Dear Blog,
A very quick note for you, I shall write again tonight …
Now, although this is a serious note it should provide you with a little smile in Passing. I have said before that it is rather sad that once a ‘fact’ appears in the press, it becomes FACT with a capital ‘F’ no matter what. Corrections … retractions … further explainations … all a complete waste of time. For example, someone wrote in a publication about my acting ability citing two classical performances in particular. And so it is. Impossible to change; so my prowess in Shakespeare and my performance in a classic play about the Spanish occupation of the Americas are now just part of my extensive repertoire for you to research Blog!! Back to my quick note …and Blog I kid you not. The facts are there for you to check. Two weeks ago, a news item about pollution in one of the cities in China was corrected the following day with an apology about the incorrect facts. The item was even carried with the apology on Radio 4. So the record was put straight then? Oh no it wasn’t. Oh yes it was. Oh no it wasn’t. Because the same original ‘fact’ was carried in an article in the ‘Guardian’ on Saturday May 4th . As part of a reasoned argument about food contamination and adulteration … I refer to the article on Page 3 by Jonathan Kaiman reporting from Beijing. I quote ‘….Chinese consumers eat four times as much meeat today as they did 20 years ago but pork sales collapsed in March after about 16,000 pig carcasses wre dredged from a river in Shanghai, an incident authorities have yet to explain.’ Check it out Blog. Would I lie to you?
O.K. Blog ‘16,000 pig carcasses were dredged from a river’ and the apology was ‘we apologise for the error in yesterday’s article, it should have read “16 sows and pigs were dredged from the river.”’ The big question now is whether there will be an apology in Tomorrow’s Guardian?????????????????????????? Or next Saturday’s????????????????
Colin
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