You may recall, if you've been around since the beginning of this blog, my rant against predictive reporting. It's where experts predict the worse case scenario to cover their backsides, and news reporters hype it up further still because there's no other news.
And so, Friday was going to be "Black Friday" - the day when 18 million cars hit the roads (at 3pm, according to traffic experts) and Britain would grind to a halt. The first thing news editors had to do was to make this news, since Britain grinds to a halt every Friday. Hence the "Black Friday" tag, ensuring in everyone's minds that this would be no ordinary Friday. And there was indeed nothing ordinary about it, because when I drove home on the A55 it was the quietest Friday traffic I'd seen in a long time. The hysterical reporting was exposed when, during the 6pm bulletin, the BBC cut to its reporter in a "traffic control room" (since when did a traffic control room control traffic?) for the latest, only for the bank of CCTV screens behind the admirably straight-faced reporter to show free moving traffic everywhere.
But wait! "Black Friday" wasn't finished yet! This was the night that millions of yoofs would drink themselves into oblivion, rampaging through our towns and cities in Santa hats, causing all manner of murder and mayhem. But lo and behold! in the early hours of Saturday morning there was PC Spokesman on Sky saying it had been no different to any other Friday.
Thank God for some more missing data discs today. Otherwise we'd be facing "Blue Monday", and certain death for us all.
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