In the week that a large proportion of the British population were miraculous survivors of the strongest earthquake to hit these shores in 30 years, and by "survive", I mean most of them slept through it. I felt it necessary to write a blog on the colossal overreaction there was to both this story, and the collapse of Northern Rock Building Society.
There has been a worrying trend in recent years, and I use the word "worrying" entirely deliberately, for the people in news broadcasting to insert something relatively banal, and blow it up to be something incredibly worrying. Firstly, let me point out that the collapse of Northern Rock is not in itself a banal story, but the collapse itself was not the story on which they were reporting at the beginning of the day. The story they were reporting on was the fact that Northern Rock had been refused an emergency loan by the Bank Of England. As we were watching that morning I said the following sentence (and this is no word of a lie): "You watch, later today there'll be people queuing out of the door to take their money out".
And that's exactly what happened.
Put simply, widespread panic. Which I believe was largely unwarranted, because media reports on a story exacerbated the problem and brought about the collapse of the bank.
Fast-forward to this week, when at 1am, my house shook to the first earthquake I've ever experienced on these shores (I've experienced a tremor on the Island of Crete in 2003). Obviously we in the UK are not used to such things, but sheesh, the sum total of the casualties from the UK-wide "natural disaster", was one guy who suffered a broken pelvis. Spare a thought for the people who've suffered real earthquakes and lost family members, property and possesions. I mean, really.
It's time we all got a grip. Once upon a time we were furnished with the Great British Stiff Upper Lip (tm) and we never succumbed to such frivolity. This is what we need to get back to, less panic, more pragmatic, it's what made Britain great.