Comments on: Daily Mail blames freak natural accident on striking teachers

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

My mother found a way to blame Katrina damage to New Orleans on PETA: Levees were being damaged by burrowing muskrats & nutria; the gov’t started an awareness campaign to encourage hunting, trapping, and/or eating the varmits; PETA complained and stopped the killing; the levees were subsequently riddled with holes; the hurricane came along and washed away the spongified levees. It was PETA’s fault!

By: Glastafarian

Glastafarian — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Can I just completely agree with you on all of that!

By: Yamara

Yamara — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So if the teachers had been paid fairly, that girl would be alive today.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ok, much as the Daily Mail needs one letter changed in a renaming, they didn’t ever blame the accident on the strike. Their sentence said that she was sitting on the park bench because of the strike. Unfortunately they know their audience and the generally godawful grammar of the British public, so they (most likely) knew it would be misinterpreted. Pleading innocence is like them saying “Hey! There’s those people you hate! They all had sex with your mother. By the way, there’s some weapons over there on that rack. Not that you should use them, this is in no way connected to what we said just before.” Or something like that.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Doesn’t anyone else find it a little odd that the Mail has quoted three different people saying almost the exact grammatically incorrect sentence: “she was sat on the bench with some friends”?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

>and that person didn’t get killed by your negligence, he was killed because he forgot his keys.

PHEW!!! THAT’S a relief! I’d much rather he be killed because he forgot his keys than blame the liquor store that sold me that vodka. Mostly cause the second closest liquor store is wayyy too far away.

By: ak

ak — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is pathetic…

By: Allen Garvin

Allen Garvin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“It’s absolutely true because I read it in the Daily Mail”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI

By: Bubba

Bubba — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The one silver lining I take from this is that even the normal DM commenters are pillorying the paper for their barbaric handling of this story, if the tree had been African there may have been a different reaction but take solace where you can.

By: KanedaJones

KanedaJones — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

– wouldn’t that be a “terrible grammar win”?

Naaa its just a case of the terrible act of grammar fail, I would expect it to be very similar to a terrible murder.. which although its execution (poor choice of words) may be poor, it just turns out that no one seems to want to critique it on style points.

By: one pieceman

one pieceman — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The article is in very poor taste considering the tragedy of the situation.

However, there is a related context that is of interest here.

Are kids safer at school or not at school? I don’t know the answer to that, but there are presumably stats on that. If it was the case that school is safer, then this should inform decisions such as shutting down whenever there is the smallest flurry of snow, etc.

By: jjasper

jjasper — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Also to blame – bench makers.

By: Teller

Teller — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The branch sent to the IOCC for analysis.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I like where this is headed…

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Meh, its not that long ago since a kid was killed by a falling branch whilst on a school trip.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Interesting reaction from the police officer parent. Weren’t the Metropolitan Police (and quite possibly other forces around the UK) pushing hard for the right to go on strike just last (this?) year? Wasn’t there a protest by the Metropolitan Police just a couple of months ago in Whitehall? Those pinko teachers!

By: thelepleys

thelepleys — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

nay nay. terrible grammar as a whole is what failed the world in this tragic tale. if the subject was grammar, and grammar failed the world, then it would be a grammar fail that was terrible.

By: Neon Tooth

Neon Tooth — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Gotta love the kind of “I’m an utter dumbass with libertarian/right wing ideas” bent of the Daily Mail.

By: Neon Tooth

Neon Tooth — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

environmental activists

Or as they’re known outside the lobbyist, paid climate denier, flat Earther world: The overwhelming scientific consensus.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I hope the CCTV’s they have every 10 ft in the UK pay off and one of them captures an image of the awful tree that committed this crime.

By: Maurice Milligan

Maurice Milligan — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Surprised no-one has asked whether it was a traditional English species of tree or a terrible foreign invader. Maybe even a Scots Pine – you know, one brought down south by Blair or Brown and trained to savage English children?

By: nicol

nicol — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

When I was at school a friend died driving a car with three other friends in it. It was pretty horrendous for everyone.

We weren’t prepared for the journalists who doorstepped families within hours, let alone the cover story in the Daily Mail the next day, alongside the picture they’d got from her mum, besides the headline “this is the girl who drove the car of death”.

Unable on that occasion to blame striking teachers or asylum seekers, the subs made their own subtle yet gross inference.

A slimy scrotum of evil that newspaper.

By: Talia

Talia — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I most commonly hear it referred to as the Daily Fail.

By: thelepleys

thelepleys — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

terrible grammar fail!

should read: “Girl, 13, at park because of teacher strike, crushed to death by falling branch”

By: nem0fazer

nem0fazer — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Wait till the teachers go back and a kid’s run over going to school.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Makes me recall the comment that if as a tourist, you were driving on a Persian Gulf country and had an accident, it was automatically your fault, because if you weren’t visiting there there would have been no accident at all.

By: blueelm

blueelm — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Um…. wouldn’t that, if anything, be the city’s fault for not maintaining the park?

I like that though. It’s like responsibility through chaos theory.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

AMAZING. seems like they already sent that version of the headline down the memory hole tho in favor of an only slightly less insane “Girl, 13, crushed to death by a branch as she sat on a park bench after teachers went on strike” – http://istyosty.com/tmp/cache/b840c23cc6b6a0b9a65ec0594ff18d6488536506.html

By: adwkiwi

adwkiwi — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Waaaaaaaay down the bottom is a press release from the parents:

“Our beloved daughter’s death was a tragic incident, which occurred only 24 hours ago, and we do not want it to be connected to any other events.”

Stay classy, Daily Mail.

By: petertrepan

petertrepan — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Katrina victims seek to find, punish, butterfly