Let Sleeping Badgers Lie

Overheard during TV programme on sleep:

Dr Michael Moseley: "Alcohol before sleeping relaxes the throat muscles and makes you snore."

Hay: "There you go, Badger - you mustn't drink alcohol in the evening if I'm to get a decent night's rest."

Chairman: "But that would be very bad for me, as I'd have to drink in the morning."

Hay took this cruel video of me last year during my meditation exercises.

Overheard this morning:

Chairman: "Greg Allman has died."

Hay: "He was married to Cher once."

Chairman: "Everyone's been married to Cher. I think I was married to her once."

Reynard came a little earlier last night for his dinner and I managed to get a decent video of him.

I was having a read of the Sunday Times this morning and alighted on the British Airways computer failure story. A whole 3/4 page spread, along with the usual graphics that are designed to use up lots of space and yet add bugger all to the story. Anyway, as an observer, the focus of my interest from a news perspective is the cause of the IT failure and what was done to restore operations, but what are we presented with? interviews with disgruntled travelers who spent £5k on a flight and are understandably a bit miffed. That's not of the slightest interest to me - I'd expect there to be hordes of complaining passengers following the cancellation of all flights - it's not news.

The media today seems to engage not in asking crucial, newsworthy questions, but in interviewing Joe Bloggs and hearing his complaint. The human interest angle trounces real news, but it's the kind of human interest that totally uninteresting, except to the person being interviewed.