h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I love local TV news. Some of the banalities and utterly trivial events that make it on to the screen amaze me.

The title of this journal is taken from a news report on Yorkshire TV some 18 or so years ago. The presenter said, "and in other news a man's shed has burnt down in Huddersfield", at which point we all stopped in stunned silence before exploding in to laughter at the triviality of that report. And yes there were pictures to accompany the story.

Well, we've got another shed moment

This story - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/6672331.stm - was the lead item on the BBC's evening South Today show. It came with pictures of the shed, and interviews with a fat burly fireman and several residents of the local area. About two and half minutes of air time all told. Love it

It might be more newsworthy if the shed hadn't originally been in Huddersfield beforehand ...

Y'know, the 'More news from around England' section on http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/default.stm gets more and more like a local newspaper every day as it reels off stories like 'Boy breaks bones in factory fall' or 'Boy hurt in hit-and-run incident' or 'Pallet blaze at disused airfield'.

Wonder if there will be a man buys icecream cone in is slippers story during the summer...

Depends on the timing, partly... on the weekends, most regional BBC news programmes have one camera to cover their entire area - so wherever it ends up getting sent, that usually ends up being your lead item.

This is all thanks to the unique way that the BBC is funded, which means the big programmes and departments at TV Centre get all the budget they want and the rest of us have to make do with cocoa tins and bits of string.

The money you get for commentating on 90 minutes of football on local radio - plus being there two hours before for the build-up and an hour after for the reactions - wouldn't even buy you one of Gary Lineker's ties.

But we do it for the love of the game, of course.

::AHEM::
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/humber/6676759.stm

That's priceless


It's a terrible shame that the chap got injured though. I do hope that he makes a full recovery

True.

Mind you, this story raises a question that has long smouldered at the back of my mind. How come American place-names sound so cool, while British place-names... don't.

"Oh I was only 24 hours from Cleethorpes"
"And the Cricklewood lineman is still on the line"
"By the time I get to Romford, she'll be rising"
"Milton Keynes, Milton Keynes, prettiest town that I've ever seen"
"East Finchley, East Finchley, that toddlin' town"
"Mablethorpe, oh Mablethorpe, I still hear your sea winds blowin'"

I always thought Bishops Stortford was a rather cool name name.

Show me the way to Bishops Stortford, etc

Americans tend to find a certain novelty value in British place-names though, I think.

Well the Americans had to name their places all at once. Whereas the Europeans have had centuries for our place names to evolve and to develop. That's why American names may have a certain shock of the new (and a terrible habit of repetition) but ours have a certain maturity to them


Now, anyone for Bawdrip?

I'm rather found of Sheepy Parva and Sheepy Magna. Not as places, they're dull ittle villages. But as place names, one sounds like a disease farmers should be worried about and the other like a Sheep Liberation organisation.

One has to wonder why any girl born in the village of Loose would want to stay there after she achieved her majority

We Americans do find British place names novel.


And I think we're not alone... Need I remind y'all of a certain book titled "The Meaning of Liff"?

Men questioned over sheep in car
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/6684299.stm

And it didn't happen in Wales

I heard that explosion in Cleethorpes and the fire brigade sirens and saw the plume of smoke

What do you men get upto in your sheds?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/humber/6676759.stm
*that* explosion, not GreyDesk's journal subject

That sheep one is great - "10 boxes of stationery were found in the back of the car" WTF ? Never mind the paper - what about the sheep ?

He was using its tongue to lick his stamps?

That sheep storey is awful... I mean... pressumbably that was written up on the web by a Beeb journalist? it makes less sense than I do on drugs as a storey with the details given Mind, all these storeys could be worse... A lot worse... 'back home' our local press of the newspaper variety has been running the same three storeys for the past at least four decades...
'Third crossing, when?'
'Dog Dirt'
'Impending factory closure' Actually they may finally prove to be right on both the third crossing for the river and the factory finally closing maybe they'l have to go out of bisuness w when two thirds of their 'news' is no longer able to be used