Category Archives: Utter bullshit
Not really cardboard cut-out for a career in sales
This is a very sad episode in the life of Middlesbrough’s Evening Gazette. It’s all very well that local newspapers publish classified adverts so the locals can wheel and deal in household appliances and the like, but when such adverts … Continue reading
Newspaper appeal: ‘Please confirm I’m not going mad’
Sometimes, even the imagination of a booze-soaked fantasist can become the news. The Shields Gazette, 17 January 2011 (story): Can you help solve pub mystery? A GAZETTE reader has asked South Tynesiders to help solve a pub ‘mystery’. The woman … Continue reading
Filed under Utter bullshit
Fishy questions in Blackpool
The Blackpool Gazette never shies away from the big questions: Despite searching the paper’s website, I’m yet to find the story which might have given rise to this poll. If you’re aware of what possible motivation the staff of the … Continue reading
Filed under Polls, Utter bullshit
The Shaming of Cats
Cats: some people drop them into wheelie bins, while some people enter them into national competitions. But which is the bigger form of abuse? Local newspapers love nothing more than printing feel-good stories about domestic pets and their owners, as … Continue reading
Filed under One of our own, Utter bullshit
Police are keen to hear from anyone who may be missing a pet monkey
This week in deepest Lincolnshire… is it a squirrell? Is it a monkey? No, it’s just members of the local constabulary managing to trick a newspaper into publishing a police in-joke. Louth Leader, 13 August 2010 (story): Monkey spotted running … Continue reading
Filed under Utter bullshit
The benefit of hand-sight
The regional media is happy to take its lead from the right wing national gutter press when it comes to scare stories about benefits. The Bolton News has exhaustively covered the story of Terry Langford, 62, non-cripple, who was recently … Continue reading
Filed under Heartless bastards, Moral outrage, Utter bullshit
Sheep thrills
Local papers short on material simply love it when there’s a semi-humorous angle to what would otherwise be a tedious everyday occurrence, e.g. one person having their sleep disturbed. Surrey Comet, 27 July 2010 (story): Lost sheep wakes Worcester Park … Continue reading
Filed under Getting oneself in the paper, Utter bullshit
Rules and Regulations
We could do with some government regulations against letters to newspapers like this. The Bolton News, 12 May 2010: Don’t let health and safety rule your life I BELIEVE we live in a Politically Correct and vastly over-regulated country, I … Continue reading
Filed under Letters to the Editor, Utter bullshit
“The Pen” is mightier than the sword
Aside from stories about dog-dirt-riddled pavements or brave ‘Supermums’ repeatedly giving birth in order to achieve unnecessarily large families, the undoubted lifeblood of the regional newspaper is the mentally-unhinged serial letter writer. With boundless dedication to the cause and, occasionally, … Continue reading
Filed under Letters to the Editor, Utter bullshit
How to spot UFOs and literally draw far-fetched conclusions
It’s always wonderful when regional newspapers are able to avoid publishing multiple empty pages on slow news days by instead publishing drawings by demented members of the public. UFOs, sometimes helpfully identified as ‘unidentified flying objects’, are, of course, a … Continue reading
Filed under Utter bullshit
