More scarce … or more smart

Apparently, the hedgehog is now an endangered species in the UK. Numbers have plummeted in the past five years. Now this is all very sad.  But how do they calculate the size of the hedgehog population exactly? You don’t often see hedgehogs shuffling back to their hedge of birth around census time.

In fact, hedgehog population size is estimated from the volume of road kills. Now, whilst in my head I completely believe that building on greenland sites, the increased intensity of and reduced crop diversity in agriculture and the social trend for overly designed gardens have all destroyed natural habitats for hedgehogs, in my heart I am clinging to the idea that after 100 years of cars on the roads, the little buggers have just got a lot better at not getting hit.

Doorbells

Electric doorbells are not as well designed as acoustic doorbells.  (If that is the correct phrase.)  They need batteries.  They are less audible.  They break in more complicated and generally fatal ways.

I award them the Digital Watch Prize for Unnecessary and A Bit Shit Design.

How on earth could there ever have been a market need to design the electric doorbell.  And why did nearly everyone buy one?  And what happened to all those doorbells on chains?  Are they still there?  Or were they stripped out to make munitions in WWII?Nominations for this prize will be warmly accepted.

Judges decisions are final and – most often – arbitrary.  Prizes are awarded as and when and sometimes not at all. 

Madeleine McCann

Apparently, according to Chief Inspector Sousa, Madeleine ‘may never be found’.  Given that the only necessary criterion for having the possibility of never being found is to be lost, I’m not sure that statement counts as news. 

Watched the YouTube video of David Beckham, who is apparently doing ‘everything he can’ to find Madeleine.  Unless she is the Viper Rooms or a boutique on Rodeo Drive, I don’t favour his chances.

I’m not trying to be glib.  I can’t imagine anything more traumatic and painful than having your child abducted.  And I have a good imagination.  But this international, public desperation – which returns and recedes depending on the slowness of the news day or the inertia of journalists – is terribly hollow.  The worst quality is this self-righteous pretence that we somehow – reading about Madeleine over our cornflakes or catching it on the Internet whilst avoiding doing some work – are sharing in the parents’ grief.  Nonsense.  No more than watching pornography is sharing in someone’s shagging.  Lighting candles and being pompous and solemn to camera is not very similar to losing a child.

Out of boredom, we are all taking a holiday in the McCanns’ grief.  They have to live there.