Snow panic
Panic. Panic! PANIC! Do you not see how important it is to panic? We haven't had a decent panic since swine flu - remember that? And that wasn't even around long enough to panic about. So now it's time to really panic. PANIC! It's not too late to panic. Get out there and panic. No, stay in and panic. Stockpile salt, water and Ovaltine at the Co-op. Then panic. And buy a newspaper while you're in there, elbowing people in the head for a can of de-icer and a bag of oranges to ward off the scurvy.
I've written before about how people like Iain Dale and Richard Littlejohn - ah, and I'm sure Wogan would be doing it, if he were still on the radio, but thankfully I don't have to listen to him ever again - do the "Hey look, it's snowing outside, therefore there's no such thing as climate change ever, hooray, I win" silliness every now and then. Which is fine, because it's a nice little joke for their readers and makes them feel more comfortable about not having to understand something quite complicated, like the seasons of the year and the fact it's colder in winter than it is in summer, especially in a generally cold country like Britain*. But you'd think that kind of silliness would be reserved for comment pieces rather than the front page of a national newspaper. You'd think so if you didn't read the Express:
Aaaargh! SNOW CHAOS! Eeeep! Martyn Brown was the Express writer charged with sellotaping together their snow story, writing:
AS one of the worst winters in 100 years grips the country, climate experts are still trying to claim the world is growing warmer.
With millions of Britons battling through snow and ice to get to work today, scientists claim that the cold conditions should not be used as evidence against man-made climate change.
As one of the worst winters grips the country, climate experts claim the world is growing warmer. Whyever might that be? Could it be that not every country in the world is seeing a really cold winter? Possible. But to imagine all that, and to imagine that today's weather in Britain is slightly different from the global climate, is quite difficult if you don't want to look beyond your own back gate. This story says there's a heatwave heading for South Australia. Conclusive evidence of man-made global warming, then? Well no, not quite either. It's a bit more complicated than that. Why can't newspapers handle things that it's hard to describe in ten words or fewer?
Even the Mail - even the Mail, for god's sake - is a bit more upbeat about things, saying that we'll get through it with true British grit and determination:
That's a bit more like it! I imagine the online articles about snow have ten billion billion billion comments underneath saying "WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING LOL?" but at least the Mail are trying to suppress their natural instinct to panic as much as is humanly possible.
The newspapers, though, are bastions of responsibility compared to the dumbed-down rolling news channels, desperately trying to out-Day Today each other with increasingly apocalyptic predictions of snowmageddon. I think if I see one more breathless reporter in a bobble hat out in a snowy field telling me that it's snowing - which I can see with my own eyes, by looking with them - I'm going to go insane.
And now, of course, news channels and their websites have turned into Tony Hart doing 'The Gallery'. Send us in your pictures of snow so other people can have an idea of what snow might look like, in case they've strained their necks and can't look out of windows - and people do, they really do. "Here's my picture of snow, it's in my back garden" - "And here's a lovely picture from Doris Racist of Guildford, and here's some lovely snow in her back garden, oh and look, there's a little dog turd by the bird bath there, lovely, keep those pictures coming in" - is this what we've become? Is this the bright new world of citizen journalism? Is this what rolling news was meant to be all about - people sending in pictures of their back gardens because there was weather?
Apparently, yes. Sky plead with readers to send in their snow pics:
I'll send you a picture all right. Here's a picture of my hairy arse, which is about as relevant to news and as interesting as your bloody snow pictures. Ooh, here's a gate with some snow on it. Christ! Oh, people made snowmen did they? I would never have known they did, if you hadn't been there to tell me. Thank goodness there's no other news in the world at all, that you could just clear the news schedules and stop people dying and being nasty to each other right across the planet, because there was a bit of a flurry in the home counties and some kids had a day off and went sledging, the jammy bastards.
I might sound a bit curmudgeonly, but no. I like snow. I think it's great. I like going to the pub as well, but I don't think Sky should have a reporter outside telling the world about it. There are lots of banal details about the world that aren't interesting enough to be put on the news, with warnings of CHAOS and DANGER and BLOODY SNOWBOUND APOCALYPSE WITH PEOPLE MURDERING EACH OTHER AND TURNING TO CANNIBALISM - all right, I made the last one up. I know the election stuff was tedious, and the snow's a bit more fun than that, but surely - surely - there are other news stories as well, somewhere, about something. Aren't there? Or is this all there is? Panic and weather, the two great British obsessions - it's a perfect storm.
See also: Lenin's Tomb - today's headlines
* Even if you're looking at pictures of it on the TV from Florida or popping over on holiday to the UK to see how your kids are doing in their journalism jobs (which they obviously got through talent, determination and sheer skill alone) in the case of Littlejohn
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January 6th, 2010 - 09:02
As an Aussie living in England I am constantly surprised by the panic leveled at the winter weather conditions of a people who live in a country where the winter weather conditions are as one ought to expect them to be. Puzzling.
January 6th, 2010 - 09:21
Just been listening to BBC Radio Bristol, emploring us to 'make the news for us' by sending them lots of photos…
No! Fuck off we are not your ass monekys who will sent out stuff to you for free, so go and hire a bloody photographer you scroungers!!!
God help us if something actually newsworthy happened today, the snow would probably still get top billing…
January 6th, 2010 - 09:51
1. The Express sub-headline doesn't even make grammatical sense, it should say "And they still claim THERE'S global warming".
