Week in Review:12/6/11

Chris Huw Williams is making the most of the news cycle’s silly season.

The past few days have been a bit of an end of an era for me. I’ve finished second year of Uni, exams are over, revision has most definitely stopped and my room is cleared out to a shell of it’s former self. The news, has been pretty much the same. Coming slightly earlier than it normally does, Silly Season appears to be upon us. Silly Season tends to be that part of the year where literally nothing happens, so stupid stories are used to take up space.

An example? Well, how about the non-story that the Human Centipede 2 has been given no rating. Supposedly the pseudo-horror film is so unbelievably disgusting that the current rating system doesn’t reflect how gruesome and horrible the film actually is. That’s not news – it’s just a debating point. Having trended near the top of the BBC’s most viewed stories over the week, the internet has been full of people questioning whether or not this should be allowed – is it really ‘art’ like the director has suggested?

I had to keep reminding myself, as I saw the story appear on the front page of the news website, that  only a few months ago Libya, Syria and all the other disasters were taking up the front page of the news feed – not mickey mouse stories that lack any depth.

Yet the ‘silliness’ doesn’t stop there. Supposedly, Leicester City Council have had to deal with citizens questioning how prepared they are for a zombie invasion. The freedom of information act has managed to reveal some crackers in its time, but I think this one is the best one.

I wonder, though, how much of it is a joke and how much this ‘concerned citizen’ is actually concerned. Apparently the person claimed that, “having watched several films, it is clear that preparation for such an event is poor and one that councils throughout the kingdom must prepare for”. If it’s a hoax, it’s quite a funny one. But it’s not the first time that a fear of zombies has made the news. Only a few years ago (surprisingly not in Silly Season) a zombie survival guide was created in online in response to a government sponsored guide on surviving a terrorist attack (… or nuclear weapon, in fact, I don’t remember the details – but it was certainly scaremongering, to say the least).

The only real ‘event’ (if you can call it that) which has made the news this week is that it’s the Duke of Edinburgh’s 90th Birthday. Fun times. The old racist who comes out with more clangers than the clangers themselves still isn’t dead.

I’m not a royalist. I never have been and I hope I never will be – I still don’t understand how someone can have a hereditary job and role in this country, in spite of some of the things that he’s claimed. The man has said some of the most ridiculous things, but it’s all be brushed off as fine since ‘he’s a royal’. One time, when speaking to the Scottish WI, the prince claimed that: “British women can’t cook”. The blundering buffoon also said, about smoke alarms, that: “They’re a damn nuisance – I’ve got one in my bathroom and every time I run my bath the steam sets it off”, to a woman who lost two sons in a fire, 1998.

His insensitivity is incredible and his idiocy is matched by no-one. I guess it’s good that he’s turned 90, hopefully there’ll still be a few more years of clangers ahead of him. It’s just impressive that no-one has managed to regulate him or what he says to people even up until now…