Whale in the Thames

Whale spotted passing the Houses of Parliament

Let's hope it doesn't get caught by the receding tide.

Probably there to complain about Galloway.

Would the media coverage of it be considered a "podcast"?


I'll get me coat.

Not another fucking recipe thread.

Awesome. Who wants to wager on that being a Sun headline tomorrow?

If anyone has access to Sky News there are some fairly dramatic pictures of it beaching itself at Battersea and a member of the public wading in to try to refloat it.

It's a Northern Bottlenose whale, which looks like a fat dolphin to me:

I tittered at this and it's even funnier from a Norwegian.

"Toad in the Hole for teh new millenium!"

Was going for a comment about "Frog in the Tyne" until I realised I had that a bit arseways.

Whale? In the middle of Laaaahndon? Shurely the Sun will boast:

"Moby Dickens", or, more likely (if it gets out alive), "Having a Whale of a Time".

Surely:

"All's whale that ends whale"

"A Whole Lotta Bottle" (...nosed whale)

"Spout of his depth"

Or, if it doesn't go well for wee Shamu,

"Fin"

Although, that's maybe more for a broadsheet...

Daily Mail:

Lifes a Beach For Asylum Seeker !

Applause.

Yer akshual Sun headline today:

Celebrity Big Blubber.




It's a different league, innit...

Daily Express: "Di reincarnated as Princess of Whales"

Not really, but I bet they considered it.

All's whale that didn't end whale, alas.

Yeah. Pity.

Died of "natural causes", apparently.

On the back of a boat.

In the middle of London.

About as natural as it gets for a whale, that...

Farewhale.

can't help thinking the fucking do gooders should have left the thing alone.

Without the "fucking do gooders" it would have beached at low tide, died anyway, and then someone would have had to clear up the mess. At least they tried to get the poor thing back out to sea, though I suspect it was on the way out as it was.

has it died? Yes

does someone have to "clear up the mess" Yes (and that's hardly a very charitable reason to interfere)

do they all feel like they've done something great? Probably.

it might have beached, it might not. It might have swum back out to sea, it might not. it might have been pining for it's (generally male) lifelong mate. As it can't talk, we'll never know. I'm all for letting NATURE take it's course myself

See I think they should have let it beach and die, because they remove the body by BLOWING IT THE FUCK UP which would be all kinds of awesome to watch.

Poor whale, I like whales.

You are the headline editor for the Mirror and/or Mail (both of which ran that on their front page today) AICMFP.

They let Nature take its course for a while until it became apparent the poor thing was dying anyway, then figured they couldn't do any worse than to cart it out to sea where the water is a damn sight better for it. That it died before it got there is sad but hardly evidence of incompetence per se.

And the Queen officially gets first dibs on all whale bits before any exploding happens (if, indeed, any does).

Extraneous apostrophe aside, in all likelihood it was in the Thames due to unnatural environmental factors in the first place; even if it wasn't, once it was in there it was in a very unnatural environment indeed, what with the boats and concrete and traffic noise and all.

It might not be something you give a fuck about, and personally I think there are other more important things one could be doing, but the people who are on call for this sort of thing have a long history of cetacean rescue, with some successes. Implying that the people wading/swimming around in fucking freezing water for hours to try to save it were doing it for self-aggrandizement is a little silly.

Splat.

I love that video. 'Err well, yessir, we're conifident in our half a fucking ton of dynamite' BLAMMO. Disentegrate it? What the hell did they think would happen?

Nothing to add; just felt moved to scan my cuddly whale.

This post has been edited by Ms Boods on Jan 22 2006, 22:43

If paul gets anywhere near that, I suggest you search him for dynamite.

Can't be too careful about these things.

'Old on... a Northern, bottle-nosed whale floudering near Westminster?

Charles Kennedy, anyone?






Aha. Aha-ha.

Hi everyone, I'm a silly boy who uses apostrophes when h'e shouldn't!

I happen to think the money spent on said 'people who are on call...' could be better spent on floundering humans, but that's just an opinion, you understand.

Seeing as the BDLMR is a charity, funded by donations, it's clearly an opinion their donors disagree with.

I'm sure you don't think that just because something is a charity it's automatically above criticism, Lemon. People are persuaded to give money to all sorts of charities in this country, many of them playing on the general gullibility and anthropomorphic tendencies of the great Sun-reading unwashed!

My point is merely that as an organisation funded by donations it doesn't really matter whether you think it could be spent better elsewhere - that's the call of the donors.

Personally I don't really care if a whale dies swimming up the thames, but some people clearly do, and from what I can tell they took some reasonable actions to save it.

Yeah if it was tax payers money I could see the why some people would be concerned about the money but since the people involved are either volunteers or paid by the charity which is funded by donations.

It's a charity which clearly uses pictures of "cuddly" animals to appeal to anthropomorphising gullible saps. I don't like it much, but if people wanna give I guess it's up to them

For the record: there will be no explosions.

Following the postmortem the flesh is disposed of via incineration or landfill and the bones are off to the Natural History Museum.

And regarding the other thing:

And one more story on the whale:

Link