Paul Kingsnorth

Aaaaargggh! Run for the hills! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Or perhaps not. Perhaps it is, after all, just a DEAD SODDING BIRD. Perhaps we could calm down enough so that when I switch the news on I am not confronted with 40 minutes of coverage of the fact that the swan is dead, the swan remains dead and that NOTHING ELSE HAS HAPPENED.

And perhaps when we do calm down we can start asking ourselves why every TV journalist in Britain had to fly up to Scotland last night to do live pieces to camera in front of the slipway on which the dead fucking swan got washed up eight bastard days ago. And perhaps the editor of the Today programme on Radio 4 could explain to me why his journalists were coming on like half-crazed souls in the cellars of Dresden this morning.

Here are the facts of the matter: a bird got a cough. A bird died. Other birds may or may not get coughs and die. If we're very unlucky, a bird may cough on a human and he or she may subsequently die. This has happened 100 times so far, in the ENTIRE WORLD, in TEN YEARS.

But these are facts and thus not interesting to us. For we are The Media and we like SCARY STORIES. We like them almost as much as we like stories about Tony fighting with Gordon, and we like them only slightly more than we like stories about small children being brutally murdered by psychopathic paedophiles. Come on; give us a break! Here we are, sitting in some dingy studio drinking stewed tea out of foam cups or staring into computer screens clawing about for 500 words to write about putting folic acid into bread. Of course we want some excitement! We're only human! We want to keep it going! We're BORED!

Christ! Another one! Surely this calls for a Newsnight Special?

And what's THIS woman up to?


Should she be BANNED? Is she setting a BAD EXAMPLE FOR OUR KIDS? Should she be SHOT for her OWN GOOD? Lines are open now, so give us a call! We want to hear YOUR STUPID, PIG-IGNORANT, ILL-INFORMED VIEWS because we've exhausted our own already!

Excuse me; I'm going to leave the country for a while, and not because I'm worried about coughing birds.