In this Latest News Report, The Bally Traveller, also known as Ivor Bundock, gives his take on Covid-19, as well as the media’s coverage of the Coronavirus pandemic. Other news includes some happier news stories happening around the world, such as businesses that are helping out during the lockdown, and The Hubble Telescope celebrating its birthday by taking photos of Nebula NGC 2014 and NGC 2020.
Latest News Report by The Ballie Traveller: The media.
Do they report or create the news?
I’m assuming that most people are now tired of the constant stream of news coverage of Coronavirus statistics, negativity and criticism. With this in mind, I often wonder how many of the worlds’ bad events are brought to fruition by the media fuelling a kind of collective hysteria.
If you live in the UK, chances are that you will believe that there is only one issue in the entire world, namely the Coronavirus pandemic. Every major TV news channel will generally repeat the same negative miserable news on the hour, every hour.
There are no worldwide conflicts, starving people in refugee camps or anything else newsworthy, except for maybe Donald Trump speaking “sarcastically” about mainlining insecticide.
When the world’s stock markets began to wobble in 2008, the press almost built themselves up into a frenzy, bringing out the hysterical survival urge in the rest of us to rush out and sell our stocks and shares, causing even more damage. The cycle repeated ad infinitem until yes, you guessed it. The stock market crashed.
We all suffered to some extent. A few brokers leapt out of tall buildings and others lost their pensions, but hey, the media then manufactured more news to keep the cycle rolling on.
Then there is the constant criticism of the government for not doing better. Better than whom? There must be some degree of latitude, surely. No one knew the best route to take, even considering that we had the Spanish Flu episode one hundred years ago. Should we be wearing masks or maybe drinking bleach? Who knows the answer?
Of course, the opposition party (as they do), would have done everything correctly the first time, kept the deaths below 100, ordered protection equipment two years ago and could test 100,000 people per day from the start.
However,
Corona Virus Fallout from a different and unlikely perspective – Not all bad
Somehow, a good glass of fine wine often helps smooth out many of the problems of the world.
Laithwaites Wine, founded by Tony Laithwaite and his wife Barbara in 1969, that’s 50 years ago, has experienced an incredible rise in customers of some 300%, for the past year to April 2020.
Interesting, considering that most of their customers are in lockdown. Not everyone is letting circumstances get them down, and appear to be socialising remotely, using the likes of Skype and Zoom, much chit chat with, of course, a glass of wine in hand.
With fewer people visiting supermarkets, Laithwaites has filled a gap and delivers within 3 days of orders being placed.
The result: A flourishing retail business and very happy wineries to boot, all doing their bit for the cause.
Latest News Report: Fancy knitting a jersey during the lockdown.
Stitch and Story can help.
A business co-founded 7 years ago by 2 women whose aim was to encourage millennials to learn the art of knitting and crocheting. Yes, you read that correctly. Since lockdown, they’ve had an incredible increase in sales of 800% in March 2020.
The company started as what the owner describes as a “kitchen-table start-up” and provides materials and tutorials for crafting. They now have 11 full-time employees.
Co-founder Jennifer Lam told the BBC in an interview that “It’s just perfect to do right now. So many people are sick of working on screens and being on their phones all the time.
Crafting is seen as a break from that. It’s just so rewarding to make something from scratch.” Who would have thought?
Latest News Report: Happy Birthday, Hubble.
A happy wrap up to miserable currents events.
The Hubble Telescope, which was launched some 30 years ago, spotted this amazing view last week.
The spectacular birthday card above is a picture of Nebula NGC 2014 and its’ smaller neighbour NGC 2020. The Nebula was spotted by Hubble some 163,000 lights years away, close to our own Milky Way. That’s quite far for us mere mortals to comprehend.
The scene has been called “Cosmic Reef” (Credit NASA / ESA)
Hubble started as a failed project, due to her mirror having a flaw in the manufacture. Images were blurred. It was subsequently repaired and has proven to be an astonishingly important scientific tool. It is slowly failing due to problems with its gyroscopes, but it will undoubtedly be repaired again and survive for another generation.
This has been the Latest News Report by Ivor Bundock, The Bally Traveller, with his views on what’s been going around the world recently. See previous news updates, and stay tuned for more insights on Current Events.
One Comment on “Latest News Report by The Ballie Traveller: Update on Media & Coronavirus in 2020”