Beltway Snark

Does anyone else think it’s strange how much attention was given to the Royal Wedding a few weeks ago? I can kind of understand the coverage in the UK – it is the future King after all – but I found it amazing how much coverage was provided in a variety of different countries such as the United States.

I suppose I should be that surprised, as I note that the US has major thing about the Royal family. There are all sorts of reasons for this, but it probably mainly dates back to the wedding of Princess Diana who was extremely popular in the United States.

If I was living in the United States and had this much coverage about something that was going on in a different country, I would probably get a bit sick of it. There are enough problems in the US without having to worry about all the things that are going on in different countries especially when they are not newsworthy. Obviously it’s important to have some coverage of the Royal wedding, but apparently it took up most news stations time for several days. The only reason that it was eventually pushed off the front page was because of events elsewhere (that I won’t go into here).

I live in the UK and am very glad that all the coverage has now stopped, although all we hear about now is how the Queen is visiting Ireland! It’s strange because I don’t think many people there actually care whether she’s there or not.

It’s always interesting to read the “other news” sections of the big news sites, some real gems of stories can come up. The latest one that I read today was about a twenty year old who decided to drive his dad’s car. Nothing too exciting about that, except that it was a 275 grand super car (a Gumpert Apollo) and he completely wrote it off in a crash in Germany.

Apparently, he was driving near Hamburg and lost control, span off and crashed the car. There was no chance of salvaging the wreckage (understandable when you see the photos) but luckily no one was injured either. There’s no official word on whether he was speeding yet, but it seems unlikely that you can lose control of a supercar without going over the limit.

I’d love to know how he explained that one to his dad. I’m sure the car has some form of insurance but I have no idea how rare it was – it may be that the dad can’t get a new model of the car. It’s also got to be very embarrassing for the sun to have the story all over news sites. This is definitely one mistake he’ll never be allowed to forget!

Fortunately I can say that I never wrote off my parent’s car or even crashed it but I know people who have. It doesn’t usually go down very well with the parents!