One of my regular Saturday morning habits at home is to read the online edition of the Market Drayton Advertiser, the local newspaper for the town in which I grew up in Shropshire. It’s always fascinating to contrast life in the inner city where I am now with the small country town of my origin. In addition, there’s always a chance the tribe of Woods will turn up in its articles, as my cousin and first cousin have in consecutive issues.
The Advertiser can also be relied upon to have some quite bizarre bits and pieces – almost as if it’s being written by journalists who don’t check their facts and blind sub-editors checking the copy. One prime example from a few months ago was a report referring to tidal power on the River Tern. Those who know their Shropshire rivers will recognise this as a tributary of the Severn, whose tides extend upriver as far as Gloucester, some 80 miles south. I have occasionally sent the editors emails to point such inconsistencies out, but have never received an answer.
This week’s offering again has a wonderful blooper in the item on the Christmas prize livestock show, which relates the tale of local butcher Scott Shepley successfully bidding for the prize heifer, weighing all of 605 kilograms. Halfway down the racily-paced item comes the sentence:
“At a whopping £262 per kilo, the big beef cost Scott a gut-busting £1,585.10.“
Wait a minute! £262 x 605 = £158,510. Methinks someone missed a point.
