cage as the pilot and Mel Gibson as a goose.

Then you've got Nationwide Building Society who, despite probably having quite a firm grasp of the state of the economy, seem genuinely surprised that nobody in Manchester reported that a cash machine at a BP garage was giving out twice as much money as it debited from people's accounts, for six hours. Surely if banks and building societies were all that naive the country would be in the midst of a financial disaster. Ah, I see.

And carrying on the hypocrisy surrounding who is and isn't allowed a forum to spread their religious beliefs, bus driver Ron Heather, from Southampton, refused to drive a bus with "There's probably no God" advertised on the side on the grounds that he believes there is. I wonder how many atheists have had to grin and bear working around adverts for Alpha courses? Not to mention that when you followed the URL in the Christian "Jesus died for your sins" adverts you arrived at a web site which included statements saying that "All non Christians would burn in hell for eternity in a lake of fire." I know which offends me the most.

Also Rafael Benitez has joined the growing flock (for want of a better collective noun) of football coaches to politely suggest that club chief executives should butt out of key managerial decisions.

Certainly lots of food for thought.

1 Comment

The cashpoint story sounds like a story that happened this summer in the US - instead of the usual $3.75 a gallon for petrol, one station's machines had it set for 37 cents. And the shop worker wondered why it was so crowded all day!

Posted by Kaitlin on Friday 16th January, 2009 at 20:18

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