(Or better, "And they still claim global warming is happening")
(Or better still, don't mention anything about global warming as it's totally irrelevant)
(Actually Daily Express, don't even publish at all, you're a waste of fucking ink, so piss off)
2. Since I've been awake, they've had this three times on BBC news. First they asked someone (weatherman? expert?) whether this snow means global warming isn't real (a query right out of left-field), then they had two emails, one which called for global warming because they're too cold and too dumb to know that weather and climate are two different things; and the other which said that Gordon Brown can't be that bad a Prime Minister since he's managed to stop global warming (yes, the BBC journalists really did think it okay to read out such ignorance, and then not even fisk it).
And AFAICT, no other emails were read out while I was watching.
January 6th, 2010 - 09:53
Last night, on BBC Look North, they interviewed a lawyer who had slipped on the snow/ice on a pavement and strained ligaments in her arm. They then went on to suggest that there may be claims against local authorities if pavements, etc aren't kept clear. Admittedly, the word resonable was added in case anyone with a brain was watching and they did round off with the statement that it was unlikely anyone would claim in such circumstances…so what was the story again?
January 6th, 2010 - 09:57
Is it snowing? Crikey, I hadn't noticed.
Looking at the whole reporting thing in the context of modern churnalism, it's to be expected. Why go out looking for actual news when you can report on something that's happening quite literally in your back garden. Yes, this amount of snow is relatively unusual (at least down south it is), but you'd think a more proportionate response was in order.
January 6th, 2010 - 10:44
The french have an expression that roughly translated says "paper has never been known to refuse ink"
January 6th, 2010 - 12:17
Th tabloids and the BBC have covered this in such a pathetic and ridiculous manner. What makes these people so abrasive to actually enjoying the weather? Instead, it's all about the CATASTROPHIC SOCIAL CHAOS it's creating. It's fucking absurd.
January 6th, 2010 - 12:28
Frozen Britain! BBC News's nice little label for it, lest we see a photograph of another snowman and forget that it's caused by the same horrible stuff that made a car go upside down because the brave driver ventured out without a blanket, thermos or functioning forebrain.
Like The Mail, BBC do like their labels. Broken Britain (extra mark for the alliteration), The Downturn and so on. These labels package up all the doom and present it to us so we can easily digest it without needing to engage critical thinking. It's nauseating in a way I cannot find a way to convey – perhaps the idea that not only should this appeal to us (it doesn't), but that we're too stupid to assess data by ourselves (we're not), so we'll have it spoon fed. I don't know.
Why are we as a species drawn to apocalyptic stories? There's a grim fascination with all the so-called chaos, rubbernecking an accident, hearing gossip about someone, watching people humiliated on television, and so on.
Have we become this way or is this reporting style borne out of the kind of society or even species that we are? Is it an inevitable result of disparate societies thrown together by global communication in an evolutionary short space of time, having their beliefs challenged and having to deal with it?
Now off for a nice walk in the murder death kill. Wish me luck.
January 6th, 2010 - 21:15
The brave sports reporter on North West tonight tried a 'that's not proper news!' comment after their run of photos but the two girls on the sofa said that they thought the same sometimes when he was giving the football results.
As a football-following, non-panicking girl I was ashamed of both of them.
I'm still struggling to understand how snowfalls in Northern Europe in January can be considered an 'extraordinary weather event' as the BBC keeps calling it. Anyone help?
January 7th, 2010 - 05:06
I think if I see one more breathless reporter in a bobble hat out in a snowy field telling me that it's snowing – which I can see with my own eyes, by looking with them – I'm going to go insane.
Amen. Living in a very rainy and flood-prone area gives me the joyous experience of once a year seeing my local newscasters standing up to their knees in floodwater, shielding themselves with a blown-out umbrella and yelling "DON'T GO OUTSIDE! IT'S RAINING! REALLY HARD!"
Of course, when it does get cold here, we get dire warnings about killer freezes and arctic blasts…meanwhile, the temperature doesn't even hit freezing and then everyone forgets about it the next day. So it goes. If the news can't rile us into a paranoid frenzy about normal (or even the occasional abnormal) weather patterns, they get bored.
January 7th, 2010 - 13:01
As I said on Twitter on 06/01/10, maybe we should ask our guestworker neighbours (Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians, etc.) for advice (I guess "Express" hacks don't actually read other Twitterers' Tweets, Tweetpics etc.).
If you think the "Daily Express" is bad – what about the "Daily Star" (a "success" according to some media commentators).
You don't mention the "Evening Post" and "Western Daily Press" in your press blogs – because they're too close to home?
January 7th, 2010 - 23:36
Funny how the plunging temperature has the Express questioning whether global warming is real. I recall they ran several front-pages last summer in which their top story was 'Weather Gets Quite Hot'. None of them, as far as I remember, had the sub-headline "Crikey, Maybe These Global Warming People Are Onto Something After All"
January 8th, 2010 - 12:41
Westengland: I don't really read them, to be honest!
January 10th, 2010 - 14:37
It's so amusing to read about the 'snow panic' in England when here in Estonia the temperature is -25 degrees centigrade and there is about 25 inches on snow everywhere. Life just goes on…no paper headlines about it, no panic. Even though this amount of cold is far from normal.