2000 and hate

Thought of the day

Headlines like “2000 and hate” (today’s Sun) get me down. Four people in the UK died violently on New Year’s Eve. From thence the headline is derived and makes violent deaths on New Year’s Eve look like they’re a precedent. I have spent the last ten minutes looking at the news archives for the previous two New Year’s Celebrations in the UK, and as far as I can make out, one more people died violently this year than on December 31^st 2005, and at least three people were killed (doing a quick tally of the headlines) on December 31^st 2006. While a 1/3 increase in deaths on New Year’s Eve is tragic for the 4 families involved, running in on the front page of a newspaper scares old ladies.   No wonder we’ve seen prison overcrowding; with headlines like that people would vote for Oliver Cromwell.