Usually fish are in the water now they are falling out of the sky

Here's an extract from a recent Telegraph.co.uk article called Australian town, 326 miles from river, hit by raining fish. Check out the quote from Joe Ashley, 55:

Harry Campbell sent this one in to The Engine Room, and he asks: "Is punctuation now rationed at the Daily Telegraph?"

If anything, I think the lack of punctuation conveys a rather appropriate sense of panic on the part of Joe Ashley. I'd be panicked if I thought crocodiles might start dropping out of the sky...

Skin cancer caused by 'ultra violent sunlight', according to Telegraph.co.uk

According to an article published on Telegraph.co.uk today, skin cancer is caused by "ultra violent sunlight":



This one was actually spotted by Ed Yong and retweeted by my colleague Sue Proud - I just wanted to record it for posterity.

You know it's a slow news day when...

Sarah has emailed in to draw my attention to a story on the Telegraph website entitled Ghostly image of Michael Jackson appears on car bonnet.

She writes:

What on earth were The Telegraph thinking when they decided to put this on the website? I can only imagine that it was a slow news day. My favourite bit is at the end where they quote Gary Sloggett on what he did when he saw the photo [of his car]: "I immediately turned to my wife and said: 'What is Michael Jackson doing on my car bonnet?'"

This is my favourite part of the article:

"It's quite extraordinary," said Gary, of Stafford. "The obvious explanation is that it seems to be some sort of cloud formation that just happened at the time."

Yes, it's the reflection of a cloud. How extraordinary!

It's time for place for learning

The Daily Telegraph reports that a new primary school has banned the use of the word “school” in its title because it has “negative connotations”. Instead the school is to be known as “a place for learning” after its governors decided the word school is too “institutional”. The head teacher (“primary educational facilitator”, perhaps?) says: “We want this to be a place for family learning, where anyone can come... we wanted to de-institutionalise the place and bring the school [sic] closer to real life.”

Predictably, the Plain English Campaign has condemned the whole idea as “ridiculous”. It cites other recent examples of a “political correctness agenda” including “knowledge navigators” (teachers, though I think educational facilitator is more accurate and slightly less silly); the glorious “education centre nourishment assistants” (dinner ladies); “idea stores” (libraries); and an attempt to ban the word “inmates” for prisoners in case it offends them.

You really couldn’t make it up.


Telegraph.co.uk: Primary school drops word school from name...
The Engine Room: A library by any other name

Headlines: 'Sark fire blamed on a cleaner'

The most misleading news headline of the day goes to the Metro free paper with:

Sark fire blamed on a cleaner

In reality, the fire that caused £10m of damage to the Cutty Sark last year wasn't caused by a person who cleans – but by an industrial vacuum cleaner that had accidentally been left on for two days. Of course, it is possible that the cleaner had been left on by a cleaner, so to speak.

The Sky News website decided to run with an almost identical (and just as misleading) headline.

And here's some rather more enlightening video footage on the cause of the Cutty Sark fire from Telegraph.co.uk. I've had to change the dimensions to get it to fit on the blog so apologies if it looks a bit squashed or otherwise doesn't display properly: